Archive for December 2009
Mindfulness and Interpersonal Effectiveness
Increasing awareness in interpersonal situations can help you access information that you were previously not attending to. This could help to increase your options for responding effectively, reduce the intensity of conflict, lower the arousal of the person with whom you are interacting, and help you do some problem-solving. While being effective is complicated and can include a variety of other skills such as acceptance and tolerance, there are a few tips that may be useful if you are the type to react quickly and regret what you said later. Please remember that a key component in mindfulness is doing what is effective. Across contexts, different interactions may be read differently and may not have differing degrees of effectiveness. So take these suggestions as ideas rather than concrete advice:
1) Pay attention to urges to interrupt, respond with intense emotion, or abruptly disagree. If/when you notice these urges, focus on your breath. While you focus on your breath, keep your face relaxed. Try a gentle half-smile (page 172, skills manual) and inhale and exhale slowly. You may be able to simply slow down an interaction by inhaling and exhaling every time a person expects you to speak.
2) If you are caught off guard, are shocked, or can’t think of anything to say, summarize what the person said. Sometimes summarizing will prompt them to clarify or explain more fully, which allows you more time to regroup. It also gives you an opportunity to make sure you heard them correctly.
3) If there is an intensity on the other person’s behalf to get you to respond, break eye contact and look thoughtful. If they insist on your response, tell them that you are thinking about what they just said. If it is an option, you may want to say that you are going to think about what they said and get back to them at a later time (once you have regulated your emotions and are more clear about how to respond!)
4) The clearer you are going into a potentially difficult situation, the better off you are about your own expectations and what you may do if they are met or not. Consider filling out pages 129 of the skills training manual (based on page 116) before you even go into the interaction.
5) What do you notice the other person doing that makes the interaction difficult? They may glare, interrupt, insist or demand an answer, fail to make eye contact, or present in a stoic or non-responsive manner. While this may be enough to increase anyone’s anxiety about an interaction, observing how it increases your anxiety may help you prepare for the interaction.
6) Pay attention to your own tone of voice, rhythm of speech, intensity of volume, and posture. Increasing the pitch at the end of a sentence can make your statements sound like questions and minimize an intensity of a request. Speaking quickly or loudly may be overwhelming to another person, and a failure to make eye contact can be interpreted in many ways. Practice changing your non-verbal behavior in a mirror before the interaction and see if it changes how you feel about the interaction.
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Just this moment
The only thing you really have in life is this current moment. Where your attention rests, your life rests, and when your attention is turned towards worries about the future or second guessing the past, your life becomes worrisome.
I’ve spent lots of my life worrying about negative outcomes. I’ve lost sleep stuck in worry mode. I’ve heard clients generate all sorts of unnecessary misery as they work to confirm worst case scenarios and how their lives will fall apart when these things happen to them. Whether or not there is validity to my worries or my clients’ worries, the only thing I have control over is the current moment.
The current moment brings me back to earth: The sound of the heater kicking in, the hum of a passing car, and the tapping noises on the keyboard. If I take care of this current moment, I am taking care of my current life stressors. The only way I can prepare for the future is to take care of the current moment. I can only do one thing at a time.
Mindfulness calls us to attend to what is going on right now in this moment. I sometimes have my clients do an exercise in which they spend five minutes writing sentences starting with “Right now” or “In this moment”. When a person can bring their attention to the present, they can reduce worry thoughts and overwhelming life circumstances and take control of just this one little slice of time.
Right now, in this moment, I have just reduced my stress. I am always seeking out reminders that ground me in the moment, that connect me to the air I breathe and the earth that sustains me. And I’m always looking for ways to give this back to clients.
Behavior Chain Analysis Worksheet
What made you vulnerable before the event even began?
Were you biologically vulnerable (ie, not getting enough sleep or food, using mood altering drugs, being sick)?
Was your emotional arousal high before the incident happened? Rate your emotional arousal on a scale of 1-10.
Can you think of anything that was going on in your environment that was upsetting or distressing prior to the event occurred? (ie, conflict with someone else, being reminded of something painful, loneliness)
What were you thinking or feeling prior to the incident?
Prompting event
Did you know/were you aware you were going to engage in the behavior to be targeted?
(How did you first know you were going to engage in the behavior to be targeted?)
What actually happened? What were you thinking at the time? What were you noticing/experiencing?
What were your expectations about the event? What did you expect would change?
Consequence (what is the cost/benefit of what you are doing)
What were the positive outcomes?
What were the negative outcomes?
What made it more or less likely that you would engage in this behavior again?
Did your behavior solve any problems? Did it lower emotional arousal, help you escape a painful situation, feel validated, feel better?
How do you feel about the behavior?
How did your behavior affect your environment/ other persons?
Why analyze behavior?
A behavior analysis is done
- To figure out all the things going on within your skin and your environment that have to do with you maintaining your behavior, to figure out how/when/where you get stuck, and to problem solve ways to make your life better
- To figure out ways to change your environment to make your life less miserable
- To get you to have a narrative of your experience
- To practice talking about your problems in non-judgmental manner
- To increase your clarity about your own experience, and
- To get you to think through what you do/decrease automatic behavior
- To give you a sense of mastery and control in telling your own story.