I've been in and out of outpatient and inpatient treatment for BPD for a decade now and nothing has ever really helped me... until now.

The group I'm in is called Managing Powerful Emotions and we basically discuss how to identify and understand our own emotions. We meet twice a week and I think its basically DBT with a focus on emotional regulation. I really didn't have any confidence in it when I first started about 3 weeks ago. But we just started doing Observation sheets for ourselves and... it's fucking great. So, I thought I'd share them and see if it might be helpful to anyone else.

Here's an example!

**Emotion Name:** I find it helpful to wait until I finish the rest of the sheet before I try to identify the feeling because that's really hard for me.

**Intensity (0-100):** I hate doing the number thing so sometimes I skip it.

**Prompting Event:** What happened right before you started feeling this way. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what prompted it.

**Interpretations:** This is for all the thoughts and opinions you have about the feeling or prompting event. Don't censor yourself! For example, if I'm feeling shame or sadness, I usually think things like, "I'm so stupid and worthless. I'm a burden to everyone. I hate myself. Everyone just tolerates me. I should just disappear. If I don't get my shit together people will just leave me." That sort of thing.

**Body Changes:** Anything the emotion makes you feel in your body. Examples are tense, numb, tired, heavy, pain, feeling sick, heart beating fast, dizzy, breathing fast, etc.

**Body Language:** What other people would notice if they saw you. So... your facial expression, posture, maybe you're pacing or clenching your fists or curling up small or avoiding eye contact or screaming or something.

**Action Urges:** What you really want to do. For me, it's almost always self harm. It could be breaking things, running away, hiding in your room, taking drugs/alcohol.

**What I Said or Did:** What you actually did, even if it matches the action urges.

**After Effect:** How did your feelings/actions make you feel? Did anything you did help you or make you feel worse later? How did the other people in the situation react?

**Function of Emotion:** What do you think the purpose of that emotion was? Our group made a list of functions:

* Communication (Let others know you liked/didn't like what they said or did)

* Influence (Try to get others to act or feel differently)

* Motivate (Get you to take action of some kind)

* Attention (Force you to pay attention to your thoughts or actions or warn you that a situation might be dangerous or unhealthy)

* Cover (Cover up a more uncomfortable feeling, such as getting angry when afraid or sad instead of being angry at someone)

**Taking a Second Look:** How else can this situation be looked at? Is your reaction helpful or harmful? How would you see it if this was happening to someone you cared about?

**Summary:** What, if anything, did you learn about yourself from doing this?

The first few times doing this felt kind of dumb, but now it's actually starting to help me! I can look back on old sheet and see what happened and try different things. It kind of takes me outside the situation and helps me see it more objectively.

I hope this helps somebody!