The Skillful Podcast

In Part 2 of How to Assert Yourself, Marielle and Ed discuss common interpersonal pitfalls in speaking up for yourself in relationships.

Do you swallow your needs and then find they all come out in a rush of words and anger?

Vacillating between staying silent and then blowing up is common and hurts both your relationships and your self-respect. This episode offers lots of ideas to help you avoid these extremes.

It can be hardest to speak up in our closest relationships because that is where the stakes are the highest. Despite what our fears may say, speaking up actually can strengthen relationships if done skillfully.

For full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

Do you find it hard to speak up for yourself in relationships? If so, this 2-part series on how to assert yourself may help you understand why it can feel so hard to ask for things or say no in different types of relationships.

In order to be able to assert yourself, you first need to know what you want and don't want. Sometimes this is harder that it seems. If you've spent a lifetime minimizing or denying your needs, it may be hard to get in touch with what matters to you most.

Once you've identified your needs, you have to trust that your needs matter as much as everyone else's.

For full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast

Myths about Interpersonal Effectiveness

Check the Facts

Opposite Action

Build Mastery

DEAR MAN

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

In this episode, Marielle and Ed answer a listener's question about fears of abandonment when conflict arises in relationships. These fears go straight to the heart of old wounds for many people.

Often, worry that conflict will destroy a relationship is rooted in our earliest relationships with our caregivers. If that early care was inconsistent, absent, or punishing in some way, it will be hard to feel secure when conflict inevitably arises in adult relationships. With skill use and a lot of compassion, you can learn to walk yourself through this common fear.

For full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast/

Wise Mind

Distress Tolerance Skills

STOP

Self-Soothing

Radical Acceptance

Check the Facts

Opposite Action

DEAR MAN

GIVE

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

This episode is the 2nd part of an overview of the Emotion Regulation skills in DBT, focusing on skills that can help you be in Emotion Mind less often. You can find part 1 here.

The skills discussed in this episode may not have an immediate impact on how you're feeling, but regular application of these skills over time builds emotional resilience and flexibility.

Accumulating Positive Emotions in the Short-Term

Accumulating Positive Emotions in the Long-Term

Build Mastery

Cope Ahead

PLEASE

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

The Emotion Regulation skills in DBT offer lots of ways to help you identify and respond to emotions. Some of the Emotion Regulation skills focus on change, while others focus on acceptance. This toggling back and forth between acceptance and change is the primary dialectic we are continually balancing in DBT.

This episode provides an overview of the Emotion Regulation skills as a whole, and takes a deep dive into change-oriented strategies such as Check the Facts, Opposite Action, and Problem Solving.

For full show notes, visit our website.

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

This episode explores how to apply mindfulness skills to help you manage distressing thoughts using the DBT skill called Mindfulness of Current Thoughts. Thoughts can cause a lot of suffering. Often, thoughts about events are based on assumptions, judgments, or interpretations rather than on facts.

The core of this skill is to notice thoughts as just thoughts, or sensations of the brain, rather than as fact or truth. This can help lower emotional distress and reactivity. Mindfulness of Current Thoughts helps you change your relationship with your thoughts rather than changing the thoughts themselves.

For more information, including the full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast/

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

Today, Marielle interviews Elle Michel, LMFT, a therapist in Los Angeles who specializes in treating complex trauma. Elle uses a combination of modalities to treat trauma, including DBT, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Brainspotting.

This episode focuses on describing what happens in the nervous system after a traumatic event, and how to use DBT skills to cope with an activated brain and body.

For more information, including the full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast/

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

Today, we take a deep dive into working with judgments.

Judgments about ourselves and others can increase emotional suffering and negatively impact relationships. Judgments are often assumptions, interpretations, or myths that we add to the facts. We then tend to mistake our judgments for facts.

This episode explores how to notice all of the subtle and often habitual ways judgments show up, as well as how to shift into a nonjudgmental stance.

For more information, including the full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast/

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

The Distress Tolerance skills in DBT offer creative ways to get through challenging situations without making things worse.

In Part 2 of this overview of Distress Tolerance skills, we focus on acceptance skills. Both acceptance and change skills can help lower emotional distress so you can access your most wise, grounded self. Radical Acceptance, as well as skills that support Radical Acceptance, are covered in this episode.

For more information, including the full show notes, visit our website: https://bayareadbtcc.com/podcast/

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.

The Distress Tolerance skills in DBT offer creative ways to get through challenging situations without making things worse. Today's episode is Part 1 of an overview of Distress Tolerance as a whole, with a special focus on change-oriented skills.

When emotional distress is high, there can be an intense desire to do something to make the distress stop. Very often, when we numb or distance ourselves from distressing emotions, we create new problems. The DBT skills discussed in today's episode help you respond to hard emotions in ways that you won't regret. These skills are also helpful when you need to get things done but you're too overwhelmed to get started or think clearly.

We'd love to hear from you! Where are you getting stuck with your skills application? Ask us a question for the chance to have it answered on the podcast. Submit your question here.

Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.