Overview: Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones
The DBT Skills Challenge
Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones Overview
"Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones" is a critical component of the Interpersonal Effectiveness module in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). This set of skills is designed to help individuals cultivate positive relationships and disengage from harmful ones in a healthy and effective manner. Each skill focuses on a different aspect of relationship management, providing tools for nurturing connections and protecting one's emotional well-being.
Finding and Getting People to Like You: Teaches techniques for identifying potential relationships by connecting with people who have similar interests, making conversations, expressing likability, and joining groups. This skill helps individuals expand their social network and increase their likability through positive interactions.
Mindfulness of Others: Encourages maintaining awareness of others' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors while interacting. This practice helps in building deeper connections and understanding in relationships by focusing on empathy and attunement to others' needs and emotional states.
Ending Relationships: Provides guidance on how to end relationships that are harmful or no longer beneficial. This includes making decisions in a manner that is respectful to oneself and others, using effective communication strategies to convey decisions, and managing the emotional aftermath of a relationship termination.
These skills enable individuals to proactively manage their social interactions, fostering meaningful connections that enhance personal growth and well-being while also ensuring they have the tools to protect themselves from and effectively handle toxic or damaging relationships. Through the application of these techniques, participants can achieve a healthier balance in their social lives, contributing to improved overall mental health and stability.
Below you can see how this skillset fits with the other DBT skillsets.
DBT Skills Categories
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is structured around a general overview and four main skill categories, each designed to address specific aspects of emotional and behavioral regulation. The summary below shows how this skillset fits into the overall program.
General Overview: The introduction introduces skills training and provides tools for conducting behavioral analysis.
Analyzing Behavior: Tools to help individuals understand why they engage in ineffective behaviors or fail to engage in effective behaviors.
Mindfulness: Focusing on improving an individual's ability to accept and be present in the current moment.
Mindfulness Skills: Core practices that help individuals observe, describe, and participate in their thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.
Other Perspectives on Mindfulness Skills: This includes practices such as Loving Kindness, which fosters compassion towards oneself and other.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Enhancing the skills needed for building and maintaining healthy relationships.
Obtaining Objectives Skillfully: Techniques to effectively ask for what one needs, say no, and negotiate conflicts.
Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones: Skills for developing and maintaining positive relationships while ending or transforming unhealthy ones.
Walking the Middle Path: A set of skills that balance differing viewpoints and approaches, facilitating better communication and understanding in relationships.
Emotional Regulation: Aimed at helping individuals understand and manage their emotions effectively.
Understanding and Naming Emotions: Enhances the ability to recognize and label emotions accurately.
Changing Emotional Responses: Offers techniques for modifying emotional reactions that are not aligned with the facts or that are unhelpful.
Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind: Aims to decrease the intensity of emotional responses by cultivating a balanced and satisfying life.
Managing Really Difficult Emotions: Provides strategies for handling and enduring severe emotional episodes responsibly.
Distress Tolerance: Focused on increasing resilience and the ability to tolerate pain in difficult situations without resorting to destructive behavior.
Crisis Survival Skills: Techniques for managing acute emotional distress and crisis situations effectively.
Reality Acceptance Skills: Skills that help individuals accept and tolerate reality as it is, even when it is painful or difficult.
Skills When the Crisis is Addiction: Targeted strategies for coping with addiction-related crises, including managing urges and preventing relapse.
Through the skilled application of DBT techniques, individuals can achieve improved mental health, emotional stability, and stronger relationships.
Recommended Content
Page 139: Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 10
Note: All Recommended Content references are from “DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets: Second Edition” by Marsha Linehan.
Return to: The DBT Skills Challenge
Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones Overview
"Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones" is a critical component of the Interpersonal Effectiveness module in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). This set of skills is designed to help individuals cultivate positive relationships and disengage from harmful ones in a healthy and effective manner. Each skill focuses on a different aspect of relationship management, providing tools for nurturing connections and protecting one's emotional well-being.
Finding and Getting People to Like You: Teaches techniques for identifying potential relationships by connecting with people who have similar interests, making conversations, expressing likability, and joining groups. This skill helps individuals expand their social network and increase their likability through positive interactions.
Mindfulness of Others: Encourages maintaining awareness of others' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors while interacting. This practice helps in building deeper connections and understanding in relationships by focusing on empathy and attunement to others' needs and emotional states.
Ending Relationships: Provides guidance on how to end relationships that are harmful or no longer beneficial. This includes making decisions in a manner that is respectful to oneself and others, using effective communication strategies to convey decisions, and managing the emotional aftermath of a relationship termination.
These skills enable individuals to proactively manage their social interactions, fostering meaningful connections that enhance personal growth and well-being while also ensuring they have the tools to protect themselves from and effectively handle toxic or damaging relationships. Through the application of these techniques, participants can achieve a healthier balance in their social lives, contributing to improved overall mental health and stability.
Below you can see how this skillset fits with the other DBT skillsets.
DBT Skills Categories
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is structured around a general overview and four main skill categories, each designed to address specific aspects of emotional and behavioral regulation. The summary below shows how this skillset fits into the overall program.
General Overview: The introduction introduces skills training and provides tools for conducting behavioral analysis.
Analyzing Behavior: Tools to help individuals understand why they engage in ineffective behaviors or fail to engage in effective behaviors.
Mindfulness: Focusing on improving an individual's ability to accept and be present in the current moment.
Mindfulness Skills: Core practices that help individuals observe, describe, and participate in their thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.
Other Perspectives on Mindfulness Skills: This includes practices such as Loving Kindness, which fosters compassion towards oneself and other.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Enhancing the skills needed for building and maintaining healthy relationships.
Obtaining Objectives Skillfully: Techniques to effectively ask for what one needs, say no, and negotiate conflicts.
Building Relationships and Ending Destructive Ones: Skills for developing and maintaining positive relationships while ending or transforming unhealthy ones.
Walking the Middle Path: A set of skills that balance differing viewpoints and approaches, facilitating better communication and understanding in relationships.
Emotional Regulation: Aimed at helping individuals understand and manage their emotions effectively.
Understanding and Naming Emotions: Enhances the ability to recognize and label emotions accurately.
Changing Emotional Responses: Offers techniques for modifying emotional reactions that are not aligned with the facts or that are unhelpful.
Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind: Aims to decrease the intensity of emotional responses by cultivating a balanced and satisfying life.
Managing Really Difficult Emotions: Provides strategies for handling and enduring severe emotional episodes responsibly.
Distress Tolerance: Focused on increasing resilience and the ability to tolerate pain in difficult situations without resorting to destructive behavior.
Crisis Survival Skills: Techniques for managing acute emotional distress and crisis situations effectively.
Reality Acceptance Skills: Skills that help individuals accept and tolerate reality as it is, even when it is painful or difficult.
Skills When the Crisis is Addiction: Targeted strategies for coping with addiction-related crises, including managing urges and preventing relapse.
Through the skilled application of DBT techniques, individuals can achieve improved mental health, emotional stability, and stronger relationships.
Recommended Content
Page 139: Interpersonal Effectiveness Handout 10
Note: All Recommended Content references are from “DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets: Second Edition” by Marsha Linehan.
Return to: The DBT Skills Challenge