DBT For Dummies. Gillian Galen
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Does my emotion fit the situation, and does it make sense that this emotion is showing up right now?
Does the intensity to which I am feeling it make sense?
Does the duration that I am feeling it make sense?
Getting from recognition to regulation
While some find that recognizing their emotions is the hardest part, others find figuring out what to do with them or finding the willingness to use a skill to be the most challenging part. We discuss more specific emotion regulation skills in Chapter 10. Once you recognize your emotions, you need to ask yourself what you want or need to do with them.
Validating your emotions
One of the most critical and sometimes hardest things to do is to validate your emotions. For many people who come to DBT, this is one of the hardest skills because for many years, they, and often their loved ones, have been invalidating their emotions. The key to validation is to remind yourself (and others if you’re validating them) what makes sense about how you feel. The NO in your SUN WAVE NO NOT (covered earlier in this chapter) helps you avoid the self-invalidation that may have become automatic.
Asking a few helpful questions
1 How can I validate my current emotion?
2 Do I want to tolerate and accept this emotion so I can ride it out like a wave?
3 Do I want to increase or decrease the intensity of this emotion?
4 Do I want to stay miserable?
5 Do I want to do something to make it worse?
We review many skills to help you tolerate, as well as increase and decrease, the intensity of your emotions in Part 3 of this book.
Sometimes, staying miserable for a period of time can be validating. It’s okay to do that. That being said, we include it as number four because we want that to be a choice made with intention and not a state that you find yourself stuck in, not realizing how you got there. You can think about it like this: It’s okay to throw yourself a pity party — sometimes we all just need that — but you need to know that you’re going to the party, so that after a reasonable period of time, you know how to leave.
Number five is there for similar reasons; it will help you avoid falling into the trap of making things worse. Remember, you can almost always make your situation and emotions worse. Our hope is that you learn this as an option so that you can experience this emotion less. It isn’t uncommon for this to happen in a split second and with little awareness. The idea is to slow yourself down. It may seem like an obvious example, but when you’re angry and you punch a wall, it may feel good in the moment when you get a huge rush of adrenaline, but then you just have a hole in the wall that you need to explain and then fix. You have worsened your problem, and if you’re like many people, you’ve piled on an intense feeling of shame.
If you can keep these questions in mind, you can build the awareness to decrease reactivity and increase your sense of choice of how to move on a skillful path toward regulation.
Identifying and Handling Problem Areas
We all have problem areas. In DBT we have a number of skills training assumptions, and two of the most important ones are that we are all doing the best we can, and we need to do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change. Problem areas, or areas of emotional vulnerability, are a reality. It can be helpful to not get lost in judgment about problem areas, but instead to embrace them as nuggets of wisdom that you know about yourself and that you can build awareness and skills to manage.
Looking at what causes you distress
Looking at what commonly causes you distress can help you anticipate challenging situations. When you can anticipate difficult situations or interactions, it gives you time to plan ahead so that you aren’t continually experiencing distress in the same situations. Knowing your common areas of distress will also help you validate your experience, which, as we discuss earlier in this chapter, will help you keep painful emotions from building in intensity.
Is there something you do that repeatedly causes you distress (posting on social media, being with certain people, going to certain places)?
Are there certain relationships or interactions that repeatedly cause you distress?
Are there certain holidays or gatherings that repeatedly cause you distress?
Are there certain places you go (work, school, restaurants, people’s houses) that