For #gish item #158 and #disabilitypride we were asked to make a portrait of a disabled person out of something representing their contributions. 

I made this piece in honor of Marsha Linehan, the woman who has saved my life and many others with her creation of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as a method to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, a disorder that she shares with her patients. It is made with quotes from her textbook and DBT skills. 

When it comes to explaining art, especially if it is fairly plain, you always get the question “how do you know when it’s done?” 

Of course, it’s never done. No such thing. 

But this comes from a basic flaw in understanding the artistic process. 

Artists just fix the most wrong thing they can currently see. Then the next most wrong thing they see after that. So it’s an easy assumption to make that by improving the amount and type of flaws an artist can see, they would improve substantially.

 But it’s not as if the painting has a certain number of flaws and after each one, check mark that part is done. Because every line and color that gets adjusted changes how the eye perceives. And the more flaws that you are attempting to rework at the same time, the more likely you are to become demotivated and just give up. 

This is a perfect metaphor for the process of growth through DBT. Thesis and antithesis reaching synthesis. Followed by re-evaluation. Then do it again. You continue to fix the most wrong thing that you can see. Until… when?

Until the risk of exceeding the limit of your skills is greater than the reward of the fix you are trying to make. “If I push this further am I gonna ruin it?” 

This is likely what people find most frustrating about the first line traditional therapies. The skill gap. Your ability to see flaws will improve before your ability to handle them does. 

This is the opposite in DBT.

Your ability to see flaws and cognitive distortions improves as you begin using skills and gaining experience with them. It is only then then you begin making the connections as to the true sources and solutions of your behaviors.

Those connections may have only traumatized you if you were still functioning at the same level as before. 

You need practice walking up to the line and knowing whether you can take another step or not and you cannot learn that academically. 

You’re gonna ruin a lot of work. Eventually you tune in your sensitivity and awareness so you can spend more time in the safe zone of fixing things before you reach the limit of your skills. That’s when you can actually begin the real and profound work safely and know that wherever you end up going with it, you have the capability and control over what’s directly in front of you to be able to handle. 

I had stopped making art for 10 years after a cruel drawing professor in college. I also was institutionalized 22 times during that decade. That part was more about identity. It was play that developed the confidence and learning that results in me now being introduced as an artist, and as the person that I’m actually comfortable living as day to day. 

Practicing non-judgmentally which gives you the time and experience to develop your own meaningful conclusions, and improving your eye but not practicing systematically, will both allow you to improve. One has gotten you into a productive practice, though, and established a baseline, and done so without relying on installing a harsher critic. 

I lived it before I became it.

And it is only now that I feel safe enough to go deeper.

But it is with a better understanding

And a better mindset.

And now… no one can take it away from me.

See I once thought that the goal was to get good at something. 

Now I realize you only need to be good enough to fix your mistakes to be quite dangerous.

And you’re already ahead of everyone that’s not even trying. 

But is this piece done? 

Not if Marsha Linehan says it isn’t. 

I’ll be fixing it up digitally to give away as a downloadable if she gives permission.