DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

man we're uh so we're out here heck up here it was quite the hike today sorry sorry about that it's been worth it I mean it's been awesome it's been a great hike there a couple points I was cussing you but it's like we kind of have this thing where Chase figures out a lot of our events for like a lot of our activities for our events like our Retreats and stuff and he usually picks out like these hikes that he's like yeah it's just it's just like a mile it's only a mile hike and by the time you get into it not only is it a mile distance but it's more like 2 miles distance plus a mile of elevation and so we're always giving chase a hard time for for like how hard for like how hard the hikes are that he picks so today of course I pick the hike today and we get like a quarter of the way up and he's like who's the one that should be complaining about uh about the hikes we're on cuz we're not even close to that point you said you were going to it's like every time you think you're almost there look like it's just a mile I think I just clocked as we're closer to 2 miles now really yeah that doesn't account for the elevation gain which is significant it's significant that that had to be how that that's at least a thousand oh at least we could we could track it probably but yeah any it's at least a thousand yeah it's been it's been awesome though it's been beautiful getting out here this is I've never been up to this spot before and it's funny I can see one of the spots that we normally go to and it looks puny it's minuscule yeah that's a two- Mile right there yeah right to there two miles that's that's four ridges over no no no no we're not planned no no no we're off to a good start today yeah um speaking of Good Start uh there was a a really diligent mindfulness student that asked his teacher how how long will it take me to reach Enlightenment and the teacher said 10 years and the student said what if I double my efforts and it said 20 all right there there you go different perspective yeah slow it down homie uh what do how do they start the mindfulness Olympics Ready Set stop that's dumb all right the point is you've been talking a lot about mindfulness lately for whatever reason yeah there's a lot of lot of DBT stuff going on around these parts we've been teaching DBT in our lesson in our uh company meetings lately yeah and you know I'm and I'm kind of taking Jabs at you but it's been I think been really useful for me to slow down and and think differently about my approaches yesterday we had a pretty cool meeting went over highlevel uh some relationship skills is that what you'd classify them as and and um and I thought maybe that would be something we could talk about a little bit and then uh if we have time towards the tail end I'd love to uh I don't know if debate is the right word but to you how wrong you are I don't know maybe that's no I'm just kidding um about uh agency and mindfulness I it I just have had some thoughts that I'd love to share and see cool um kind of how they check in with you but um so the relationship skills that we learned about um and this is something you've learned years ago right this was like early on this was I was taught I was taught the DBT stuff back when I was working for the the drug courts of South Eastern Idaho more than a decade ago and DBT is dialectical behavioral therapy and what like it's basically an offshoot of CBT I think it's way better than CBT um no but really it is it just is but um since we're talking in facts and judge and judgments today so yeah so basically it was DBT was founded by Marshall lahan who developed it specifically for people who had the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and what happens with a person with borderline with borderline personality disorder is they have kind of some key sort of symptoms one is is that they have a really difficult time managing their emotions um they have a harder time coming back to Baseline after they become flooded with emotions so if I get upset and I have a hard day but then I'm able to to manage I bring myself back down a person with borderline personality disorder has a hard day they don't bring them themselves down and then the next thing happens and they elevate and So eventually they're living in like really hard places emotionally and then that leads to poor decisions self harm um addictions uh all sorts of acting out and then it also they they have a really difficult time maintaining relationships so DBT came up with this idea let's start with mindfulness mindfulness is like the B and then we'll build skills around this mindfulness for crisis survival for emotion regulation and then for dealing with people relationship relationship so so that's so there's a bunch of skill sets under each one of those categories and you can the thing I like about DBT is you can tangibly teach a skill that's practical and usable and practice in in group or in in a session to train for so theoretically if you de develop all of the skills and you have the toolbox then you can have what's what they call is a life worth living which is I can handle anything that comes my way right and is is this for anybody is is yeah I mean it was it was developed for Broadline personality sort originally but um they've there's a lot been a lot of success with in the addiction world if you look at like a lot of what mental health is is a lot of mental health problems what do you see people can't regulate emotions people can't handle crisis people aren't living mindfully and they have a hard time with relationships so so the skills they kind of just generalize to a to a happy life right you know you know so um so I'd love to just go over the relational skills that we talked about yesterday um and I'm going to give it my best to remember the acronyms and the use case yeah for each one you know this is kind of like pop quiz uh but for my own self um so the the way that we had it explained was it's a a triangle you have three different points three different purposes what priorities yeah what are you trying to accomplish and um so first thing you do is prioritize figure out which which thing you're trying to do and then once you get to that place um you're able to use whatever that skill is that's related to that that purpose that's right um so what I remember objective yeah so so there's three there's three main priorities for why we interact with people so the three you're going to list up the three priorities right now right yeah so you have an objective so there's something you're trying to accomplish you want to do something or get something in a relationship uh self-respect so you're trying to maintain self-respect and then uh the last one is you're actually trying to strengthen or build further the relationship with somebody mhm okay um so for each of those uh respectively there's dear man dear man is for objective if I'm trying to get something mhm uh there is the fast skill for self resect and then there's give for the uh relationship building Rel ship um so and maybe instead of me trying to you're doing great okay yeah uh yeah this is good you actually listened yesterday that freaking awesome hell yeah hey big surprise right exactly I'm not just over there cracking jokes like some idiot um playing my harmonica at random um so dear man is descri and I'm just going to say that what they are and then maybe we can we talk about the essence of them sure so describe uh Express uh assert uh reinforce mindful be mindful uh o appear appear confident H that's funny that one God damn it uh and then negotiate right yeah okay so kind of walk me through uh if you don't mind like let's say um the situation is that I've got a uh let's go with the simple one of I'm trying to get a raise yeah you're trying to get a raise I'm trying to get a raise mhm you come to the boss and you're going to use the deer man skill the the objective now the priority is to get the objective of getting a raise so even though you still want to have a good relationship with your boss and you still want to keep your self respect those things kind of become the secondary skills to the fact that in this meeting my my goal is to get a raise I'm going to step into that conversation and I'm going to describe why I'm there and express and express kind of what what I want to have happen there and why I'm there right my my intentions and then I'm going to assert be assertive with what I want and reinforce the person I'm talking to and there's ways to reinforce where you help them to see why it benefits them to also play the game that you're playing with them for the negotiation so to speak right so you help them understand how grateful you are for who they are and what they've done for you and how they run their business and and also what you're going to be giving to them or what you're already giving them to them that helps them like go yeah you're right like that's that's a great objective to go towards right um be mindful which means stay stay present there don't get distracted into other discussions appear confident is a hard one for people but that's about body language and posture and tone of voice and um the more that it's practiced it's just like a skill like anything else it can be developed with more confidence but you're more likely to get your objective if you're if you show up confidently and then the last one is negotiation which means think when whenn like think multiple options towards the same objective so be creative be willing to look at how you might be a able to help somebody else with their objective while you get your own um you're more likely to be successful when you do that okay cool um have you used that one recently have I used I think deand anybody yeah yeah I mean that's dayto day right I do that I do that a lot I go in there like I actually did this with uh so so there's some land that I want to hunt and um I went out there to to try to go access it it's public land but it closes off like it closes off on a certain date of the year to kind of prevent the dirt roads from getting chewed up and stuff and next to it there's like a parking lot there and it's on like what my map shows was private land and so I was like well I I want to park here so I can hike there right and but I didn't know who to contact you know because I'm like it looks like a public parking lot but it's showing that it's on private land so I started calling people I started calling the fishing game I I called fishing game first and and I the phone call sounded just like this this is the dear man skill hey uh thanks so much for taking my call like you guys are awesome I love what you guys do and I hope you can help me I I'm hoping you're the one I can talk to to help me right cuz what I'm now doing is I'm being grateful and I'm trying to elicit the response like of course I want to be the one to help you like you know so yeah I hope you I hope you guys are the one that helping me if not like just steer me in the right direction but I'm really wanting to access this land I want to park at this parcel like what can you tell me fishing game's like that's not our jurisdiction but here's the sheriff's number like in fact well I'll just patch you into the sheriff you can just talk straight to the sheriff so I call the sheriff's patch into the sheriff's and same thing I'm not sure you guys are the ones I'm really hoping you're the ones that can help me with this info Sheriff's like look at it and they're like uh we don't know like you can talk to a deputy so they they patch me into a deputy and the deput is like that's not me like that's not like you should call you should call the forest service oh here's their number so finally called the forest service same thing and the lady there was so nice she was so awesome and she listens to me and she's like at that spot I said yeah there's like some signs posted that say it's spot it looks public but it says it's private like and she sat there and she's like you can absolutely park there you can I'm like are you sure like you know she's like you can absolutely park there so I like took that as like fact anything I'm not going to go ask any other questions I'm not calling the landowner I'm just I got to yes I'll I'll I'll I'll funnel it back when I'm getting my trespassing ticket I'll funnel it back to the the forest service you know but she said she has nothing to do with this so so that was like the reinforcement and the express and asking part of it there wasn't nearly a lot not of negotiation that was done there yeah but it didn't need to be done because it was you know places there is some negotiation that needs to happen well okay so let me ask you uh how much of that is butt kissing versus being authentic I was genuinely being kind yeah you know I sit and I think about like what if I was doing that job in Reverse what do you usually get in those jobs hey hey I got a complaint like somebody's trespassing on my land or hey there's a you know there's I I need to disturb you know something I need to you know report something and so I was just thinking you know if I'm answering that call it would be really nice to be the one to go like oh I get like a two-minute break to someone who's nice right now you know of course I want to help them yeah and it works in everything like it works it works with everybody it does especially if it's genuine yeah no yeah I was just thinking well yeah maybe some stories I probably shouldn't share public I'll hold those off anyway um all right so uh next twist the triangle let's say it's uh self-respect the new priority is self-respect the new priority is self resect so the other two take a take the back seat kind of um and it's the the fast skill and I actually can't remember the first two letters but I do remember the last two okay so fast is about keeping self- resect first one is to remember to be fair to yourself and others so you're being fair and this is the key to both like you're equals so so you're not better than somebody you're also not going to treat yourself as worse than somebody in the interaction so we we're equals while we're talking and I have to remember that when I'm going into the skill um I want to be fair to you I don't want to like Chase you're such a jackass you know or oh my gosh Chase I'm sorry I shouldn't be talking to you it's just we're equals um second one is to apologize less and people get confused on this one a lot but apologizing less is about actually taking ownership for what you actually can and then letting go of the stuff that you can't actually own because if you own stuff that's not yours number one you actually probably doing that in order to manipulate somebody else's feelings to avoid conflict or something and you're also preventing the other person from actually being the one to grow or learn by owning they're part of of something um it's kind of a way of playing small for a lot of people too so and then you got the last two which you know stick to your values um so I mean that one's kind of straightforward don't don't vary from from what your actual values are and you want to know what those are when you're going into the conversation so you can fall back on those over and over again and and then the last one is uh tell the truth be truthful yeah mhm um so with with any of those I mean is that that's basically a scenario where um maybe somebody has given you some grief or like what when would you have used you would use that one anytime some it's it's a boundaries kind of a skill anytime somebody steps over your values and you have to kind of set boundaries then you're going to use a fast skill to kind of protect those values and and but you're going to do it in a in a kind way that's not dramatic you know um you're going to do it when you need to have like a conversation with somebody about like you know somebody calls up and is like hey you want to watch my kids and uh and you don't mind helping out once in a while but this is like the fourth time they've asked in four days and one of their kids is like a snot-nosed little punk you don't want to watch them and you're like oh we would love to like but we got all sorts of family stuff on tonight and then we have practice and then we have we're probably going to be going to game night or something Meanwhile your whole plan for the night is like hide behind the front door and turn on the TV right like you just lied and the skill says because you just lied you've already gone against your own values which means you're roding your self reses so instead you should and there's lots of ways to be honest with this but you can just say yeah we don't have the energy for it tonight or you know what that's not going to work for us tonight or if I really love you you know what like we've watched your kids the last three nights we're kind of burned out and if I'm being honest like I don't think I can take your son today you know like you know we need a couple days to rest up and we're happy to help again right like trying to think if we've ever had you guys watch our kids four days in a row now you're like is that us a little too close to home not at all we we don't watch your kids hardly at all like we could probably stand and watch your kids more you said it not me look out for some phone calls hey we love your kids we love your kids so but yeah so so that would be another time when you would use a fast skill like and that telling the truth part like it seems so simple to just for some reason we feel like we feel better about ourselves by letting ourselves and the other person down easy with a lie than just the truth it's like you know like like if I want to cancel my appointments today because I'm just like I'd rather stay up here here I can like hurry and like either the best thing for me is to call our secretary and then have them do all the Dirty Work hey gu I'm feeling I'm sick like got a call in sick today and then they call like hey Tyler's sick can we please reschedule why did I have to say I was sick why don't I just call and say man like I need a mental health day and I I need to cancel my appointments because cuz I need a mental health day and I I I need to spend some more time in nature right now and then the secretary calls and says hey Tyler is like says he needs a mental health day he needs to see if he'll reschedule or cancel are the clients going to maybe be a little pissed at me and would it be easier if I was sick and they're like oh I hope he feels better but what did I do to trust in the relationship especially if today like they happen to be hiking out here and they're like were you sick you look fine like why are we why are you four miles off the road like I thought you were sick now I've really eroded trust not to mention that I let go of my own self-respect yeah so anyway that's that's a fast skill that's a fast skill okay um so last last uh objective would be the relationship building skill and this is the give skill and I don't remember Jack about the give skill I started off strong you know shooting 50 GI skill GI skill might be the most important one for a lot of people yeah maybe obviously not for you I'm trying to maintain self you're going to have some self resect no matter what and and you're definitely going to get what you want yeah exactly remember that one my relationships will be crap but otherwise so you can you're going to really consume people so the last the the give skill is is about maintaining relationships and it's the first one is to remember to be gentle in relationships which means that if you actually want to be productive in the relationship you treat it like it matters so you don't mistreat people you don't start with drama you don't start with harsh comments you don't start with criticisms right off the bat you use soften startup and you use eye statements and you use kind of more gentle communication and that also invites people into your space more um the eye is to be interested to actually show interest in the other person so instead of just kind of like looking at your phone or like looking off into space like while the person's talking you're actually making eye contact you're you're showing some active listening restating that kind of stuff and then really taking a genuine interest in them and their perspective V is validation and validation is not agreeing with somebody validation is letting the person know that they're understood and that they're seen and that their perspective is valuable and um and so being able to validate whatever that perspective is that they're sharing with you and then the E is to keep an easy manner with which means body language open posture soft muscles in your face keep your breathing going um you're actually inviting more conversation connection with an easy manner whereas if you're closed off or turned away you're actually inviting less connection so that's the fast version of that man I guess yeah fast and dirty so what's the what's a recent I mean it doesn't have to be recent What's a prime example of you doing the give skill um every day in my office is there's give skill going on you're just like the DBT master sensei but I I have found a lot of value in the DVT skills for myself personally actually I use them a lot um but yeah no like I I think in the give like to be a good therapist you have to have some level of trust with the person you're trying to help before you can push on them and so the gift skill is really important especially early on in the therapeutic process to really have people see that you care about them you're genuinely trying to understand them and and as you grow in trust it actually allows you to to do some pushing and some some things for change that otherwise wouldn't be able to happen if they didn't feel understood and and feel valued you know and uh and so it really is important to to do that on a daily basis I try to do it with my kids every day with my wife in the way we talk to each other every day on some level not always perfect at it but um yeah to me the give skill all all of these skills are daily SK kinds of skills and and you don't think about them necessarily in sequential or like I'm well now at first I'm going to and then I'm going to show some interest I think I think at first you that's the way you learn them yeah you know but but really each one of those letters they're all acronyms right each one of those letters is its own skill so like with the dear man I I frequently am as I did with the forest service people and everybody else it's like I'm reinforcing before I'm even like moving into like hey here's what I need right um I just found that to be effective when you call people on the phone re do the reinforcement first with a simple I'm so glad you took my call like so thank so grateful you're here like who's gonna who's going to want to be like sorry can't help you if you're like man like I'm so appreciative to you for being here answer my call like reinforce it first and then you start asking for what you want and by the time you start asking they're already like I want to help this dude like first nice person I've had in like three days so anyway they don't have to be done in order per se um it's it's more that each one is its own skill too yeah Okay cool so man yeah well makes me feel like uh I'm doing pretty good in life I think you're doing great dude well you're getting a lot of what you want um you know joking aside like you were saying each one of those is has its own its subskill right and I don't necessarily think about it in those terms all the time but I do think I'm kind of hitting those aiming for those general areas whenever I am working in those modes yeah that's what I like about DBT is that it puts language to to principles and things that you're already like oh yeah kind of Common Sense yeah that makes sense to me so now it's like I'm reinforcing I I do that naturally but now because I have the language I feel skillful which then also makes me feel more confident and confident right even though I was doing the same thing anyway right so so so many of the skills are that way in DBT they're so practical and simple but because there's a language to them it sticks with you and it also then helps you go oh yeah I already have some of these skills already built right that makes [Music] sense