Note:  This ended up being way longer than I intended.  Insight is appreciated.  Thank you all for being so fantastic.  &lt;3

I see a therapist and a DBT therapist.  The reason I have two of them is that one works for the county and I cannot see him as much as I'd like due to a large caseload.  They both know about each other so it's not like some weird therapy "affair." 

Anyhow, this is the issue I've always had: 

I think the skills are great in theory, but I can never be cognizant enough to put them into practice.  This is in part due to needing trauma therapy (I think).  I spend all of my time holding in my emotions, trying to keep myself level that I get overly rational and when I'm no longer able to contain it, I become totally emotional which usually results in a fight with my partner.  Do I think that DBT is helping me become a little more self-aware, yes I do?  But my therapist has helped me figure out what's operating behind my actions in order to help me understand myself.

Every time I finish seeing my therapist, I feel exhausted but refreshed, as if a little bit of weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  The last session we talked about how I basically have all of this "ammo" to come at everyone as a precautionary measure in order to protect myself.  He reminds me often that while my current methods have allowed me to survive up until this point, I need to slowly loosen them and adopt a different way of living that will be far less stressful.  This is what I'm trying to keep in mind as well as communicating my feelings and giving myself a break when necessary.  I just can't pick out a skill to use if my life depended on it, which I think is a little unusual because I also have OCPD and am a very rule/order type of person.  

I just always feel so damn preoccupied...I'm an introvert so I would like to think I have a rich albeit complex inner life.  I like to process things with time by writing and really thinking about them.  But I also have a hard time with "busy work."  As a student, I absolutely loathed the crossword or word search worksheets for points toward my grade.  I'm a teacher now and it's probably why I don't do things like this.  What I'm trying to get at is that I really do not like the diary cards.  It's hard for me to go through and figure out what skill I used during the day.  I tend to operate in the "did I lose my shit about anything?  If so why/why not." 

Finally, this whole thing just makes me feel sort of dumb and like a failure.  This seems easy but I just can't understand how to employ it.  My husband is a very skill focused person, too.  He had a DBT class with other people and they followed a book closely.  My introduction to DBT came in a group where we focused on a worksheet or two and then went around in a circle to discuss issues we were having/application.  Now my DBT therapist and I are working on things one on one.  She's explaining the skills to me and they make perfect sense but are hard to apply. My biggest fear is that people will think I think I'm too good for DBT or that I'm being willfully ignorant.  I'm not, I just have a difficult time implementing the skills.  I don't know.