Behind every Instagram Reel or Pinterest party theme, there is a lot of time spent planning, several takes to get it right, and editing to create the final product. The people involved have developed the skills they need to be masterful at what they do, but they often don’t show off the process, the falls, the crying, the fails, the defeat, the learning moments.
You, for example, can’t see how many sentences have been typed and deleted while writing this blog, and I promise, a lot of sentences are getting reworked as I write. You see the final product, after multiple edits, with attractive formatting and photos to highlight the message.
Do you feel like it’s not worth it to even try?
We live in a world where people can make anything look easy, perfect, and effortless on social media, where it’s uncool to try, and it’s not aesthetic to be less than excellent. Failure can feel personal. Successes are assumed to be the baseline, so celebrating them feels silly.
It can be hard for anyone to try new things when all you see around you are successful results and not the work that goes into them, but when you’re also dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or BPD, your symptoms can make it especially difficult to feel like you’re capable.
It can be hard to believe in yourself
Fatigue, impatience, and brain fog can make starting a new task difficult. Perfectionism, negative self-beliefs, a shaky sense of self, and fear of rejection can make you feel worthless, demotivated, and unwilling to try.
What’s worse, these symptoms reinforce themselves; when you can’t get yourself to try, to grow, to learn, and you’re convinced it’ll be a failure before you start, your self-esteem crumbles even more. Self-esteem is key to self-actualization, and when you are buried under an avalanche of hard feelings and internalized beliefs, it becomes even harder to engage with your life.
What do you need to do to Build Mastery?
The Build Mastery skill asks you to learn something new as a way to remind yourself you’re capable, and to help you build up emotional resilience. You’ll mindfully engage with the learning process, finding out all you can, practicing diligently, and celebrating your successes. When failures come up, you’ll face your feelings, observe your thoughts, learn, and let them go.
Start something you’ve never tried before
Pick something you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t tried before, like painting, windsurfing, a DBT skill, crocheting, or baking fresh bread. Choose something fun that you know you’ll be able to practice regularly.
It’s understandable if you feel resistance to this! That’s avoidance kicking in, trying to stop you from taking even tiny risks. Try to push past that resistance by focusing on what you need to do, moment to moment. Learn everything you can about what you want to try, take notes, make a plan, and ask someone you trust (like your therapist at THIRA Health) to help you be accountable so you can share your progress.
Practice, learn, pivot around failures
Take notes, watch videos, take a class, or find a local club to learn all you can about what you’re going to build mastery in. Practice regularly, and make sure to document all your efforts, so you can see your progress.
As you do this, you’ll inevitably fail at something. We all do, it’s a core part of the learning process. When you fail, you’ll probably have some strong feelings, and may even want to give up. This is a great time to use mindfulness to give yourself some perspective and relief.
The STOP skill is a great one to use here. Observe your thoughts and feelings when things don’t go right. Let go of judgments, just notice. Breathe, and let these emotions and the thoughts they bring on pass you by. Then, when you’re more emotionally regulated, proceed mindfully. Instead of trashing the project or abandoning your goals, look at what you can learn, and try again!
Celebrate successes
Anxiety, depression, BPD, and more can make it really hard to feel like celebrating your successes, so while you’re building mastery in your new skill, it’s also a chance to build mastery in celebrating your accomplishments.
When you consistently practice, celebrate that. When you learn something new, celebrate it. When you fail, struggle, and have the emotional resilience to try again, celebrate that. It may feel weird at first, but with time, you’ll also master the skill of recognizing your success.
Not sure how to celebrate yourself? Here are some options:
- Share your success with a friend so they can cheer you on
- Journal about your success, taking a thoughtful look at how your abilities (and your sense of self) have changed
- Reward yourself with something you enjoy, like a night out with friends, a day trip, a fancy coffee, or a cozy night in with a good book.
- Just taking a moment to smile and recognize you’re doing a great job
How does the Build Mastery DBT skill help with emotional regulation?
The emotional dysregulation that comes with mental health disorders like BPD or depression can make it hard to move past what you’re feeling and pay attention to actually doing something you want to do. Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and more can leave you stuck in a “fixed” mindset, where you assume that if you’re not great or talented at something right away, it’s not for you.
With a fixed mindset, if you’re not immediately successful, that’s that. When your self–esteem is tied to your abilities, and if your abilities are fixed from the start, how can your self-esteem grow?
The more you try and aren’t perfect from the start, the worse it is for your self-esteem. Fixed mindsets feed emotional overwhelm and dysregulation, making it harder to live your life to the fullest.
Build Mastery helps you gain multiple skills at once, including a growth mindset
Build Mastery doesn’t just help you learn a new skill; it also helps you develop a growth mindset. This is the mindset that flows from the belief that you can definitely improve at anything you want to try. With practice, diligence, and learning from failures, you can make progress in any area of your life. The goal with a growth mindset isn’t perfection (especially not from the start); the goal is improvement, and choosing to see improvement and effort as signs of success.
With a growth mindset, your self-esteem comes from putting in effort, not perfection. Effort and improvement are both things you are fully capable of, no matter what depression, BPD, or anxiety try to tell you, and Build Mastery can help reinforce this for you.
An intensive DBT program at THIRA Health can help you rebuild self-esteem
Build Mastery helps you learn how to do something, but it also helps you learn how to accept failure, to start new things, and to develop the emotional resilience you need to try, try again. It’s one of several emotional regulation skills, alongside mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance skills, you’ll learn at a comprehensive DBT program, like those at THIRA Health.
THIRA Health provides structured, evidence-based care in a healing, supportive environment. If you or a loved one could use expert support and a personalized, holistic treatment plan for managing mental health symptoms, contact our intake team today.
