Relationship Skills 101 for Teens:
Using DBT to Deal with Intense Emotions
Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Continuing Education credits for this podcast can be earned at https://allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/585/c/
Objectives
~ Looking at yourself
~ Examining relationships
~ How up and down emotions fuel the relationship rollercoaster
~ Stop letting your emotions control you
~ Reduce your judgements to improve your attitude
~ Stop fighting reality and deal with it
~ Don’t let your urges control you
~ Improving your relationship with yourself
Looking at Yourself
~ What are the problems in your relationships
~ What are some of the behaviors you are engaging in that are causing these problems?
~ Become Mindful—Live in the present
~ The Past
~ Remember the good
~ Learn from and let go of the bad
~ The Future
~ Identify dreams
~ Avoid creating catastrophes that haven’t happened yet
Mindfulness Exercises
~ Pay attention throughout the day if you are focusing on the task at hand or …
~ Dwelling on the past
~ Fretting about the possibilities
~ Practice acceptance
~ When emotions are triggered, identify them and let them go instead of feeding them
~ Try not to judge
~ What does it mean to judge yourself? Thoughts? Others?
Examining Relationships
~ Healthy Relationships
~ Communication
~ Acceptance
~ Healthy boundaries and limit setting
~ Compassion
~ What do you want from your relationships?
~ Examine your relationships
~ What are they providing for you
~ What is lacking
~ Write a “My Best Friend” essay
Benefits of Healthy Relationships
~ Provide validation and acceptance
~ A sense of belonging
~ Self confidence
~ Social support
Relationship Rollercoaster
~ Your interpretations of events are based on
~ Your current state
~ Your prior experiences
~ The event itself
~ When you are tired, sick, depressed etc. it is easier to focus on the negative or get irritable
~ Emotional rollercoasters are caused by immediately reacting to every stimulus without awareness or acceptance
Teens Lives Can Feel Overwhelming
~ Teens have fewer experiences and skills against which to assess current experiences
~ Developmentally teens are trying to figure out where they fit in the world, so they often feel vulnerable
~ Teens have often been provided with acceptance and encouragement based on conditions of worth
Exiting the Rollercoaster
~ Keep a journal for a week of what upsets you
~ At the end of the week, review the journal
~ What, in retrospect, doesn’t seem so bad
~ How could you have used that same energy to address the situation?
~ What was going on that made you more vulnerable to getting upset?
Stop Letting Your Emotions Control You
~ Emotions are a combination of feelings, thoughts and urges.
~ They are a natural response based on what your brain thinks is happening.
~ Your brain is not always right.
~ Feel the feeling. Label it and let it go.
~ OMG I am totally going to fail this test…
~ Mark asked Samantha to prom instead of me…
~ She is such a $#!@%
Reduce Your Judgements to Improve Your Attitude
~ Judgements often…
~ Compare us to others instead of focusing on ourselves
~ Tear down others to make us feel better about ourselves
~ Tear down ourselves to protect us from disappointment
~ Constructive uses of that energy
~ Self-improvement and compassion
~ Celebrating other’s strengths
~ Celebrate our own strengths
Stop Fighting Reality and Deal with It
~ Sometimes things suck—accept it
~ Identify the things you can change and change them
~ Identify the things you cannot change and learn how to change your reaction to them
~ What can you learn from it
~ What does this mean about/for you
Don’t Let Your Urges Control You
~ Urges are part of feelings
~ The strongest urges are those to fight or flee
~ Physically
~ Emotionally
~ Urge Surf
~ Distract don’t react
~ Focus on something else 4/3/2/1
~ Watch something really funny
~ Listen to really loud music
~ Hold on to a piece of ice
Improving Your Relationship with Yourself
~ Become aware of your vulnerabilities
~ Develop self-compassion
~ Start identifying what you need and why
~ Be your own best friend
Summary
~ Teenage years can be very tumultuous
~ Teens often feel vulnerable as they try and find their place in the world
~ Teens do not have the same experiences that adults do, so their frame of reference is limited.
~ These vulnerabilities can lead to extreme reactions
~ Developing skills to deal with extreme reactions improves relationships by
~ Reducing angry/aggressive reactions
~ Teaching the teen he/she has the ability to handle distress
~ Empowers the teen to use the rollercoaster energy for constructive outcomes.
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