These powerful DBT techniques can help you take back control of your inner life

Coronavirus has turned the world as we know it upside down. We’re struggling with lockdown, illness, and finances. It’s all too easy to get caught in a downward-spiraling cycle of negative emotions and actions. These powerful DBT techniques can help you take back control of your inner life

What a week it’s been! And it’s only Day 7 (as of this writing).

If you’d thought you were juggling a lot before coronavirus, our current situation has added so many other balls (and flaming objects) to keep aloft. Most of us are feeling a mix of emotions: anxiety about health and finances, overwhelm, gratitude for our families, stress about making Pesach, loneliness.

We may feel pride in the kids’ learning — or a sense of failure when they won’t get on the conference call. We vacillate between enjoying the children and not enjoying the children (ditto with our husbands). We may be feeling inadequate and dysfunctional.

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a therapy designed to help you manage your emotions, and thereby your actions, so you can build a life full of meaning. It’s based on the dual assumptions that you’re doing the best you can — and that when you fall short of your ideals, you need to learn skills that enable you to do better. Let’s look at how these DBT skills can give you the tools to enable you not just to scrape through this time, but to be the person you want to be.

It’s well known that our thoughts affect our emotions, actions, and physical state. But they’re actually all intertwined and feed into each other, as illustrated in the chart below.

It’s our emotions that most frequently get us off track. When our brain goes into what psychologists call an “amygdala hijack,” meaning that our emotions are running the show, it makes us think and act in ineffective and often destructive ways — yelling, mentally beating ourselves up, overeating, shutting down, etc. In order to treat others and ourselves well in action, we need to be able to manage our emotions.

But simply willing an emotion to change isn’t enough. (How often do we become more incensed when told to “just calm down”?) What to do? There are three ways to change our emotions: alter our thoughts, our actions, or our physical state.

Sometimes it’s easiest to change our actions. Sometimes it’s easiest to change our physical state. And sometimes it’s most effective (although often not easiest) to change our thoughts. Having a smorgasbord of skills to choose from will ensure you’re most equipped to deal with whichever dragon is pursuing you at the given moment.

With this in mind, here are DBT skills selected to help you thrive and reach these goals during a crisis. Choose whichever skills or whichever combination of skills works best.

STEP ONE: Mindfulness

To know which solution will help, first you need to figure out exactly what’s bothering you. You’d never go to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics without any examination or testing; getting to the root of your emotional difficulties requires a similar process.

Here, the “exam” is “Observing and Describing.” Here’s what it looks like: Notice that you’re getting upset (Observe), then name your emotions and thoughts (Describe) by asking yourself, “What am I feeling?” and “What am I thinking?” For example, you might notice that you’re snapping at your children (Observe) and then think, “I’m really anxious. I keep wondering whether my boss is going to lay anyone off” (Describe).

Step one is only step one. Just like you wouldn’t go to a doctor who doesn’t base his prescription on a thorough exam, you also wouldn’t go to a doctor who’d say, “The test shows you have strep. Now that you have that insight, you should get better.” You’d want to know which antibiotic to take.

In terms of managing your emotions, you now want to figure out which skill will help you with your specific emotion and thought. Read through the different skills and choose the ones you’d like to try first. Once you’ve become more familiar with those, you can come back for more skills to add to your emotional toolbox.

Change Your Thoughts: Validation

Validation means telling yourself or other people that what they’re thinking and feeling makes sense. It doesn’t mean that you agree, although you might. It means stating or acknowledging that the response is based on life experiences. For example, if your daughter wants to read her new book instead of listening to her teleconference or doing her English assignments, you might not agree with her decision — but you can probably understand it. If you’re getting annoyed with her, you might not approve of your reaction, but you can understand that you’re feeling pulled in a million directions and have less patience than usual.

Without validation, such situations can quickly devolve into a power struggle.

Mother: It’s time to call into the teleconference for your Chumash class.

Daughter: (ignores her)

Mother: I said, it’s time to call into the teleconference for your Chumash class.

Daughter: I don’t want to. I want to finish my chapter. I only have ten more pages.

Mother: It’s late already! Close the book this second and go make that call!

Daughter: I’m not calling.

Validation is a great skill because it (1) keeps you and others calmer and (2) it improves your relationships by validating others’ feelings and thoughts (even if not always their actions).

Imagine if the conversation with your daughter could go this way:

Mother: It’s time to call into the teleconference for your Chumash class.

Daughter: (ignores her)

Mother: I said, it’s time to call into the teleconference for your Chumash class.

Daughter: I don’t want to. I want to finish my chapter. I only have ten more pages.

Mother: I don’t blame you. It’s hard to stop in the middle of the chapter. Let’s call now, and you’ll have a lot of time to read afterwards. I know it’s hard — but you can do it.

Daughter: Okay, fine.