For Mindfulness Practice we did a “mindfulness of pleasant activities.” This was hard for some people because it was not as easy as one would hope to come up with an activity that is truly pleasant. I hope this will get easier as time goes along.

In this week’s group we talked about the Myths and Challenges to those myths when dealing with interpersonal situations. Before we started the new material, as usual we discussed homework review. There were several really good examples of obstacles to being interpersonally effective, including emotions and worry thoughts. We discussed these obstacles and in the second half of group, talked about challenges to these obstacles.

First, we discussed the Myths of Interpersonal Effectiveness. Myths are things that we assume to be true, even though we may not rationally believe them to be so. They just “feel” like they are true, so they can control our behavior, whether we want them to or not. These include things such as

• I can’t stand it if someone gets upset with me.
• I won’t be able to take it if I get rejected.
• I don’t deserve to get what I want or need.

Again, while these are often easily seen as not “rational” we have a hard time getting over them because they feel like they might be true.

Following identifying the myths that each person believes, we moved into challenging them. Finally, we ended up coming up with cheerleading statements to allow us to make it through what might be a difficult situation. These cheerleading statements are like pep-talks for yourself to help get you through. We went around the class using cheerleading statements that each member came up with and believed would work if they had to deal with a difficult situation. For homework, we asked that each person complete the challenges to the myths on the sheet entitled “Myths of Interpersonal Situations” and to go through the cheerleading sheet that followed.

Some Pearls from the class were:

• That the group is getting comfortable enough with one another that they are able to share difficult stories, in addition to the success stories.
• That strangers don’t matter so much and we shouldn’t worry so much about what they think.
• That really participating in the DBT-U class has finally started to happen and it is good.

Reminder: there is no group on March 14th because of Spring Break.

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Interpersonal Effectiveness, DBT