Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery Interpersonal Effectiveness

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Today we're going to be talking about dialectical behavior therapy skills and specifically interpersonal effectiveness. So we're going to start out by just defining what interpersonal effectiveness is, because that's kind of a garbage term that nobody really knows what we're talking about. Examine the goals of interpersonal effectiveness, and then we're going to eventually get into identifying barriers to interpersonal effectiveness. So let's start at the beginning. What is it? Interpersonal effectiveness is the ability to ask for what you want and need and say no to unwanted requests. Imagine that. Setting boundaries, new concept. So why do we want to do this? Well, it makes sense that we would want to do this, but there are some practical purposes for doing it too. By getting needs met and being able to set boundaries, you're going to feel more respected. Instead of feeling like people are taking advantage or walking all over you, you're going to feel more like you're in a partnership with people. And it's a give and take. It'll reduce anger and resentment because a lot of times if we don't effectively set our boundaries or if we don't know or communicate what we want or need, we may expect other people to just know what we want and need. And then when they don't meet our expectations, we get angry or resentful. It also helps reduce stress. If you're not wondering who's going to be there to help you, or if you're going to get somebody to agree, or how you're going to go about asking for a raise, then you're not going to be so stressed. You're not going to be living in the future, wondering and wishing and hoping that it goes right. You're going to feel confident that you have these skills to approach a situation, deal with it, and get what you need. All of this feeling more respected, not having as much anger and resentment and reducing stress frees up energy that you can use to meet your other goals. Like, here's a concept. Being happy. So ultimately, the goals of interpersonal effectiveness are to help you figure out how to get others to do things you want them to do. Now, this isn't always going to happen. We can ask and we can take no. But if you're effective in your interpersonal skills, you're going to more often come up with a yes answer. You're going to more often come up with a win. You'll get others to take you seriously because you're asking for what you need in a respectful way and you're not wishy washy about it. You're saying, this is what I need and you know what it is you need. And we'll talk in a little while about how a lot of times it's a lack of clarity on our own parts about what we need and want that causes us to ask for things that we don't really need. And then when those things, we get them and they don't make us feel any better, then we ask for something else instead of figuring out from the beginning, all right, what is it that I am needing right now? Interpersonal effectiveness helps you say no to unwanted requests. And this can be anything from helping somebody move to taking a job transfer to relationship issues. It'll help you strengthen your current relationships by learning how to nurture those, validate the other person and create a situation where it is a give and take and you can respect the other person's point of view and you have a better idea about what's going on. Because when you ask for something or when you say no or yes to a request they have, you're more aware and present regarding how you feel, what you're able to deliver on, and what state they're in and what they're bringing to the situation. We're also going to eventually talk about finding and building new relationships. Relationships are our greatest buffer against stress. They can also be our greatest stressors, but we are going to talk about the good ones. We will figure out how to find and build new ones, which is kind of difficult. Once you get out of high school or college and you are not immersed with the same people all the time. Every day it can be more challenging. And yeah, you have got the people you work with if you work in a big company, but that's not always the people you want to hang out with. So we're going to talk about different places and different ways to go about finding people who share similar interests. And in today's Internet based world, there's a lot of different opportunities. And we're going to end by talking about ending hopeless relationships. And sometimes our relationships we have we're just hanging on to because we're afraid to let them go or because we're afraid of the repercussions or whatever reason you have. And we're going to talk about using what's called a decisional balance exercise to figure out is this relationship, albeit difficult, worth trying to salvage or is this relationship ultimately causing you more harm and one that needs to be terminated. So for Each of the following statements, I'm going to ask you to think about two examples of how this caused a problem for you in the recent past. This is designed to help you kind of highlight where you might have some weaknesses in your interpersonal effectiveness skills. Speculate why you're effective at not doing these things as well, getting others to do things you want them to do. Now, a lot of times we'll ask people to do things and they'll say no. And sometimes that's okay, but we want to look at why is it when I ask people to do things, do they say no? And if they say no, most of the time, maybe this is an area I need to tune up a little bit and figure out why I'm ineffective at getting help when I need it. Another area I want you to think about is, have there been times when other people haven't taken you seriously? You've said, I really need your help, and they're like, yeah, whatever. Okay, so what situations might have happened in the past between the two of you where they've learned to really not take you seriously? Maybe when things happen, you might tend to make them out to be this huge, big deal, and ultimately they're not that big of a deal. So when people say no, it doesn't end up really impacting you negatively in any sort of way. So we're going to look at what do you need to do in order to help get others to take you seriously when you ask for something and say, you know what, this is important, I really need this right now. There are going to be times when you ask for things and you're sort of ambivalent, like, do you want to go to the park today or do you want to go this place this weekend? That can be a give and take sort of thing. But then there are other times where you might need a ride somewhere or you might need somebody to help out because you're sick, where it's more important. So how do you communicate the difference between requests that would be nice to get met, but it's not a big deal if they say no versus requests that it's really important to you to get those needs met at this point in time. I also want you to think about things that you've done recently with strengthening current relationships and how your current relationships and lack of attention have caused them to weaken in the recent past. And we take our relationships for granted in general. Once people becomes a friend. Once people become friends with you, the tendency is to say, great, we're friends, let's chat and go from chatting like a lot to maybe once a week or once every couple of weeks or only when you need something. You kind of see where we're going here. So it's important to maintain attention on those relationships. But we're also going to talk about those relationships in terms of your relationship with yourself and becoming aware of what you need, what you want and what your status is at any current time and being compassionate toward yourself. You have got to nurture that in yourself and toward yourself before you can give it to anybody else actively. And what challenges have you faced finding and building new relationships? You know, let's think about why are you not effective at doing these things? Some people, it's a self esteem issue. Other people don't know where to meet people or how to form those relationships. So we're going to talk about a variety of different things that may stand in the way of forming new healthy relationships and different things that you can do to start down that path. So barriers. We've talked about why it's important to have good interpersonal skills and we've talked about some goals of interpersonal effectiveness. But what are some barriers to being interpersonally effective? And you can kind of see how what we talked about, the goals that we just talked about are probably inhibited by some of these barriers. So think about how these things impact your ability to get those interpersonal goals met. Lack of effective communication skills, lack of the ability to be assertive. Lack of clarity about what you want from other people. Sometimes you just want to feel better or you want somebody to help you out because you feel overwhelmed, but you don't know what that looks like and you don't know why you feel overwhelmed. So you're just kind of spitting in the wind here, hoping that somebody's going to do something to make you feel better. Difficulty balancing your needs and the other person's needs. Yes, sometimes things are going to happen and it is urgent. It is imperative that you get this need met. And if somebody says no, it can feel devastating, it can feel like a rejection. However, maybe the other person had something else equally as important going on, which is another reason why it's important to have multiple relationships. So you've got a plan B and a plan, circumstances, couple other people you can call. Another barrier to interpersonal effectiveness is letting your emotions get in the way. Feeling ashamed, feeling guilty, feeling like you don't deserve to have your needs met. Any of those negative emotions that make you kind of want to crawl back into your shell are going to Keep you from being assertive and confident and stating what you need. You sacrifice long term goals for short term relief or urges. Yeah, this is a barrier to interpersonal effectiveness because it's easy to say, yeah, that sounds like fun, let's go do this. And then maybe you were supposed to go do something with your kids or your family and now you don't have time to get everything done and meet your obligations. A lot of times impulsivity monkeys with time management. So we end up being over committed and not able to fulfill our obligations to ourselves and to other people. Which brings us to other people who get in the way. There are people with the best intentions and there are people with not so good intentions. You probably have both in your life. But when they get in the way of you being interpersonally effective, they're the ones that try to talk you out of things or convince you to do things that you don't want to do. So being able to assert your boundaries and stick to those is really important in being effective. Because if you give in once, not every time, but if you give in just once, then they know that, you know, if I push the right buttons or work at it for long enough, I can get them to change their mind. Other people are more powerful than you. And you know what? There are situations that are going to come up when other people are more powerful, whether it be a cop on a traffic stop or your boss or whomever. And you may not be able to win in that particular situation. So the question is effectively to get your needs met. How do you handle that particular situation? And then what's your next step? Because generally there's somebody you can appeal to. Even if you're in a situation where there are others more powerful than you, you can change the situation if that situation is not meeting your needs. A need for external validation keeps us from asking for what we need because we want other people to like us. So if we want other people to like us, then we're going to say yes to everything that they ask of us. And we're going to avoid asking for anything from them because we just want their attention. Developing self esteem and learning that you are all that bag of chips is going to be the first step in being able to ask assertively for things and say no. And set healthy boundaries so you can be fully present when you are there for people. You know you are no good to anybody if you are completely worn down. And the final barrier is believing that you don't deserve to get what you want. And sometimes our wants and our needs are a little bit different. Believing that you don't deserve to get what you need. A big issue. So if you need something versus just kind of wanting it, you know, you may want a Ferrari, but what you need is something to get you to work. If you believe you don't deserve it, if you believe you don't deserve compassion, then you're going to communicate that to other people, either through your nonverbals by hemming and hawing and not making eye contact, or you're not going to ask at all, which is obviously a barrier to getting your needs met. Interpersonal effectiveness is more just communication skills. It requires that you know what your wants and needs are before you actually go out and start asking people to help you meet them. It helps you effectively ask for those wants and needs and troubleshoot why you might not be getting your needs met by other people and or yourself. The next step that Interpersonal effectiveness skills helps you with is taking action to improve the situation in order to develop healthy, sustainable, albeit not perfect, relationships. None of our relationships are perfect. They all require energy. They all are going to have their ups and downs and their hiccups. Deciding which relationships are worth the effort is part of interpersonal effectiveness. It.