Week Five-Interpersonal Effectiveness

Before we start with the material presented, I want to offer a few disclaimers.

I did not make it through interpersonal relationship in group. However, we had other interpersonal groups which we just labeled differently, i.e. conversations, resolving conflicts. I also focused heavily on using the handouts with my individual therapist while in treatment.

Secondly, do not expect the skills to always work. They do work. However, they will no always work. Do not think that the skills are useless because they didn’t work in a particular situation. There may be a variety of reasons: the other person is not being skillful (either due to a disorder, willfulness or other), the person doesn’t expect you to be skillful, the situation does not allow you to be skillful.

Next, just because you didn’t get what you wanted doesn’t mean that you were not skillful. It may just be that you can’t get what you want.

Finally, this is a long and hard skill group. We will also be a lot of homework that is outlined in Linehan’s WB. It would be most advantageous to get a copy of this. It looks like it’s about $30.00 on www.amazon.com right now. It’s $35 on the publisher’s site www.guilford.com. I think I paid about $35.00 when I bought it at Borders, who seems to have it regularly in their bigger stores.

O.k. With those warnings. Let’s give it a shot.

In attending to relationships we are tying to head off problems before they start, resolve conflicts and not let hurts and problems build,.

Ask others for help. Offer to do things. If overwhelmed, reduce or put off low priority demands

Look at what you do because you enjoy doing it and "want to do it" and how much you do because it has to be done and you "should do it. Try to keep these in balance. Get your opinions taken seriously. Get others to do things. Say NO to unwanted requests.

Interact in a way that makes you feel competent and effective, not helpless and overly dependent. Stand up for yourself, your beliefs and opinions. Follow your wise mind.

Please don’t worry if you understand little or none of the above. This is just a general overview of where will be going in this area. We will be going through each of these in depth. For now, just review and think about how developing these skills may help you. But don’t worry about the meanings too much right now.

Relationships are like puppies. You can’t expect them to grow into something you want around unless you pay attention to it and give it food and water, but also love and training. If not, the puppy will grow to a mean aggressive starving out-of-control dog. These are my words, don’t blame Linehan. The point is, Linehan,WB p. 71, "you need to attend to relationship to keep them from blowing up or otherwise ending. Relationships that are not attended to can create enormous stress." This leads to more emotional stress. Eventually, the more we let the relationship go unattended the harder it will be to repair and it may not be repairable.

If you don’t feed your puppy, he will die.

I think I am the Queen of the dead relationships.

As I am sure you have read in many other places, it is not easy to stay with a borderline. However, we cannot push people away that we want to stay. Part of that "manipulation" problem that the DSM-IV talks about. When we see problems, we can’t ignore them or say go away. Because, guess what, if we tell people to leave, they are eventually going to leave. I can honestly say that I only have two "real" relationships in my life, with my childhood best friend (god bless her) and my BF.

My once best friend in college tole me, "it’s really hard being your friend you know."

This is true. I can’t speak for you, but if you match the description for a borderline in the DSM-IV you have probably heard a statement like this.

I think that we need to attend to relationships more than most people. Remember back to your coremindfulness though, don’t judge yourself.

The most important thing I can think of is when you are trying to attend to a relationship, use your WISE MIND as well as the skills we will be learning in the next few weeks.

I don’t want to start the next section, because we are running out of time, so let’s get to the homework.

Be skillful this week.