DEAR MAN Worksheet
Download the free DEAR MAN worksheet
Download free resource
Enter your email below to access this resource.
By entering your email address, you are opting-in to receive emails from SimplePractice on its various products, solutions, and/or offerings. Unsubscribe anytime.
If you’re looking for ways to empower clients to enhance their coping strategies, try using this DEAR MAN worksheet.
Modalities like dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) can improve distress tolerance, enhance mindfulness, and strengthen emotional regulation.
Specifically, the DEAR MAN DBT tool can empower clients to build better relationships by improving their assertive communication skills.
In this article, learn about the DEAR MAN DBT skills your clients can develop by using the worksheet—like assertive communication. Find out the benefits of this skill and how you can use the DEAR MAN worksheet with clients to reach therapy goals.
What is the ‘DEAR MAN’ acronym?
Dialectical behavioral therapy uses a range of tools and techniques to help clients manage overwhelming emotions.
DBT strengthens skills in four main areas:
1. Distress tolerance: The ability to withstand stressful situations and enhance resilience.
2. Mindfulness: Focusing on present time awareness, instead of distressing past experiences or anxious predictions.
3. Emotional regulation: To recognize feelings without becoming overwhelmed.
4. Interpersonal skills: Possessing tools to express needs, set boundaries, and find solutions while protecting yourself and your relationships.
The DEAR MAN DBT tool helps clients assert their needs to achieve desired outcomes or gain clarity on a situation.
You may have also heard this skill described as objective effectiveness, meaning setting an objective (what you want out of a situation) and how you’re going to achieve it.
The DEAR MAN acronym stands for:
- Describe: Objectively describing a situation by sticking to the facts and avoiding subjective information.
- Express: Sharing feelings and emotions about a situation clearly, without assuming the other person knows how you feel.
- Assert: Using assertive language, describe what you are asking for, or saying no to, as clearly and directly as possible, while respecting the other person.
- Reinforce: Ensure the other person knows the benefits or consequences of agreeing to or declining your request.
- Mindful: Stay present by being mindful of your tone of voice, posture, and body language, while staying focused on the objective of the conversation—even if the other person becomes unreasonable, threatening, distracting, avoidant, or defensive.
- Appear: Project confidence, assertiveness, and competence by maintaining a direct and neutral tone, 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. Be willing to compromise or acknowledge the other person’s perspective—unless it is something you feel uncomfortable compromising on, like a value or personal boundary.
How can the DEAR MAN DBT tool help clients?
The DEAR MAN skill is one type of interpersonal effectiveness skill taught in dialectical behavior therapy.
Learning this skill has several benefits for clients, including:
- Providing a framework to achieve a goal
- Developing effective interpersonal communication
- Enhancing self-knowledge
- Developing self-respect
- Reducing conflict
- Developing skills to express one’s needs through assertive communication strategies
Enhancing interpersonal communication skills can help clients develop more meaningful relationships and reduce the effects of unhealthy relationships.
The other interpersonal effectiveness DBT skills include the GIVE skill, FAST tool, and boundary setting skills—all of which aim to improve communication and enhance positive relationships.
Benefits of learning assertive communication skills
The key benefits of learning assertive communication skills include:
- Promoting self-advocacy and enforces boundaries by protecting personal values and limits
- Asserting and meeting own needs
- Developing self-respect
- Supporting compromise and conflict resolution
- Enhancing self-esteem and building confidence by feeling able to have difficult conversations
How to use the ‘DEAR MAN’ worksheet
The DEAR MAN worksheet can be downloaded above for free and saved to your electronic health record (EHR) for future use.
The worksheet provides a visual aid to illustrate the DEAR MAN DBT tool by breaking down each part of the acronym. It also gives suggestions on different ways to articulate each part of the skill, and provides psychoeducation about the tool.
You can use this DEAR MAN worksheet in various ways, depending on your practice or role.
For example, you can use it to form part of a group DBT course. Additionally, it may be helpful in situations where your client is processing a conflict and is looking for solutions. Or, it can be used as a regular assessment tool to practice and enhance a client’s interpersonal communication skills.
How SimplePractice streamlines running your practice
SimplePractice is HIPAA-compliant practice management software with everything you need to run your practice built into the platform—from booking and scheduling to insurance and client billing.
If you’ve been considering switching to an EHR system, SimplePractice empowers you to streamline appointment bookings, reminders, and rescheduling and simplify the billing and coding process—so you get more time for the things that matter most to you.
Try SimplePractice free for 30 days. No credit card required.