Think about someone who reacts to situations in a way that you would like to react. Ask yourself how they would react in this situation, and compare your reaction to theirs.
Use self-validation by recognizing how your emotions make sense, and stay away from judging yourself. This will help you decrease the intensity of your emotions and access your inner wisdom to assess your reaction. It’s often self-judgment, self-blaming, and self-invalidation that continue to drive up the intensity of your emotions and make it hard to think (see Chapter 5 for more on self-validation).
Take five mindful breaths to help you decrease the intensity of your emotions. Just taking a few breaths will help begin to calm both your body and your mind.
Be aware of topics or situations that prompt your reactivity. This awareness will help you know that certain situations leave you at a higher risk to be reactive so that you can plan ahead for them. Some people find it helpful to identify these topics or situations as “red flags” and then make a skills plan or cope ahead plan to use when they come up. If you can identify these red flags, you can catch yourself before you react and instead use your skills.
Holding off on taking action
One of the three functions of emotions is to motivate action. In some cases, that is exactly what needs to happen; however, in other cases moving into action too quickly can get you into trouble. When the goal is to open your mind and be able to see multiple perspectives, you’ll often need to observe your urge to argue your point of view, ignore or dismiss another position, or get stuck in a state of certainty that there are no other options.
Simply observing, which is discussed more in Chapter 9, means having awareness that moving into action isn’t necessarily going to be helpful or effective. Sometimes you may find that awareness after you have charged ahead; in those cases, your task is to observe with compassion and remember that in many cases, it isn’t too late to slow down, breathe, and work to open your mind.
Expanding Your Perception
Once you have the willingness and skill to observe your first reaction (as we describe earlier in this chapter), you’ll have the opportunity to expand your perception and consider alternative points of view. The wonderful thing about developing this type of awareness is that you can give yourself some choices about what to do next. You can decide to stay stuck in your perspective, but it’s more likely that your mind will become more open and less certain, and that you’ll find it easier to consider different possible perspectives. Expanding your perception and awareness can be very helpful when you are stuck feeling like you have only one option to solve a problem or are in a conflict where it feels like you can’t understand the other person and they can’t understand you. Often strong emotions blind us to alternatives that are really helpful.
Being able to expand your perception is critical to nurturing and maintaining important relationships. Many relationships end when one or both people can’t slow down and see alternative perspectives. Simply seeing another perspective doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily agree with it, and if you can see and understand where the other person is coming from, you can validate their emotions and become more curious and non-judgmental about how they got to their position. If the interaction is becoming escalated, this can decrease the emotional intensity for everyone involved. By approaching it in this way, you’ll help the other person be curious about your perspective, allowing for a more effective conversation.
The following sections walk you through the main steps of expanding your perception and considering other points of view.
Considering your therapist’s point of view
As we discuss earlier in this chapter, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to not move into action to make a decision, to continue a conversation or debate, to get in the last word, to quit a job or school, or even to end a relationship. Due to the very direct nature of communication in DBT, clients sometimes have difficulty seeing their therapist’s perspective. It may be that the therapist is holding a firm contingency that was part of a behavior plan or is giving you difficult feedback. When this happens, sometimes it can be hard to see your therapist’s point of view.
Take a few deep breaths, and make sure your breathing and heart rate are regulated.
Note that your therapist is trying to help you reach your goals; ask yourself how your therapist’s perspective may be helping you achieve those goals.
Ask yourself: What is the wisdom in your therapist’s position?
Ask yourself: Do you want to be right or effective in this interaction?
Coming to an agreement
In close relationships, feeling misunderstood or angry can be very painful. So, how do you move forward when this happens with your therapist or someone you care for? One of the biggest barriers to coming to an agreement is that you’re unable to see another perspective, or you feel that if you change your position, you’re giving up, giving in, or letting the other person win. Here are some useful questions to ask yourself in order to help you come to an agreement when you’re stuck:
Are you zooming out? As you try to come to an agreement, it can be helpful to zoom out. Think about the other person’s perspective. Does your therapist care for you? Is she trying to help you meet your goals? Could she have made a mistake? Is there wisdom in what she is saying? This technique can be very effective to use with other important people in your life when you feel misunderstood or are having difficulty seeing their point of view.
Are you being effective? It can be a helpful reminder to ask yourself whether you’re being effective. Is the perspective or the point you’re making helping you get what you need? Are you delivering it in a skillful way that your therapist or the other person can hear? Are you maintaining your integrity as you make your point?
Are you acting from a wise mind? As we discuss in the earlier section “Questioning Your First Reaction,” sometimes when you struggle to hold multiple perspectives, it’s because you’re acting from an emotion mind. Can you take a few breaths and connect to your wise mind? Your wise mind is the state of mind in which you have access to both what you feel about something and what you know or understand about something (see Chapter 9).
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