Hi, folks. So today we're going to be jumping into one of the key first sets of skills and interpersonal effectiveness, called the clarifying your goals.
This is handout for for those of you who are following along and your DBT packet. So I just want to clarify as you are learning these interpersonal effectiveness skills, this skill you will actually almost always try to use before you ever even go into a conversation with someone. As you get more practice, as you get more advanced, you can do this stuff more on the fly. And while you're actually already talking to someone, but during early phases, I want you to focus on, like using the stop skill or stepping away and giving yourself some space to think through this before you go forward in a conversation. That's important. Okay. So hold on to that, that, why do we want to clarify goals.
The pretty important thing here is that in order to get what we want in a given situation, we have to actually know what we want.
And there are so many things that can get in the way of us knowing what we want in a situation.
Emotions can get in the way, beliefs about our relative deserving this of something can get in the way all kinds of things can get in the way.
A common example that I use to illustrate this point is when I think back to and maybe some of you can relate to this, my very early postpartum period. So we don't have family nearby.
But I did have a number of friends, thankfully, who are offering to provide some support. After my baby Elliot got discharged from the nikkyo. So So kind of them. And yet, I was so sleep deprived with a super colicky preterm newborn, that when people would so kindly ask, what is it that we can do to help? I was like a deer in the headlights, I had no idea, the idea of actually identifying ways in which individual people could help. And then asking them to do that felt totally overwhelming for me in that moment. So this is where stepping aside, and actually thinking through what, what do you want, can be really helpful as you go forward in conversations with folks.
So there are three main goals that we balance in any inner personal interactions, okay? All three of these goals are always sort of in competition with each other. And one of the things that we're going to do today, as part of our practice, is to start identifying what each goal is, and how important it is in a given situation. Okay.
So the first goal is our objective. The question that I want you to ask yourself here to figure this out is, what specific change or result do I want from this interaction?
Typically, your objective is the thing, they're the reason that you're having a conversation in the first place. Now, this could look like lots of different things. It could be things like standing up for your rights requesting someone to do something that you need them to do, refusing a request that you can't help with. It could be resolving conflict with somebody, it could be trying to get your opinion taken seriously, all kinds of things.
Typically, sort of the easiest way to think about this is objectives are what is the thing that you're asking for? Or what is the thing that you're saying no to the limit that you're setting in a given situation? So first things first, you want to ask yourself, what specific and that's the key word thing, their thing Do I want from the situation?
Then next goal that you're balancing in any situation is relationship effectiveness.
So one of the things that we're wanting to do here is ask, How do I want this other person to feel about me? After this conversation is over whether or not I get the thing that I want from them.
Do I want them to walk away like cowering in fear of me because I've screamed and shouted at them? Do I want them to walk away? feeling super shameful and guilty? Because I've criticized them and pointed out the 10,000 ways in which the thing that they're doing is not the thing that I want from them? Or, ideally, all things being equal? Do I want to walk away from this situation? Feeling at least good or neutral? Having this person feel that way towards me?
Sometimes people argue with me that there are times when this is important, and there are other times when it's not, right. So maybe for you that that bank teller, that cashier, that whomever fast food worker, you're like, I don't really care about my relationship with them. And I take your point, if that is something that you were thinking, it's true that those relationships, because they're not constant in our lives aren't as important. But I'm going to get if you could walk away from a conversation with one of them feeling positively having had a solid conversation where they walk away also feeling good about it. That's a judgment that you would like that, right?
Who doesn't like to leave on good terms if we could all things being equal? Okay. So there's a couple of things to think about with regards to relationship effectiveness. First of all, one thing to think of is that actually improving a relationship can be your main objective of a conversation. And so if that's the case, we have to sort of reevaluate what this all looks like.
The second is that always making the relationship your main objective is super, super problematic, and it does not work. So I want you to take a second and think back over sometimes when you have made relationships super, super high priority at the expense of getting what you want or need, at the expense of saying no, when you really couldn't do something, or at the expense of your own self respect, what happened and the long term, if you're like most people, it's going to look like this, if you subvert your own means, so this is push your needs down. Over time, the relationship is going to end in one of two ways, hopefully, you'll be able to see this.
The first is that you are eventually going to explode. And potentially really, really damage the relationship with your super strong negative reaction because you are so sick and tired of always putting this other person's needs first before your own.
The second is that you eventually are going to be so fed up that you are just done, you want to walk away from this relationship because it's not worth it to you anymore. So although a lot of folks that I work with have these ideas about sort of asking for what they need, and saying no to things, that this can be selfish, which is a judgment to, I would actually argue that if in the long term, your goal is to have a solid, strong relationship with someone, you absolutely have to do this.
Otherwise, you're going to end up with extreme damage or no more relationship. Okay, so let's go back and talk through this last one. So one more thing about relationship effectiveness, I do also want you to consider that sometimes the ways in which we go about getting our needs met with more sort of extreme behaviors can be really, really effective in the short term, but not so effective in the long term for the relationship or for your objectives.
If every time you end up asking for what you want, you are shouting at that other person? How do you think they're going to respond to that? How do you feel when another person comes to you and when they're asking for you to do something? They're shouting, yelling, criticizing you calling you names? Not so great. I'm gonna imagine.
Similarly, when we engage in, like threats of violence, or crash and those types of things, relationships pendular really suffered even though it might get us the thing that we want in the moment.
Okay, so, what you want to do here is also if you're having some urges to behave in a way that's pretty destructive those against your life worth living. Ask yourself of how it would feel if you were on the receiving end of that behavior. And think through whether or not it's actually effective to act on it. Okay. So, last but not least here is self respect effectiveness. So the thing that I want you to ask yourself here is, how do I want to feel about myself after this interaction is over whether or not I get the thing that I want. S
Some examples of what what this might look like, things you might be considering here are things like standing up for a friend, defending yourself, stepping forward to do something courageous, or something that requires some advocacy, voting for something you really believe in, even if you're in the minority, or you're going to lose friends over it. Now, um, examples here. So some of you know that, historically, I am a person who struggles with going straight to anger, this is something that I worked on for a good chunk of my life to go forward and how healthy well functioning relationships. And so with regards to this, sometimes I would have the urge to talk to people, when I really, like needed to say no, and I felt like people were asking too much, or when I really, really needed something to happen in a way that was more aggressive, more demeaning, those types of things.
Now, sometimes, that worked, right, there's a reason why we do certain things.
And yeah, I would walk away from that interaction, feeling ashamed of myself, feeling guilty for how I might have spoken to that other person, feeling like maybe I'm not being the best role model that I could be to other people around me. And so this was actually going directly against my values, because I really highly value being respectful and compassionate and these types of things with other people.
So this is the question that you want to ask yourself, when you're having the urge to maybe do something that isn't super consistent with your values, even if in the moment, it's going to be really effective, and get you what you want. So other things to think on here, always making self respect, your main objective, does not work.
There are some people who really, really value being in power or being in control or on top of a conversation, never letting the other person win, never wanting to compromise, always wanting to defend a given situation. If you continually do this, that's your sort of default setting, you will lose relationships, relationships cannot sustain that over time.
Additionally, violating our own values, our own morals tends to diminish self respect in the long term, right. And so we just start to feel depressed and anxious and just generally sad about ourselves. That being said, sort of that I've spoken about being maybe on the more aggressive side of the spectrum. I also want to point out that first, folks acting really passive and helpless in situations is their go to strategy.
Because if they act like they cannot do a given thing, they're just not strong enough, etc, then sometimes this means other people will step in and do the thing for them.
The problem is, if you're not actually helpless, if you can actually do the thing, this can also over time, diminish yourself, respect in your own feelings of accomplishment and mastery, even if in the short term, it gets you the thing that you want. So I want you guys to think through because we're going to talk about it in group, what are some things that you have done in relationships that have reduced your sense of self respect?
Where might you need to improve your skills here? Okay. This might be saying yes, when you really mean No, those all of those types of things. Now, like I was saying earlier, each of these three things must be considered an every interaction. Sometimes, one or two of them might be just about equal in terms of their importance.
Sometimes there's going to be a clear winner of like, right here, I have to get medicine for my baby. So my objectives, our highest priority, whatever else happens, right. So, as we go through and identify each of these three goals, you're going to try and rate how important each one is because that's actually going to tie into each of our next set of skills.
So we're going to be learning three sets of skills, the dear man, the gift, and the fast and they each correspond to one of these schools. The degree to which you incorporate these skills will help you will be helped by knowing how important this domain is. Okay, so a couple of examples of this, I'm going to read out. So Diego's Land Board keeps his damage deposit unfairly, that's the situation his objective here would be to get the damage deposit back and this is most important to Diego because he needs it to pay his rent. Now, relationship wise might be to keep the landlords goodwill and liking or at least keep good references on hand that second most important to Diego. self respect would be not to lose self respect by getting too emotional by fighting dirty by being threatening. Okay. So that's what each three looks like. and in this situation, objectives is number one for Diego. relationship is number two, self respect is number three.
One more example here. The situation is that Carla's best friend wants to come over and discuss the problem. Carla wants to go to bed, she's exhausted, she's worked an 80 hour week, she's been wrangling kids, all of that kind of thing.
Her main objective is to go to bed. Her relationship goal is to keep a good relationship going with her friend that's most important to Karla and Purcell.
First spectacle is to balance caring for friends with caring for herself. That's the second most important thing to Karla. so in this situation, oh, she's gonna try and move towards going to bed and shape her conversation with Carla around that, but she's prioritizing her relationship with Carla here.
So the conversation might sound a little bit different.
We're going to be going over some of your examples in this upcoming week. So I want you to think about that. And we will go from there.
