Both things are true

Marsha Linehan was a psychologist at the University of Washington in the 1980s trying to treat the patients nobody could help: chronically suicidal women with what was then a hopeless diagnosis, borderline personality disorder. The standard therapies made them worse, because the therapies demanded change, and the demand felt like one more rejection. Her breakthrough was a word: dialectical. Two things that seem opposite are both true. You are doing the best you can, and you need to do better. I accept you completely, and I'm going to help you change. Holding both at once, without collapsing into either, was the treatment. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, is now the treatment of choice for that diagnosis and for many others involving overwhelming emotion.

Its skills are taught in groups and they're useful to anyone. Mindfulness: the observing mind, which you know. Distress tolerance: how to survive a crisis without making it worse, with tools as concrete as cold water on the face, intense exercise, paced breathing. Emotion regulation: understanding what emotions do, reducing vulnerability to them, and acting opposite to the urge when the emotion doesn't fit the facts. And interpersonal effectiveness: how to ask for what you need and say no while keeping the relationship and your self-respect.

Linehan revealed decades later that she'd built the therapy she'd needed as a suicidal teenager in a hospital, and that it had come from her own recovery. I include that because it's the pattern of this whole chamber: the healers built the path they'd walked.

Vault Human points to DBT therapists for anyone whose emotions are running their life. The skills belong to everyone.