Part 1 of 3 on improving interpersonal relationship skills using DBT and BCA.
Breath in. Hold it. One. Two. three. Slowly breath out. Now, as you breath in again, take a moment to mindfully consider how every breath connects you with the Universe, world, community, others and yourself. Every living thing shares the air. Starting with the air we breath, we are all connected to each other at some level.
Your connections in life significantly impact your mental health and the quality of your life, relationships, and community. These interpersonal connections, from a DBT, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy perspective, can be improved by learning and developing specific Interpersonal Effectiveness skills. From a BCA, or Behavioural, Cognitive, Affect holistic perspective, your connections form a therapeutic interweave, which reveals the many different, constantly changing relationships that impact each moment of your life. Working together, DBT and BCA, can help improve your interpersonal skills.
DBT was created by University of Washington Professor Marsha Linehan doing therapy research treating individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder. In 1993, she published her extensive academic research which explained the principles and practices of DBT. I have met and trained with Dr. Linehan on multiple occasions. She is an incredible and amazing person. DBT is a highly effective and successful approach.
BCA was developed by while I was striving to provide the highest quality mental health therapy. BCA is a grassroots developed therapy started in 2002 and evolved directly from client-therapist interactions in facing and struggling through diverse and complex mental health challenges. BCA embraces aspects of DBT, CBT, EMDR and other insightful therapeutic practices and ideas.
DBT and BCA work well together to provide practical guidance and enlightening insights into improve your interpersonal relationships effectiveness skills and abilities. Life is better when you can comfortably speak up for and respect yourself as you develop and manage the many dynamic relationships in your life.
While BCA provides a grounded and comprehensive approach to understanding the full process of mental health, DBT provides effective skills training using four modules:
- Mindfulness
- Distress tolerance
- Interpersonal effectiveness
- Emotion regulation.
The Interpersonal Effectiveness module includes three specific relationships aspects:
- Self-respect
- Relationship-respect
- Assertiveness.
This three-part series will cover each interpersonal aspect, starting with self-respect.
Self-respect is about being fair and respectful to yourself. I know that sounds obvious and seems simple and easy, but in interacting with others, the dynamic process can quickly become complex, uncomfortable, confusing or difficult. What if the other person doesn’t agree with you? Or do they want something from you that you don’t want to give? What if you are scared to ask for what you want because they might react negatively? Or, if you ask, they might hold a grudge and use it against you at a later time. Maybe you think asking for something means you are weak. What if you think you are undeserving or unworthy to stick to your own values, when someone makes unreasonable demands on you? What if you struggle to be truthful in expressing how you really feel or think? What if they have more power than you? In any relationship, maintaining self-respect can be difficult.
While developing and maintaining self-respect can be difficult, here is a life hack to help understand and develop self-respect – you are the number 1 priority in self-respect. Everyone, and everything else, is second. Regarding self respect, the spotlight of life is only on you. When we get to discussing relationship-respect, the focus changes, but for this moment, we are focusing on self-respect. Self-respect is only about you. You are your top priority. You deserve to be the best advocate for how you want to stand up to present yourself and live your life.
Being the best advocate for yourself doesn’t come naturally. Comfortably standing up for yourself in a relaxed and confident respectful way is often a new experience and can be stressful and difficult. Respectfully standing up for yourself is especially difficult if you grew up in a family or culture with strict hierarchical levels of power, with children at the bottom, without any opportunity to respectfully stand up for themselves. In such environments, it is hard to develop respecting behaviours, especially self-respect. Then, when these un-respected children grow up, they want to flip the script and become the ones in charge. Respect requires sharing control. Or, more specifically, respect requires learning and using skills to share control.
While respect is about sharing control, self-respect is all about you, which means learning and using self-control to respectfully and confidently stand up and advocate for yourself. You are not in control or charge of everyone or everything, you are only seeking to be in control and charge of your own choices and actions. To give yourself self-respect as you interact with others and build relationships. DBT and BCA can help you to see, learn and use improved skills for self-respect.
In DBT, developing and improving your self-respect interpersonal effectiveness skills is embraced by learning and using the acronym – FAST. Each letter represents a perspective or skill that can be used to stand up and keep respect for yourself.
- F is (be) fair to yourself
- A is (no) apologies for being yourself or having an opinion
- S is sticking to your values
- T is (be) truthful
Each skill helps improve how you can be respectful to yourself while interacting with others.
FAST describes some highly effective skills to respectfully stand up for yourself, with a goal of improving interpersonal effectiveness and mental health. However, FAST is not the skills most individuals have or use when they are struggling with interpersonal relationships. Often, individuals are struggling with self-respect and want to learn FAST skills.
Your struggle of trying to improve interpersonal effectiveness and learn FAST skills deserves to be recognized and validated. That is why BCA recognized a client’s struggles and created the helpful acronym – U-DIG. U-DIG is the dialectic of FAST, and it represents the ineffective and often dysfunctional interpersonal skills that many clients have developed and are using in their relationships. U is (be) Unfair to yourself. D is (be) Dishonest. I is I apologize for everything. G is Give up your values. Using these skills, U-DIG yourself into a disrespectful space and suffer with poor relationships.
Once you can recognise the various interpersonal skills for self-respect, it becomes pretty clear to see that using the FAST skills can improve your interpersonal effectiveness and self-respect, and that using U-DIG skills does not. However, real life is seldom so clear or easily separated and defined.
In life, we often mix and match the tools, skills and abilities that we possess to deal with the unexpected adventures live throws at us. That is when a person might mix and match the FAST and U-DIG skills in all different combinations that might or might not be effective in treating themselves respectfully.
We mix interpersonal skills because we struggle in different ways. While you might have a difficult time being fair to yourself, I might struggle with being honest in expressing myself. You might over apologize for many things, including just being yourself or for things not under your control. And, I might really struggle sticking to my values and may just give away many things that I value in my life.
For example, a person might use their U-AST skills where they are Unfair to themselves by not Apologizing for Sticking to their values of putting themselves down, believing that they truly are not deserving of self-respect. They might not see how unfair it is to treat themselves so poorly, as being not good enough or deserving of disrespect.
Another example is using FAD skills. You are trying to be Fair to yourself, without apologising for who you are or your opinions, but are being disingenuous or faking it, such as acting helpless and being Dishonest about what you can really do or are actually thinking or feeling. You might do this to keep people at a distance so as to lower expectations and not be vulnerable to rejection or getting your feelings hurt. The problem with this approach is that you are disrespecting yourself by not revaling your honest self, so the other person doesn’t really get a chance to know you. You have become just a false mask that you are showing the world.
Or, if you are struggling in a relationship with someone who has more power in your relationship, you might use UAGT skills. You could be treating yourself Unfairly by Giving up your values and being honest about it without apologies. You could be telling yourself: “I know that I am allowing myself to be treated disrespectfully, and giving up my own personal values, but what choices do I have?” At times life can be very unfair, and you might have to put up with being treated unfairly, but do you really want to make using such skills last for a lifetime?
Knowing interpersonal skills helps you decide what will work for you and how you want to approach connecting to yourself and the world. In these efforts, it is useful to understanding how FAST and U-DIG interpersonal effectiveness skills can impact your self-respect in your relationships, including your most important relationship. The relationships you have with yourself.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker offering keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, trauma, ADHD, and relationships. He specialises in BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.