Awful Psychotherapy Acronyms

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I did some Dialectical Behavious Therapy work last summer, to help with the depression and anger management problems I've been having. I thought the theory was brilliant at the time, but I've got nowhere with applying it. One problem is the acronyms / abreviations that are supposed to help you remember all this stuff in a crisis. They don't. They really, really don't.

On some of them, it's like they've selected the least relevant keyword from each step just to squeeze it in to the acronym, with the result that even if I could remember the word, I'd be none the wiser. I know there are three techniques called DEARMAN, FAST and GIVE, but I can't tell you anything about them without having my notes right in front of me.

JADE

Things you remember in a crisis are usually instinctual and hardwired. New techniques take time to be integrated by your mind/brain. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.

Having said that, Mindfulness is a useful tool for me when I'm not in a crisis, but it gets defenestrated when in a crisis.

Psychotherapist , one word

Psycho the rapist, three words

Reminds me of an essay years ago. Cant find it on the Net now. A parody of an office memorandum from a company about to downsize (ie to fire a bunch of folks).

"We will soon implement Resource Allocation for Personnel Enrichment, or R.A.P.E.. And will also start a program called something something something something, or "SCREW", and will offer something something (same abstract beauracratic terms), or SHAFT.

Employees maybe RAPED no more than once, SCREWED no more than twice, but they can request the SHAFT as often as they want. "

There is a mnemonic story to help you remember the names of the nine planets- with characters at a picnic, or something- whose names start with the same letters as the nine planets. Just directly memorizing the names of the nine planets is a zillion times easier than trying to remember the moronic mnemonic! Off the top of my head right now... in their correct order of distance from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and (old school) Pluto. How hard is that?