Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills Part 2

All posts in this series reference working through DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition, and all quotes come from that book unless otherwise specified.

This blog post continues to chronicle my takeaways from the Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills section of my DBT workbook. Parts of this section felt inaccessible to me as an autistic person or needed expanded upon or altered slightly to accommodate my autism, but the majority of the material was still helpful to me.

Choosing the Intensity of Saying No or Making a Request

The Intensity Scale:

Sometimes, I know what I want to ask for or say no to, and I do well at making the initial request/refusal. However, if the person I'm talking to pushes back against my request/refusal at all, I tend to falter and give in to what they want. The book suggests deciding ahead-of-time with what intensity you want to hold your ground/ compromise. The book offers a really helpful chart for choosing the intensity with which to make a request or refusal. I'm posting a picture below:

For me personally, my autism means that to say what I want to say in an interaction, I usually need some time to script what I'm going to say before the interaction starts. If I don't, I fumble around, grasping for words in the dark, and usually end up saying what I think the other person wants to hear, instead of what I mean. Or, if I don't end up parroting what people want to hear, they instead find me unintelligible or hilarious when I'm trying to be totally clear and serious. All this to say that planning ahead for an interaction, even if that means asking for a time-out, is really important for me, and the book helped me realize that there's something else I need to plan for: the intensity with which I will ask for something or say no. This will help keep me from caving on my wants and needs the second there's any push-back against them. 

Factors to consider:

The book suggests considering a number of factors when deciding the intensity of asking or saying no in a given situation. The first is whether you or the other person is capable of delivering what is being requested. Next is what your priorities are in the situation: preserving the relationship? meeting an important goal? maintaining your self-respect? Ideally, you want to do all of these, but if, for instance, the relationship is on shaky ground, you might give up a little of working towards your goal to preserve the relationship. The book also wants you to consider your self-respect and whether you are careful to avoid acting helpless when you are not. Also, consider if anyone has a moral or legal right to what is being requested. Next, you should consider if one of you is in a position of power over the other, like a boss or a teacher. Then, consider if the request is appropriate given your current relationship? Also, are you considering long-term and short-term goals? Is there a give and take in the relationship? Do you know everything you need to know about the request? And finally, is this the right time to make the request or say no, or should you wait for a better time?

Troubleshooting Problems with Interpersonal Effectiveness:

When the skills mentioned in the previous blog and this blog are not working, what do you do? The gist of it is that you look at everything mentioned in the previous blog and this blog again. Do you know what you want out of the interaction? Do you know with what intensity you want to ask or say no? Do you have the skills that you need for this interaction? Are your emotions too strong to be skillful in this moment? Are your preconceived beliefs and worries getting in the way of being effective? "Is the environment more powerful than your skills?"

I found that 3/6 of these to be the problem most often for me:

• My emotions are too strong to be skillful in the moment. I'm learning skills to have a better handle on my emotions, but this has often been an issue in the past. 
• My preconceived notions and beliefs get in the way of being effective. I often believe that autism will prevent me from being effective in certain situations, and in other situations, I think that the way I was raised will make it SO hard to learn new patterns. I want to challenge this thinking. 
• The environment is more powerful than my skills. When I was in an abusive situation, this felt especially true. I experience this to a much smaller degree now that I'm out of that situation and living in a group home.  

  Summary

  So far in the Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills section, we have covered objectives effectiveness, relationship effectiveness, and self-respect effectiveness, all of which can be remembered with the acronym DEARMAN, GIVE FAST. We have also talked about deciding the intensity with which you will make a request or say no, taking all of these types of effectiveness into account, and what things might get in the way of interpersonal effectiveness. A helpful graphic is pasted below:
  

  

  Found at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/103371753931015962/

  Next blog post, I will give you my takeaways from the subsection "Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones".