So far in this chapter you’ve learned about how certain things you do in your daily life may be increasing the amount of time you’re spending in your emotional self. Take some time now to think about what kinds of changes you could start working on right away to increase the amount of control you have over your emotions.
Below is the list of areas in your life that can affect your emotions. Answer the questions in each section to determine if this is an area you need to work on; for the areas that apply to you, think about what goals you can set for yourself to begin working on making those changes.
Sleep
Approximately how many hours of sleep do you get each night? ___________
Do you generally feel rested when you wake up? ___________
Do you usually take a nap in the afternoon? If so, for how long? ___________
After you nap, do you usually feel better or worse? ___________
Based on your answers above, and keeping in mind that too much or too little sleep usually leaves you feeling lethargic and sluggish, do you think you need to increase or decrease the amount of time you’re sleeping? ___________
If you have identified this as an area to work on, what is one small step you can take to start working toward that goal? (For example, if you need to increase your sleep, you could set a goal to go to bed a half hour earlier tonight, then work your way up to an hour.) ___________
Eating
Do you eat three meals as well as some snacks each day? ___________
Do your meals and snacks tend to be healthy? ___________
Do you find yourself eating just because you have an urge to—maybe out of boredom or because you’re feeling a painful emotion, such as sadness? ___________
Do you find yourself not eating in order to lose weight or to feel more in control? ___________
Sometimes people develop problems with eating that they need to seek professional help for. If you feel you have an eating problem and are unable to control it on your own, please speak to someone you trust. If this is not the case, but you have identified eating as an area to work on, what is one small step you can take to start working toward that goal? (For example, if you currently eat only one meal a day, you could set a goal to begin eating something small for breakfast and work your way up.) ___________
Treating Physical Illness
Do you have a physical illness that requires medication or some other kind of treatment, such as physiotherapy? If so, do you take your medication or follow your doctor’s directions for treatment? ___________
If you have identified this as an area to work on, what is one small step you can take to start working toward that goal? (For example, you could learn more about your illness in order to understand why the medication or treatment is necessary.) ___________
Exercise
Do you currently do any type of exercise? If so, how often and for how long? ___________
Keep in mind that if you have any kind of health problems, you’ll want to check with your doctor before you start an exercise routine. If you have identified exercise as an area to work on, what is one small step you can take to start working toward that goal? (For example, if you currently exercise once or twice a week for fifteen minutes, you could increase this to three times a week and work your way up to more.) ___________
Drugs and Alcohol
Do you currently drink alcohol or use street drugs? If so, how often? (If you’re nervous about writing this information down here, you can do it on a separate piece of paper or simply think about it.) ___________
Do you see this use causing problems for you in school, work, relationships, or any other aspect of your life? ___________
Has anyone else in your life ever told you that your drinking or drug use is a problem? ___________
When you’re using drugs or alcohol, do you tend to make poor decisions or behave in ways that you later regret? ___________
If you have identified this as an area to work on, what is one small step you can take to start working toward that goal? (For example, if alcohol is a problem, you could set a goal to drink only one night on the weekend instead of two and work your way down. If you don’t think this is a problem you can handle on your own, you might set a goal to look into AA groups for teens or ask someone you trust for help.) ___________
In this section, you’ll learn about two skills that will help you move toward some goals that will be beneficial for you in the long run: being effective and acting opposite to your urge.
Quite often we find ourselves acting from our emotional self—acting on an urge, doing what feels good rather than what’s going to be more helpful or healthy for us in the long run. For example, you feel like your math teacher isn’t treating you fairly and is giving you lower grades than you deserve. One day you get so angry that you talk back to your teacher, saying many hurtful things to get back at her for the anger she’s caused you, and you storm out of the room. This might feel good at the time, but what do you think the end result will be? Chances are you’ll get detention or some other kind of punishment for being disrespectful, and the teacher isn’t very likely to look more kindly on you when she’s marking your tests in the future. This is an example of being ineffective—your behavior (acting on your urge) might have been satisfying in the short term, and it might have felt good to yell at your teacher, but it also made it harder for you to reach your long-term goals.
Can you think of times when you’ve been ineffective? Write down a couple of situations here:
___________
___________
___________
Now that you can relate to what it means to be ineffective, let’s look at how you could be more effective. The DBT skill of being effective is about acting from your wise self—not just acting on your urge or doing what feels good, but assessing what you can do to move you closer to your long-term goals, or doing what you need to do to get your needs met (Linehan 1993). So in order to be effective, you first have to figure out what your goals are. Once you determine what your long-term goal is in a situation, you need to consider what you could do that might make it possible for you to get closer to reaching your goal. Keep in mind that acting effectively doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get what you’re after in a situation. If you’re acting skilfully, of course your chances of getting what you want will increase, but skills don’t come with guarantees! Let’s look at an example to help you understand the skill of being effective.
Kyle’s Story
Kyle had a plan. He was going to college on a baseball scholarship, and he was going to become a doctor and would be able to financially support his mother, who had done so much for him since his dad had taken off years ago. This had been the plan since he was fourteen. He was now seventeen and things were on track—his grades were good, and he was being scouted for some top schools. But Kyle was under a lot of pressure. If he didn’t get a scholarship, there was no way his mom would be able to afford to send him to school, even though she had been working two jobs for years trying to save money for his education.
One day in baseball practice, the coach was riding Kyle hard and he snapped. He started to yell back and almost came to blows with the coach, which ended up getting him suspended from practice. He was told he couldn’t return until he had taken some anger-management classes. Kyle thought this was ridiculous—he didn’t have anger problems; it was the coach’s fault for getting on him too much. However, Kyle knew he was so close and this could blow his chances for a scholarship. He agreed to the classes even though he didn’t think they were was necessary, and he was allowed back in to practice before it was too late.
So what do you think of Kyle’s story? Maybe you think it wasn’t fair or that Kyle shouldn’t have given in. Well, Kyle was effective. It probably would have felt much better for Kyle to tell the coach off and refuse the anger-management classes, but he recognized that doing so would not get him closer to his long-term goal and would actually harm his chances of reaching that goal. So Kyle did what he had to do to keep moving toward his goal.
One thing that often gets in the way of being effective is our thoughts about a situation. Quite often we react to how we think a situation should be rather than how it really is. From our earlier example, maybe you think that your math teacher hasn’t been treating you fairly, so why shouldn’t you tell her how you really feel? Another good example is when your parents set your curfew for 9:00 p.m., but it’s the weekend, and you’re with a friend your parents know well, so you think, “This is silly. I don’t need to be home by nine.” You stay out later—only to be grounded by your parents when you come home past curfew. These are examples of how we respond not to the reality of the situation itself, but to how we think the situation should be (Linehan 1993).
So, in order to be effective in a situation, you have to use your wise self. It makes sense that you would be angry if you were being treated unfairly by a teacher, but rather than letting this anger control your actions so that you yell at your teacher and walk out the door, you need to bring in your other thinking styles. Your reasoning self, for example, might have you think about the fact that if you get detention after school, you won’t be able to go try out for the basketball team. This will help you get to your wise self, figure out what your goal is, and think of what you can do to act in your own best interest; for example, you might think, “I’m angry with how I’ve been treated by my math teacher, but I don’t want to get a detention, and I want her to be more willing to give me the grades I think I deserve in the future.”