.Being.Us

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 ...

All posts in this series reflect working through  DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition . All quotes come from this book unless otherwise noted.  Deciding to Study Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills: According to the book, the reason for practicing interpersonal effectiveness skills is to "be skillful in getting what you want and need from others", "build relationships and end destructive ones", and "walk the middle path". There are some factors that can get in the way of interpersonal effectiveness: lacking the skills you need, not knowing what you want, being too emotional to be skillful, forgetting long-term goals because of what you want right now, "other people... getting in the way", and having thoughts and beliefs that get in the way. The thoughts and beliefs that were getting in the way of me practicing interpersonal effectiveness skills were: "If I ask for something or say no, I can't stand if so...