I feel like I’ve just gotten to the end of High School Musical and realized, yes Troy Bolton, you can be both a basketball player and a singer. Basically everybody from that Status Quo song – the guy who bakes, the girl who dances, and the skater dude who plays the cello (which was my personal favorite – dude motions like he’s using a bow and his buddy is like wait A SAW??). The point is you can be both whatever conventional thing and whatever quirky thing you want.

Except, I’ve realized this in a therapeutic setting. Now for any other counseling professionals who got scared away in school like I did from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) because of the specific populations it is often used for or just professors who were afraid of nuance like mine, I have good news of great joy (wait – sorry Linus, wrong metaphor). DBT is not that scary, it just means you’re working from a both/and framework. The Dialectic (aka the D in DBT) is that of both radical acceptance of who you are right now and a need to change. Like wow, groundbreaking. And then the fact that the T in DBT isn’t really a series of scary steps that you can get wrong on a test, it’s just a matter of triaging – my medical social work self feels like I just got my mind blown. Or like you get to high school and are like wait is this it? It’s not so scary. (I will die on this East High Wildcat hill – just you wait). Of course! We deal with the safety stuff first, then just reverse Maslow it from there, that’s just common sense to anybody trained in any type of counseling. Why didn’t I think of that?!

Now, to be clear, DBT requires skill and I’m talking about it like it’s the easiest thing in the world – but what I mean to say is I’m just realizing that I have those skills, and that DBT is not some scary thing I don’t know how to do. This is my “we’re breaking free – soaring, flying, there’s not a star in heaven that we can’t reach” moment, I guess you could say…

Personal epiphany aside, I think we don’t talk about duality or dialectics enough, and we certainly aren’t that comfortable with them.

Take the Dual Process of Grief model for example – this model states that typical grief journeys entail both living in grief and moving forward AT THE SAME TIME. A person bounces back and forth between reintegrating themselves into life without their person to being bereft at the loss and that this bouncing back and forth is more than okay – it’s expected. (If you’re like me and you’re picturing the choreography to Get Your Head In the Game with basketballs bouncing back and forth, you’re welcome).

Now think of the Dialectic in DBT – I radically accept myself as I am and realize that I need to change. Accepting these two things or accepting both grief and reintegration simultaneously, realizing that one is not more important or better than the other, is monumental. This level of self acceptance, self awareness, and self compassion is almost transcendent or religious (if that’s your persuasion). And if you really wax poetic about it, you might even realize We’re All In This Together…