DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness Worksheets
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Mental health clinicians can use DBT interpersonal effectiveness worksheets to help clients build their communication skills.
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a type of therapy that can enhance a client's coping strategies, strengthen their distress tolerance, and improve their communication skills in relationships.
Interpersonal effectiveness is one of the core tenets of DBT.
This article provides an overview of interpersonal effectiveness, and illustrates the core principles with five types of DBT interpersonal effectiveness worksheets. In addition, you can download a free editable DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills PDF to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for repeated use.
What are DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills?
In DBT, interpersonal effectiveness skills are composed of social skills training, listening skills, assertiveness training, and negotiation skills.
Learning interpersonal effectiveness skills helps people have healthier relationships through maintaining boundaries and meeting and asserting your needs.
Interpersonal effectiveness builds on DBT communication skills, like mindful attention and the ability to observe body language and facial expressions, as well as distress tolerance skills, which help to manage difficult emotions. Altogether, these communication skills can help individuals become more effective communicators in relationships.
Goals of interpersonal effectiveness
The main goals of interpersonal effectiveness are to:
- Learn assertiveness skills: For example, asking for your needs to be met and for others to hear your point of view.
- Enhance the ability to maintain boundaries: This can include several different types of boundaries, such as physical, sexual, emotional, material, intellectual, spiritual or religious, and time boundaries.
- Strengthen relationships: Interpersonal effectiveness skills teach you how to navigate conflict without damaging the relationship.
Types of DBT interpersonal effectiveness activities
There are several DBT interpersonal effectiveness activities, each relating to the main goals of interpersonal effectiveness mentioned above.
Here are several skills you can practice with clients, which can be also found in the downloadable DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills PDF:
DEAR MAN skill
The DEAR MAN activity helps to clarify your objectives in a conversation through assertively communicating a desire and being willing to confidently negotiate a fair outcome.
The DEAR MAN acronym stands for:
- Describe: Objectively describe the situation by sticking to the facts and avoiding subjective information.
- Express: Assert your feelings and emotions about the situation clearly, without assuming the other person knows how you feel.
- Assert: Use assertive language, like “I” statements to communicate your request as clearly and directly as possible while respecting the other person.
- Reinforce: Ensure you communicate the benefits or consequences of agreeing to your request.
- Mindful: Be mindful of your tone of voice, posture, and body language, while staying focused on your goal for the conversation. Try to avoid overreacting to others if they become unreasonable by being threatening, distracting, defensive, or avoidant.
- Appear: Maintain an appearance of confidence, assertiveness, and competence by using a neutral tone of voice, eye contact, and assertive posture. Avoid looking away, retreating, crossing your arms, stammering, or silencing yourself.
- Negotiate: Stay open to communication about your request, or negotiation, and be willing to compromise (unless it is something you feel uncomfortable compromising on, like a value or personal boundary).
GIVE skill
This tool helps to enhance relationship effectiveness through teaching active listening, respect for others’ points of view, and fostering healthy interactions.
The acronym stands for:
- Gentle: This means being respectful, communicating effectively, and avoiding confrontation or passive aggressive communication. This doesn’t mean being passive. Rather, the goal is to use your communication skills to assert your feelings, describe consequences, or the ways in which you have felt hurt. It can be helpful to use “I” statements here instead of blaming, threatening, or judging others even if they have harmed you.
- Interested: By practicing active listening, you’re showing the other person that you’re interested in what they are saying and their perspective. You can practice this by avoiding interrupting, maintaining eye contact, and waiting your turn to speak.
- Validate: When you acknowledge another person’s point of view, even if you don’t agree with it, they can feel validated because you have heard what they have to say. You could simply say “I hear you have said X, which has led to you feeling X.”
- Easy: Show an easy manner, which could mean smiling, being lighthearted, or using humor.
FAST skill
This skill relates to self-respect and the ability to be truthful with yourself and others.
FAST stands for:
- Be Fair: Show fairness to yourself and others by validating your thoughts and feelings and respecting the thoughts and feelings of others.
- Don’t over-Apologize: You don’t need to apologize for existing, having an opinion, or disagreeing with another person’s perspective.
- Stick to your values: Stay true to yourself and your values by maintaining your personal boundaries.
- Be Truthful: Try to maintain self-honesty and be truthful with others. That means being mindful of what you share in a kind way, and not exaggerating the truth.
Boundary strengthening
Healthy boundaries are key to interpersonal effectiveness. They protect our values and communicate to others how we want to be treated.
Not everyone learns boundaries, especially if you have grown up in a dysfunctional home.
However, part of healthy relationships is learning how to set and maintain healthy boundaries.
You can achieve healthy boundaries by:
- Identify your boundaries: Think about your values, emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, and code of ethics. Determine what matters most to you, what you are prepared to participate in, and what you are not prepared to do. For instance, you might not be comfortable with someone lying to you, or you may not want a partner to hide certain information from you.
- Assert your boundaries: This means telling others what we need to feel comfortable and what makes us feel uncomfortable.
- Enforce boundaries: Enforcing boundaries means staying true to our values by telling another person what will happen if they disregard or disrespect our boundaries. For example, if a partner cheats, you may indicate that you cannot continue the relationship and you must follow through with that consequence.
THINK skill
The THINK activity is a newer DBT tool that helps you deal with unhelpful emotions toward others by encouraging you to think about another person’s perspective, show empathy, and consider more neutral interpretations or explanations for their behavior.
The acronym stands for:
- Think: Consider the other person’s point of view before responding. Reflect on how they might be feeling or the circumstances that led to their response or reaction.
- Have empathy: Show empathy for what they might be experiencing.
- Interpretations: Consider alternative explanations for their behavior. Instead of feeling like it is a personal attack, you might reflect on other possible reasons why they are acting that way.
- Notice: By mindfully observing the other person, you can pay close attention to their emotions. For instance, they may look frightened, or their anger might be masking a boundary you’ve crossed.
- Kindness: Respond to the situation calmly and with kindness. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with the other person or forgive any wrongdoing. It simply means being kind while communicating.
How to use the DBT interpersonal effectiveness worksheets
The DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills PDF can help individuals learn DBT relationship skills, which will enhance their interpersonal effectiveness, reduce conflict, and enforce healthy boundaries.
Choose from any of the skills in the DBT interpersonal effectiveness worksheets to use in session, as a handout, or as homework to practice in between therapy sessions. You can also send clients the DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills PDF electronically through your EHR or work through it with clients virtually during a telehealth session.
Sources
- McKay, M., Wood, J. C., & Brantley, J. (2019). The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT exercises for learning mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. New Harbinger Publications.
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