So the next set of strategies in Crisis Survival are known as the IMPROVE skills.
So I think, to a certain extent, just to be clear, you know, when Marsha Linehan developed all these different skills, she got a little boxed into the acronyms. And so you could think about a lot of these skills as also being different kinds of distract skills.
And I think that's reasonable to think about, there's a lot of overlap between the distract skills, and the IMPROVE skills.
But another way to think about the IMPROVE skills is to is that a lot of them have to do with doing something with the crisis to kind of lessen how bad it is, in many of them are about kind of creating a different reality for you, in this moment, or changing the nature of the reality for you in this moment.
And a lot of them function to distract. So both of those things are true. imagery. So improve is an acronym here. So there's a seven additional skill. So you have the seven excepts skills for distract, and then you have the seven, improve skills. So imagery refers to using imagery in your own mind to create a more relaxing scene.
So you could, for example, have an image of your happy place. And go into that, that image in your mind when you're feeling stressed. So you can also play around with this and you could develop a happy place more fully you can decorate it, you could have it be make believe it doesn't have to be a real place that exists. But a special place that for you, when you imagine or go into that imaginary scene, you feel protected and call the other way in which you can use imageries to actually imagine things going well.
Imagine coping well imagine how the next couple of weeks and months could turn out in a way that that is fine and calm, and without crisis and without major repercussions. So these, this is the way in which you can use imagery. And then a final way in which you can use imagery is to imagine is to use imagery to imagine stress leaving your body so you could imagine stress, you know, if you were a person that can easily imagine things some sometimes people, some people have difficulty with visual imagery. But if you're one of these people for whom visual imagery is really effective, you can come up with a theme, for example, in your mind, where you imagine stress draining out of you, like a water out of a pipe.
So these are all the different ways in which you can use imagery.
Meaning refers to a skill in which you essentially are saying to yourself, if I'm going to go through this, at least I'll get something out of it. You know, the the famous Nietzsche quote, whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger, is actually an example of this is finding meaning in this, it's saying that, that there is something that I can get out of this crisis.
And I'm going to find that meaning or even if I don't find that meaning, I'm going to accept that there is meaning and so for example, you could say, this is the meaning that this crisis is providing for me is to help me recognize what are the things that are most important to me? Who are the people that are most important to me, what are the things that I most value, right? Or the meaning you can get out of this is to say, I'm learning that even when I'm stressed, and even when there's a world crisis happening, I can feel in control of certain things, and I can take care of people and I can take care of my work. So these are all things that we're actually learning through this process that provides us with a sense of meaning.
It's, for some people, meaning in this sort of segues into the next one. For some people finding meaning in this is a way is also found for connecting to your religious or spiritual values. Meaning is a is a form of making lemonade out of lemons. What can I get out of this experience, even though it feels terrible right now.
With prayer now, prayer is something that is for many of you could be a vital part of your life already. for others of you, maybe who are religious but don't pray or others of you who don't identify as religious. You don't want to know necessarily say, Oh, nevermind, I'm not going to do this because you could pray to many things. It doesn't have to be to God, if you don't believe in God, it could be to your own sense of wisdom. So if you do believe in God, or a higher being prayer, here could be turning, turning things over to God or a higher being, what you don't want to do with this kind of prayer is get into the kind of why me types of prayers. But instead, the form of prayer you want to get into here is opening your heart to a supreme being or to a greater wisdom or an asking for strength. That's the type of prayer that we're looking for here. So, so think about it in that particular way, which may be exactly what you're already doing. Or it may be a subtle shift in what you're doing if you use prayer already.
Relaxation, you know, many of you know already different kinds of relaxation strategies or skills, because you've taught them to people, have you used them yourself is the key question. So you could look for all sorts of things online, you maybe already have access to this to how to do progressive muscle relaxation, for example, where you tense and relax each muscle group, one at a time. Some of these are, these programs or videos that exist are actually quite long. So it also serves as an activity, something that gets your mind off of what's happening.
But you can also think about relaxing in shorter ways, which is just taking a couple of minutes to just sit and breathe deeply. When we're focusing on breathing, as relaxation, one of the things that you want to make sure that you're focusing on is making sure your exhalation is longer than your inhalation and the exhalation that leads to the psychophysiological response of relaxation. Other things that you can do for relaxation, or to take a bath or, or shower to sit and drink tea or coffee with a book in a chair that's comfy. Again, you see the overlap here between some of these items and what we already covered. But the focus here is how do you relax in this moment as a way of making this moment, less painful. One thing at a time, is really, or one thing in the moment is really a mindfulness trickier, which kind of pervades all DBT. But what it means here is that when we're in crisis, when we are experiencing high degrees of stress, you all can I know that you all know that this is true.
Our minds are in 1000 places at once. And I believe that we're further impaired in this with social media with smartphones that ping us with new notifications every two seconds, I would really this is not on the skills page. But I would really encourage you all to think about limiting that turning off notifications, limiting the amount of time that you're on social media and receiving news because I think that you could probably monitor within yourself, the likelihood that that is increasing stress rather than making you feel better.
So one thing at a time is about putting your full attention into just one thing, just one thing that you're doing right in this moment. So this could be anything this could be I'm washing the dishes, and I am only washing the dishes right? In this moment. I am walking from my car, to work or to home, and I am only walking, that is the only thing that I am doing. I am in conversation with someone. And that's all I'm doing. I'm just focused on this conversation. So this is the antithesis of multitasking, multitasking, that that that bad, instead focusing just on this one thing.
This in and of itself is probably you know, the entire treatment. This is not easy to do. And really, with our attention spans being what they are right now, one of the ways in which you can practices is not to say to yourself, I'm going to do one thing at a time and only one thing at a time all day to day because I think that's setting yourself up for difficulty and and setting yourself up for failure with this.
But instead mindfully saying for the next five minutes, I'm going to do X and whatever x is you're going to throw your attention into that the skill of vacation refers to giving yourself a break vacation, it's kind of like, well, it's the equivalent of or maybe actually doing this just saying, I'm going to get into the bed, and I'm going to pull the covers up over my head for 20 minutes. So the issue is that you for the vacation. First of all, you're doing it in a way that doesn't hurt you. So or harm you in some long term way.
So you're not doing a vacation when you should be in a session with someone or when you should be calling a supervisor or when you should be writing a paper. But you're saying to yourself, I'm going to do this in a time limited way, and just let myself zone out.
I'm going to read the crappiest magazine, I can find online, that's just gossip, I am going to sit in bed and eat chocolate bonbons for 20 minutes, this is what I'm going to do. And then when the timer goes off, my vacation is done. And I'm going back to work. So so it's really just taking a breather from all the hard work that needs to happen.
The key word here is that it's a breather, it's not, you know, I'm running away for the next three weeks, which we might have fantasies about, just notice that bring yourself back.
The last improve the moment skill is, is the skill of encouragement, which is essentially cheerleading yourself is repeating over and over to yourself.
Things that you would probably say to someone else, but saying it to yourself saying I can stand this, this won't last forever. It's kind of like if you have trouble encouraging yourself that this is just not something that comes naturally to you. You might ask yourself, you know, what would I say to a friend, and then apply it to yourself.
It's like learning the fine art of talking to yourself as though you're talking to someone else. We're usually much kinder to other people than we are to ourselves. So encouragement is turning that skill towards ourselves. And I have to say right now my favorite encouragement skill that I've been saying to myself a lot that I'm giving to you right now is to say to yourself, this too shall pass. We might not know what's going to happen, how it's going to happen. But whatever we're feeling now will change. Whatever the situation is right now will change this is inevitable. So repeating to yourself whenever you feel the need to to just say this too shall pass.
For me what that does is elicits a calmer state in the moment. And also a little bit more of a willing state in the moment, which is just to say I can accept this. And I recognize that this is going to change, this will pass. Okay. All right. So those are the improved skills, both through write down a couple of things you're going to practice in the next couple of days.
