Revealing 4 Expert Problem Solving Skills

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@Allce.com Counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome everybody to Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Problem Solving Strategies. This is the last installment, if you will, or module, whatever you want to call it. In our DBT series that we've been doing for the past couple of weeks. We're going to review the four options for problem solving, go over problem solving steps, and review concepts such as force field analysis, root cause analysis, and backward chaining. Now, one of the things you may ask yourself is, why are we going over problem solving skills? Well, partly because there's not one problem solving style that fits everyone and like goal setting and treatment planning, sometimes people can get overwhelmed and get stuck with all the minutiae. So we're going to talk about a way or a couple of ways to approach it to help people consider all of the aspects of a problem and try to figure out how to make the best decision for them. So your options with problem solving is to stay miserable. And you know, when I present this, when I'm doing a group and this is obviously the first thing we go over, they all look at me like I just said the worst thing in the world. When I say you have the option to stay miserable, they're like, why are you saying that to me? And I point out that inaction is a valid choice. You can be unhappy, you can nurture that unhappiness that is your option, or you can tolerate the problem. Some things are unchangeable and they just kind of stink. But you know that reality will evolve and that generally unpleasant things don't go on forever. So tolerating the problem means using your distress tolerance skills and tolerating both the problem itself and your responses. If you've ever had to ice your ankle or your hand and put it in an ice bath, you know, not just an ice pack, but an ice bath. Those hurt like the dickens. So during that you are experiencing distress. Now you can either tolerate the problem, knowing that your hand or your foot or whatever it is is going to go numb in a few minutes, or you can take your hand out, which is one way to solve that particular problem. The coldness. It doesn't solve the swelling or anything, but it stops the hurting. When I worked as an athletic trainer, I would have people and they would put their hand in and they would tolerate it for like 45 seconds. Then they pull it out oh, that's too cold. And then they put it back in again. And I'm like, you know, what if you just left your hand in there? Eventually it would, you know, move on to that numb phase. But right now you're just prolonging the agony. So they can tolerate the problem. If it's not changeable, they can feel better about the problem. Sometimes you can change your emotional and cognitive response by focusing on the positive, focusing out of what can come out of it. When you have a failure, you know, you don't get promoted, or you try something and you fail miserably at it. You can either look at it as a learning opportunity and congratulate yourself for having the courage of stepping out of your comfort zone, or you can look at it as a devastating failure. The choice is yours, or you can solve the problem. Sometimes it's a matter of changing something about the situation. If you are hot. I used to, when I was in graduate school, all of our courses were on the basement of the hospital, and they could not control the temperature down there to save their lives. In the middle of summer in Florida, it would be 63 degrees. In the middle of winter, it would be, you know, blazing hot. So you would go in dressed for the outside, and you would be uncomfortable in short order. So you could either complain about it and get irritable and whatever you do, or you could solve the problem. So in the summer, I would always pack a great big old sweater to bring into class with me, and in the winter, I would dress in layers so as class went on, I could peel off the layers as I got uncomfortable solving the problem. There's no sense holding on to anger and irritability because that doesn't fix anything. It just sucks your energy dry. So when there's a problem, you got to use your wise mind skills. And I know you're probably tired of hearing about these right now. Observe and describe the situation, the whole situation, and nothing but the situation. Okay? Check the facts. Identify your goal in solving the problem. What your goal is may be different than somebody else's goal. So with the example of the classroom in graduate school, you know, my goal was to be comfortable through the class. The professor's goal was to get them to fix the thermostat. So we didn't have to worry about that. We had two different goals, so our solutions obviously were very different. Brainstorm solutions. Depending on what your goal is, your solutions are going to be very different. Choose one that's likely to work, put it into action, and evaluate the outcome. Really not brain surgery here, but we get stuck. First thing we get stuck on is observing and describing. We'll use the example of feeling lonely and isolated because this is something that our clients often report. And people, you know, they don't even have to be clients often experience periods where they feel lonely and isolated. So we want to start talking about who is involved. Don't start thinking about that. Don't start thinking about who is making you feel lonely and isolated or what is making you. No, let's just describe the situation. Get the lay of the land. So who's involved here? Obviously you, because you're feeling lonely and isolated, who else is involved? Now you may be looking around your room going, I'm the only one here. However, in this situation, there may be other factors at play. For example, you have five other close friends and they're kind of involved. If you're feeling lonely and isolated, you've probably already gone through your mind. Well, I can't reach out to that person because whatever. I reached out to this person and they didn't respond. I can't reach out to this person for that reason. So those people are sort of indirectly involved in this situation. They're your support systems, your friends, whatever you want to call them. And you're feeling lonely and isolated right now and you are not feeling the love, if you will. So we want to look at who's involved. We're not saying that they're doing anything wrong. We're just noticing what is. When is this happening? Now, if this happens when you come home from work after a long day and you're the only one bouncing around house all by yourself, you know, that's definitely something that can trigger a sensation of feeling lonely and isolated. But at 5 o' clock in the afternoon, you have a lot more options than at 2 in the morning if you wake up and you're feeling lonely and isolated. So we're looking at, you know, what is going on right now? What time is it? What options do I have? Where is this happening now? Oftentimes it'll be at your house, but you also may be at work or in a group of people or sitting in a restaurant eating by yourself and feeling lonely and isolated and different things may trigger that. I always feel lonely and isolated and a little bit odd. If I'm sitting in a restaurant by myself eating, I'm like, I don't know who to look at. And I mean now with mobile devices, I can just immerse myself in something online. But before those existed. Yeah, way back Then before we had them, you know, I would always feel a little bit awkward. So I could feel isolated or lonely in those situations, whereas at home I wouldn't necessarily. So one solution would be, don't go. Go to a restaurant by yourself or go to one that has like a snack bar sort of thing instead of sitting you at a table for four by yourself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So we're looking at where is this happening? Because context is important. You can eat at your kitchen table by yourself and not feel the least bit isolated or lonely, but you can in a restaurant. And then what is the present situation? So we've already kind of talked about it, but we're going to go down a little bit deeper into this situation right now. Not general feeling lonely and isolated, but what triggered this particular episode of feeling lonely and isolated. Where am I? What are my contributions to it? Am I refusing to reach out? Well, that can kind of contribute to loneliness and isolation if you're expecting other people to come in and check on you. And what are my vulnerabilities? So if you haven't been getting enough sleep, if you're exhausted, if you've been working a lot, if you haven't been able to find the time to reach out to those social supports, you may feel more disconnected and isolated, but those are vulnerabilities you've brought to the situation. It doesn't mean you caused it necessarily. It's just it is what it is. So you're recognizing the situation that, you know, maybe when I get really busy with work and I'm not paying attention to those other things that are important in my life and those other relationships, I start to feel more lonely and disconnected. Which takes us down to your current thoughts and feelings. So encourage clients to think about what are they telling themselves that is supporting this notion of feeling lonely and isolated. You know, if they're talking to their dog or they're talking to themselves, whomever they're talking to, what things are going through their head like, nobody loves me, nobody would notice if I didn't show up tomorrow. Go through some of those thoughts that they're having and look for exceptions, look for cognitive distortions, try to start addressing those. And we're going to talk in a few minutes about ways to participate. Because remember, wise mind skills observe, describe and participate in changing the situation to improve the next moment. But right now, we're just identifying the thoughts. We're also looking at others contributions and vulnerabilities. You know, maybe your friend Sally, you sent her A message and she didn't respond. Now you could take it personally or, and, or you could consider the options. What else does Sally have going on? Maybe Sally has a new baby at home and hasn't slept for two and a half months. And maybe she's sleeping right now. So assuming that we know everybody's motivation sets us up for making erroneous decisions. So we want to look at what's going on with these other people in the situation that may be contributing to how they're acting or reacting or not acting towards me, which is contributing to the situation of me feeling lonely and isolated. As you start to do this, you'll realize it's amazing how much you don't know about what you don't know because you'll start thinking, you know, Sally didn't respond to me when I sent her that message and you may start to get irritable and then you may start to think, you know what? I have no idea why Sally didn't respond to me. She has had all these other things going on right now. And you can start brainstorming because you don't know what other people's motivations are. And when you're making decisions, especially without input from those other people, those have to be sort of ambiguous holes, if you will, because you can't assume you know what's going on with them. But it's important to know that there are alternatives. There are at least two or three possible explanations for, for why they are acting or reacting the way they are. If the situation is appropriate, get input from other people who notice the problem, who may be affected by it, but do it one at a time. So maybe you're having a difficult time at work and you're just struggling and you're angry and you got passed over for a promotion and you're really frustrated about it, maybe reaching out to some of your co workers and going, you know, I don't understand why I didn't get the promotion. Do you notice or do you see something that I need to work on so I can get the promotion the next time, definitely talking to the promoting supervisor would be one way to get input when it comes to feeling lonely and isolated. You know, if you're feeling that way when you reach out and you start talking to your supports, telling them I'm feeling lonely and isolated, I'm wondering if you've noticed any change or you might have any idea where this is coming from. Because we see what we see, but every single one of us, no matter how open minded and mindful we think we are. Every single one of us has blind spots. We find in recovery and from addiction, anxiety, depression. Most people, when they have relapse, warning signs when they're headed down that path towards a relapse and having another episode of their mood disorder or addictive issues, they don't notice it. They've got those blind spots. It's their significant others who notice those subtle changes. So getting input from those other people, and they may say, you know what? You haven't been kind coming out with us on the weekends like you used to, or whatever they noticed, Write all of this down. It's not good. It's not bad. It's not judgmental. It just is. Sally noticed this. Susie noticed this. I noticed this. Okay. If you have questions about things, you may verify your impressions of the problem. If you say, you know, I feel like I've been withdrawing lately, does it seem like I've been acting differently? You know, you can always reach out to other people, your support systems, whoever they are. But once you have all that done on paper, what do you do with it? Now, I love root cause analyses, and I know it's kind of a sick thing to say if you've ever actually been through one. But whenever there's a problem, and it doesn't have to be a critical incident, root cause, those are very stressful. But whenever there's a problem, you want to figure out what the cause was. So when you do a root cause analysis, you put the issue in there. So I'm feeling lonely and isolated. And then you start identifying one by one those contributing factors that may be having an effect on feeling lonely and isolated, including vulnerabilities. Maybe you're getting sick. I know for myself before I get sick, for some reason, I tend to become what my girlfriend used to call disorganized. She always knew when her son was getting sick because he would become a little bit erratic and chaotic. But for me, I can't concentrate. My attention span is like nothing. I can't remember things when I walk between rooms. And I know that's my body telling me I'm running out of gas here. We're kind of sputtering. So if you're feeling lonely and isolated, you want to look at what's going on. And if you notice something about yourself, you know, and like, for me, if I noticed that I was feeling disorganized or not engaged, I might put that down as a contributing factor, because then I might be able to find that I was starting to get sick. And when I get sick, I tend to be less patient and a little bit more whiny and self entitled. Let's be honest, when we're sick, we often aren't, you know, the best patients. All of that could contribute. When you're doing a root cause analysis, you just throw it all out there and then you start marking off the things that, yeah, that really probably didn't affect it, or yes, this did. And then you can start drawing connections. I encourage people to think of problems like blankets. And if you're like me, I'm one of those people that pulls strings. If I see a string on a shirt, I'll pull it knowing good and well it's going to unravel the hem. But you know, it's one of those impulsive decisions I make. But if you think of a problem like a blanket, then wherever you start pulling that string, you're going to start unraveling the problem, which means it gets better. You know, in this case, unraveling the blanket is a good thing. You can take all that data and you can also put it into a chain analysis. Now, looking at vulnerabilities and prompting events can help you understand how you got from not feeling lonely to feeling lonely. It can also help you understand what to do to prevent this situation in the future. So you look at what was the prompting event. You know, I'm feeling lonely and isolated. When did this start? Well, it started when I came home from work to an empty house. You know, maybe your family's been on vacation for a week and a half or your kids just went off to college and you're just kind of bouncing around in an empty house by yourself and it can feel really quiet. So, okay, in this particular incident, you know, what triggered it? What vulnerabilities did you have? What things made you more likely to feel lonely and isolated in this particular circumstance? So, you know, if you take kids going off to college, there's a lot of stuff there, that whole empty nest syndrome thing, but a lot of stress, may not be sleeping as well. You know, obviously if people are leaving, there's a big change. Even when my family goes on vacation for week or two weeks, there is so much more to do around the house when they're not there to feed the animals and tend to the farm and everything else. So that makes me spend more energy doing stuff which can make me get stressed out or exhausted easier. So just being aware of what things can you do to prevent this the next time? You know, in my case, the next time they go on vacation or for the person whose family just went off to college, kids just went off to college. What can you do to address these vulnerabilities? So when you come home from work, you don't automatically start feeling lonely and isolated. Maybe going to the gym after work or some sort of recreational activity or whatever it is. So you're not getting home at five, not going to bed till 10, and having five hours of just kind of knocking around a house by yourself, adopt a dog or six. So we know we're feeling lonely and isolated. Now we have response options. One response would be to make new friends and develop new hobbies. Now how you go about doing that is later, but okay, so you decide that you want to do this because it could fill that void, it could make you feel more validated, whatever they perceive the benefits to be. Or you could avoid it, numb it, deal with it in some way, such as eating, drinking or self harm. Unfortunately, when we choose those, we're not solving the problem. So whenever you stop doing those behaviors, the problem is still there, compounded by your sense of helplessness and stuckness, if you will. So the consequences can be a worsening mood, a sense of helplessness, and reduced self esteem. So encouraging people to look not only at what causes it and preventing it, but also choosing when they're looking at their response options, choosing ones that have the best consequences that'll help them get closer to their goals. So we've put it all down. We've kind of identified what we think caused it. Now it's time to check the facts. Is this a reaction to the environment or your thoughts? I mean, sometimes environments just prompt a reaction because of past learning or whatever. If you go to a hospital, it may prompt a stress reaction in you or not, depending on your prior reaction, and it has nothing to do with the current situation. So you want to figure out, is this environment triggering me in some way? And if so, how can I adjust that or adjust my thoughts about the environment? You know, for me, I spent a lot of time in the hospital after my son was born because he stayed there for about two months. And you know, I would be there as soon as I ate breakfast in the morning, stay there until dinner at night. His father was working night shift, so his father would be there during the night shift and we got to know the nurses and it was like a second home to us. So when I walk into a hospital now and I smell those familiar cleaning chemicals, I have a more contented reaction than somebody who may have been in there on the worst night. Of their entire life. So know how the environment is impacting you. Check whether you're using emotional or factual reasoning. Now, every reason we have has some emotion to it, but when we're talking about emotional reasoning, we're talking about people who are finding facts that fit their emotions. For example, if someone's afraid to fly, they feel like it's a scary thing, so they're going to look or hone in or grab onto any facts that support the notion that it's scary. Factual reasoning takes into account those things and says, yeah, planes do crash. Yeah, there are tragedies. However, let's look at the statistics. Let's look at it compared to something you're not afraid to do, like driving your car. So factual reasoning is a little bit more balanced and a little bit more unemotional. That's using your logic mind or your rational mind. So we want to look at what we're doing. If we're acting in our emotional mind, then we're acting generally impulsively and on urges to make it stop. We want to make it stop. Like a bumblebee on your. On your arm. Bumblebees generally are very docile. But our first reaction, sometimes when something's on our arm is to swat it off. In your emotional mind, that's what you do. You don't stop to think first. Well, what's the best choice of action here? If I try to swat it, it's going to sting me. That's going to hurt. If I just put my arm down and walk away, it's probably going to go away. So you can see where the emotional mind can trip us up. Sometimes when you're in your emotional mind, you've also got blinders on and you're just seeing the problem, the solution, or whatever you perceive as the solution to make that distress stop. Not necessarily. What's the best solution? So what we want to do is increase our mindfulness to the facts of the present situation. So we need to encourage clients to practice the pause. We need to encourage them to take a breath, really evaluate the situation on its merits, not just on how they're feeling at the moment. Look beyond yourself to other people and the context. So looking at the situation and taking it in, are you in danger? Are you in jeopardy? Is this something that should provoke anger or anxiety? And are you using all or none reasoning every time this happens? Blah, blah, blah, or you never. Blah, blah, blah. Walk the middle path. Look for exceptions. If you're feeling very extreme on one side, play devil's advocate and Argue the other side. So we want to figure out if the emotions fit the facts. And that's what all of those techniques are designed to do. Why am I feeling this way? Give you an example. Last week or the week before, my husband has the office right across from me and I heard my daughter call him. And my daughter never calls and she never calls daddy unless there is a problem at the farm. And generally by problem I mean somebody got killed or has to go for an emergency vet appointment. So when she called her father, my first reaction was my stomach jumped right into my throat. I was just beside myself with stress. Practice the pause. Radical acceptance. I had to say it is what it is. There's nothing I can do to change the situation right now. So instead I just eavesdropped on the conversation for a few minutes to figure out what was going on and, and gather more information. But in the meantime, I was trying to identify opposite thoughts. What were other possibilities for the reason she could be calling her father? Because I knew getting all upset was not an effective emotional response in this particular situation. It wasn't going to do any good. Once you look at a situation, if you figure out that yes, it is an effective emotional response, you still have to practice radical acceptance and distress tolerance. We need to encourage clients to always practice the pause because whenever they get scared or angry, and obviously there are going to be a smidgen percentage of times when it's sort of a life or death situation, they ain't gonna have time to practice the paws. So that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the normal day to day irritants. They encounter an unpleasant person, they go to grocery store after work and they're trying to check out and they're already hungry and the line is like eight people deep at every single register and they start getting really irritated. These are the things I'm talking about. If they decide that yes, this is a reasonable response, what's going on? Practicing radical acceptance. Accepting it. It is what it is and what am I going to do about it? Distress tolerance lets you bleed off that adrenaline rush and get into your wise mind so you can start problem solving. Ultimately you have those choices. To stay miserable, to tolerate the distress using distress tolerance emotion regulation techniques. If you're upset. Now we typically talk about emotion regulation and vulnerabilities as preventative measures, but sometimes you might be having a strong emotional reaction and you realize that you are getting sick or you're just exhausted and you know what? I need to go to bed, get up, and start again tomorrow morning when I have a clearer head. So sometimes you need to check out and take care of those vulnerabilities so you're not so emotion driven. You can feel better by changing your thoughts and feelings about a situation or solve the situation. So ultimately, you've got two choices. You're in the middle, and you can either start flailing around and doing the first thing that comes to mind to try to get yourself free from the unpleasant feeling, which is like getting stuck in quicksand because it generally wastes your energy and doesn't get you any closer to your goals. Or you can practice the pause, figure out the best course of action, and work on conquering a mountain. So you know what the situation is. You're practicing distress tolerance, improving the moment and accepting reality as it is. And obviously those are capitalized because we've gone over those acronyms. You're going to start addressing any vulnerabilities you have right now. My husband gets hypoglycemic, or he is hypoglycemic. So if he's standing in a long line after a long day at work and he hasn't had dinner yet, you can darn well bet he's going to get grumpy. We used to be able to just stand in line with him and see his blood sugar drop and his mood change. So sometimes you can address vulnerabilities right there, like low blood sugar. You may need to have a snack, and hopefully you've thought to pack one with you in order to get you through that moment so you're not as uncomfortable and impatient. Encourage people to pack a survival bag, if you will. You know, if they know that they get really cranky when they haven't had something to eat, keep snacks in their briefcase or somewhere where they can access them. I get really cranky if I'm dehydrated, so I always make sure that I've got access to some sort of water or juice or something. If your feet hurt, if you've ever walked, you know, any females in the bunch, or I guess guys have shoes that don't fit fit well either. Shoes can be really uncomfortable. Really pretty, but really uncomfortable. So for some people, you may be in pain. You're standing in that line at the grocery store and you're like, I can't stand in these shoes one moment longer. Now, me, I'm likely to just step out of my shoes and stand on top of them until the line moves forward. But, you know, I'm not all that prim and proper all the time. Whatever it takes for you to address your pain, that's going to help you get through that moment. Change your thoughts. Help clients learn. And this is a hard lesson to learn. Learn to look at both sides. Walk the middle path. If they are feeling like it's the worst thing ever, have them identify exceptions. Have them identify worse things that they've gone through and come through pretty okay. Now here's one that's a little different. Focus on the negative. Sometimes people in a situation, maybe they just got out of a really bad relationship and they're starting to debate going back because it hurts so much to be away from that person. In that case, we may encourage them to focus on the negative because all they're focusing on is romanticizing the positive. So it's important to see both sides and be cognizant of the good and the bad. Cheerleading thoughts. Have an SMS message schedule scheduler if you know there are particular times of day that you get cranky or if it just helps to start your morning off. That way you can get apps and schedule messages to be sent to you at particular times. And they can be funny memes, they can be, you know, good quotes, whatever it is that keeps you going and reminds you that you're a strong, courageous person. Whatever. Relapse prevention and purposeful action Sometimes it comes down to choosing the best thing that prevents any further upset. You're in a situation right now where you're feeling unhappy, you're feeling angry, okay, it happens. We all experience distress. Part of relapse prevention is continuing to move forward, to not move backwards. So we want to look at what are the options I have to deal with this distress that are not, that's not going to cause any more problems and that's going to help me keep moving forward, which is what purposeful action is. It's choosing to use your energy in a way that helps you continue along your path and identify alternate possibilities. I always say identify three solutions and you know, a couple of them, two out of the three may be really off the wall, but at least you are trying to get outside of the box to identify alternate solutions. Go online, Google different solutions because most people have put things, I mean there's just a bunch of stuff online. Some of it's garbage and some of it is really helpful. Awesome little gold nuggets that you can find. So if people are having trouble maybe dealing with their in laws, google dealing with in laws or whatever and see what other people have said to help generate possibilities in your own mind. Now, some of those may not fit, but some of them may fit really well. So you're brainstorming solutions. Now, mind you, a lot of times we're going to have situations that come up. We don't have 10, 20 minutes, 5 hours to go through this process. So you're going to condense them a little bit for some of the other issues that come along, like the long line at the grocery store. Hopefully you're not going to sit down and start charting out all of these things you can think to yourself, is this a good use of my energy? If not, what can I do to improve the next moment? One thing you can do, though, is once you get home, you can figure out what might be a way I could prevent that kind of upset in the future. When my son was little, bless his heart, he always had pacifiers, you know, but he had this one type of pacifier and no other type of pacifier would do. And it wasn't one you could find everywhere. Little stinker. So, anyway, long story short, after many times of going on trips or going to the store and losing his pacifier or forgetting it at home, I learned to pack a go bag and I had a backup diaper bag in my trunk. That way I would never be without the proper binky, which made everybody else a lot happier. Ok, so change feelings. Focus on positive stuff to get happier. And yes, I said stuff, whatever makes you happier. You can have an attitude of gratitude focusing on what you do have in the present. When my father was diagnosed with cancer, that really sucked. But I did have an attitude of gratitude that he got to see the birth of our first child. He got to spend time with Shawn, and we did appreciate the time that we had together instead of focusing on the fact that, well, maybe this would be the last time. So focus on the good stuff and find things that make you happy. Keep a folder on your mobile device of pictures and memes and sayings and links to videos that make you laugh. My daughter likes raccoons that eat fruit. She likes watching their little fingers while they eat, and she thinks it's cute. I have to turn off the sound because they make this horrible smacking noise, but whatever does it for you. That way, when you're having a bad moment, you can mentally check out and change your emotional state. When you focus on something else, change the situation by removing or eliminating the trigger. Sometimes you can do this, sometimes you can't. So if you can change that situation, like the person who is feeling lonely and they're Coming home to an empty house. Maybe they adopt a dog. So when they come home, Fido greets them at the door. And Fido always has to pee the minute you get home. So they get occupied with taking care of the dog and then making dinner. And time passes more easily, and they're less focused on being home alone. Use interpersonal effectiveness skills. If you're having issues with somebody else to address the situation, which means you've got to understand where they're coming from first. Just because you want something to be a certain way, well, that's great, but we have to understand what the other person needs in a particular situation in order to create a win win. And you may add something to alter the situation, you know, like getting a dog or going out and making new friends so you don't feel as lonely and isolated. If you can't contact your three best friends. Once you come up with those ideas, you can do a force field analysis. So for each thing, you identify the motivating forces, the resisting forces. If your friend doesn't respond to a message that you sent them, now your mind can go crazy thinking about all the reasons that person isn't responding. One solution to this may be to set up a lunch with that person to talk. Okay, so let's look at the motivating forces. Emotionally, it may give you some sense of contentment or whatever. If the person's willing to agree to set up a lunch mentally, it may allow you to box that stuff up and go, okay, I'm going to deal with this when I talk to her at lunch on Tuesday. Physically, when you reduce the emotional and mental stress, the physical symptoms of stress tend to go down. Sleeping better, less GI upset, yada yada. It may or may not affect other relationships and, you know, your job and that kind of stuff. When you're looking at restricting forces, setting up a lunch to talk could be overwhelming to somebody because they may just, like, get freaked out about, well, what if she tells me she doesn't want to be friends with me anymore and goes down this path mentally, the person may get stuck replaying that situation over and over in their head, trying to figure out how that lunch is going to go, which can increase physical distress. So we want to look at what's going on for that person and what may encourage them to go for it. And, you know, when you go through these and the enabling and constraining forces, if the constraining forces are too strong, then we're probably going to scrap that solution and look for a different one. Choose the best option that's effective at helping you move closer to your goals in the long term, stay true to your values and is realistic. That's a lot. So we want to encourage people to remember that their logical mind may propose three very viable solutions. But two of them may not feel so good. They may not be exactly what you want to do in your heart. The third one may make you happier. So that's probably the choice you're going to go with. So you need to balance, you know, the head, the heart, and the gut when making these choices and then take action. A lot of times our clients get stuck because they know what needs to be done, but have no idea where to start. I've had clinicians get stuck writing a treatment plan for the same exact reason. So what we want to do is not get so caught up in, ah, where do I start? But let's just start somewhere. When somebody has a lot of stuff to do on treatment wise, I'll have them write it down on index cards. And we put all those index cards in a basket and if there are some that have to be done first or there's a particular order, we'll set those aside. But a lot of times there's just stuff that needs to be done. So the person picks an index card each day from the basket, tackles that task. Eventually the basket gets empty. And it helps people stop from getting completely overwhelmed. When I clean, especially my kids rooms, I just take everything off every flat surface because you know how I feel about flat surfaces. And off their bed, which is another flat surface, put it in a big pile in the middle of the room and I'm like, you're finished cleaning your room when the pile is gone. But that way they don't start with, well, do I clean off my bed first or do I organize my drawers first? It's just all in the middle of the room and start somewhere. Once you start the process, continually evaluate, because sometimes you're going to start it and you're going to go, oh, this isn't turning out how I thought. Let me back up and adjust a little bit. That's okay. That's not a failure, that's a learning opportunity. And that's showing that you're being mindful of what you need to solve that problem. Other tips? Focus on the solved state, not the problem state. So this is the problem right now, and I can get really stuck on trying to figure out what I'm going to do right now. Encourage them to focus on the solved state. What does it look like when you don't feel lonely and isolated, what does it look like when you don't feel useless and worthless? Have the person be clear about their goals and objectives. What exactly is it that you're trying to achieve? Generally, this is to not be lonely or not feel worthless. Okay, fine. What do you want to preserve? And a lot of our clients overlook that because they're so busy trying to change or add something, they forget that they've got a lot of strengths. So what are the good things that you've got going on that we want to build on? What are you trying to avoid? You don't want to feel lonely, but you also may not want to engage in other behaviors that you have before. And if you're trying to eliminate something, obviously identify that. Expand your definition of defining the problem. Now there's defining the current problem. Once you solve that current problem, you may want to look back and go, does this issue occur for me frequently? And if so, let me see if there's a bigger meta concept, if you will, that's at play here, like low self esteem or poor social skills. And then you may be able to start taking more preventative measures to prevent the problem in the future. Draw diagrams and pictures that help structure the problem. I like just writing things down. I'm not big on diagrams, but I am big on arrows like this caused this, and whatever works for your clients. And obviously that's more for visual learners. Take the concept of cause with a grain of salt. This is a big one we don't want our clients to get hooked on. Well, this is what caused that. You know, my dog died, that that's what caused this depressive episode. Well, that was certainly probably a contributing factor. But can we say for a fact that that is the only thing that caused it? Or were there other relapse warning signs that we need to pay attention to? So we want to look at everything that was going on, including vulnerabilities. Watch out for disconnects. So if you've got two people working on a problem, you know, one person is focusing on the problem that they always fight in their relationship, and the other person is focusing on the solution of not fighting, then they're probably going to come up with different answers, maybe different goals, and there may be a big disconnect in how to solve the problem. So encourage people to work together to identify and not break things up too much. Be aware of your own blinders and develop your own system for solving problems. Like I said, these are some suggestions. What works for one person necessarily Work for another. Your extroverts are going to do a whole lot better if they've got somebody to talk the issue out with. Because a lot of extroverts think while they talk. I know I do. So sitting down, I mean, I can write while I think, but I've got to be kind of communicating in some way in order to get it out. Introverts tend to think, mull it over, and then talk. So being aware of what works for your problem solving, and whether you're more visual or more auditory and research the problem, just because you've encountered it before doesn't mean you know all the answers. And I think that's true for us as clinicians, too. No matter how many times we've worked with a client with anger management issues or addiction issues or whatever it is, there are always new things to be learned, new techniques, new skills that we can come across that might appeal to that particular client. When feeling distressed, it's important to first get into the wise mind. Because when people are in their emotional mind, they're going to tend to be more reactive. When they're feeling lonely, when they're feeling angry. I didn't use the example of bullying, but that comes up so much now in a situation where there is bullying, the person has to ask themselves, you know, is this. You know, we can go back several slides if I can. You want to look at, do the emotions fit the facts? So if somebody is feeling like they are being bullied, if they are being bullied and they get angry or they get. They're devastated, is that an effective emotional response? Yes, because anger and fear are designed to protect us. It doesn't mean that acting on it is necessarily going to help us. But is that emotion trying to protect us from something and alert us to a threat? Heck, yes. So, yes, it's an effective emotional response. Radical acceptance. It is what it is. The situation is really horrible right now. Distress tolerance. So, you know, if this happens in the middle of the lunchroom or. Or on somebody's Instagram account or wherever everything seems to be, pretty much feels like everything's public. Being aware and tolerating the distress for the moment so they don't react impulsively and make the situation worse. Practice the pause, tolerating the distress and then problem solving. How can I deal with this person who's trolling my Instagram account? I think trolling is the right word. So one of the things the person may do is to figure out how to block that person from being able to comment or Even see their Instagram account if it happens in the lunchroom, you know, they may choose to sit on a different side of the lunchroom or talk about having a different lunch period than the same lunch period with the bullies. I know we had like five, five lunch periods during our when I was in high school. So there are some potential solutions. Brainstorm them. Some of them seem a little out there, but it can't hurt to think about what are all the possible options. Send themselves cheerleading thoughts so they are hearing themselves and positive messages instead of the messages from the bully that can help. Changing feelings and changing the situation. So focusing. They find that bullies tend to bully people who are in groups less. So if you've got a couple of friends, it serves almost as a protection against being bullied. So finding a couple of friends that you can sit with at lunch that you can go into the lunchroom with, is it ideal? Is this how it should be? No. However, if that's the situation, the question is how can you survive it and deal with it until something else can be done or until the situation resolves itself? So this is choosing the best option and then taking action. So the person starts doing it if it helps, grand. If it doesn't help, then they have to kind of drop back and punt and say, all right, what are some other options that I could explore in terms of handling this bully situation? So when feelings of distress happen, getting into the wise mind. Problem solving involves observing and objectively describing the situation. What's going on? What's. What did you contribute? What did other people contribute? Try to get as factual and objective of a perspective of what went on as possible. Because life is 90% perception and 10% reality, you want to identify your goal for resolving the situation to help you move towards your ultimate goals. Then figure out the method for achieving that goal. Any obstacles and ways to address them. So if you want to, we'll stay with the bully example for a minute. If you wanted to change your lunch period so you didn't have to be in the cafeteria at the same time, one of the obstacles would be getting permission to change your schedule. So how do you address that? Identify any enabling and motivating forces. Look at all the reasons that you need to want to do this versus you need to want to stay the same. Or choose a different option and then develop a plan for achieving the goal. What's the first step you're willing to take? Now, like I said, there can be 30 different things that need to be done, and maybe there's no priority, but you have to identify what your first step is going to be. It's kind of like when you get out of bed in the morning. At least for me, I get out of bed and I kind of stagger into the bathroom and I'm like, okay, what am I going to wear today? That's the first step. And I pull clothes out and yeah, I could take my shower first or I could eat breakfast first or whatever, but you know, that happens to be part of that's my routine and that's my first step. So we want to have people develop steps for achieving their goal so they can start moving forward. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceus.com counselortoolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allce.com providing 24.7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. Use coupon code counselortoolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.