 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Welcome back everybody to part two of Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. We're going to continue in this section talking about cognitive distortions and how to understand what they are, where they come from for you, and how to address them. So let's continue talking a little bit about thinking errors and interventions. We talked about emotional reasoning in part one. The important thing to remember with emotional reasoning is feelings are not facts. You can feel like something's a certain way when it may not be. I'll give you a general example. I'm terrified of needles. I expect it to hurt when I get a shot. When my last doctor in Florida, the nurse that gave the shots that you'd have to get periodically, your tetanus shot and that kind of stuff was amazing. I went in there, I was all tense, I was all stressed, I'm like, oh this is really going to suck. And before I knew it, it was done. I felt her putting on the alcohol and I really didn't feel the shot itself. So I had gotten myself all worked up and all stressed out about this appointment to get my tetanus shot when there was no factual basis with it. Because my prior experiences hadn't been so good. But I was expecting the same thing to happen with this particular doctor and nurse and that wasn't how it was. So feelings are not facts. We want to learn to effectively identify feelings and separate the facts. So if you're scared about something, ask yourself, what am I scared about? Getting ready for that appointment. I felt pretty anxious and I had to think to myself, what am I all stressed out about? And then I came down to the fact that I really don't like getting shots that sucks and it hurts. Just the evidence that that's going to happen in this particular situation. Now if I had stopped and thought about it, I would have said, you know, I don't have any evidence that says for sure that this nurse is going to be as aggressive, we'll use that word, as others that I've had in my past. But I didn't. I continued to be upset and stressed out about it. In what ways is this similar to other situations? So again, I can say, well, I've gotten shots before and in the past when I've gotten shots, it's hurt like heck. And that was really unpleasant. So understanding that I do have a basis for why I feel a little bit anxious. But expecting that this situation is going to be exactly like those others created anxiety when none needed to exist because this was a new nurse. Perhaps it's going to be different this time. It's hard one to wrap your head around when you've had multiple prior bad experiences, but, you know, try to talk yourself into the fact that I actually don't know how this one's going to turn out in other situations that you've experienced that may have been unpleasant. How did you deal with those situations? Yes, you're anxious right now. And, you know, potentially it could be an unpleasant outcome. So how are you going to deal with that? Because it's something that you've got to face and you've clearly gotten through those other things. So remember that you've got strengths. You've got the ability to get through unpleasantness, even if it does exist. But you've also got to take the current situation and look at it as is and not project a bunch of stuff from the past and create expectations. Because I had worked myself up, so I was all tense and ready for it to hurt, which, you know, is the first step into making sure that it actually does hurt. So it's really important to recognize the reality of the present situation versus prior experiences. Develop distress tolerance skills. And this is another one. If it's something you've had prior negative experiences with, how are you going to tolerate the distress so it doesn't make you freak the freak out? Maybe you have to go to court and, you know, that's two weeks from now. Well, if you're going to stay stressed out about your court appointment for two weeks, that's going to have a pretty significant impact on your energy level, your stress, your relationships, everything else. So how can you tolerate that distress, that not knowing what's going to happen and that fear of what could happen? And there are a lot of distress tolerance skills we talk about improving the moment and accepting reality, improve and accept our mnemonic devices or basically shortcuts to remember things you can do. And if you look at, you can Google them, their dialectical behavior therapy skills, we'll talk about them in a little while. But basically you want to figure out how can you push that thought away for a little while if there's nothing you can do about it. You can't show up at the courthouse and go, you know what, I can't take the waiting. So I need to have my hearing now. That ain't going to work. And staying miserable is going to cause multiple problems for you and probably the people around you. So what can you do to push that thought out of your mind because you can't control it right now? You just have to accept that that's coming up. What can you do? Stay busy, guided imagery, you know, go to your happy place. Talk to yourself, you know, maybe not out loud in public, but you can verbally, you know, in your own head go, I'm not going to think about that right now and actively choose to think about something else. It's hard at first. Also recognize that urges, you know, your urge to drink, your urge to run away, your urge to put your fist through a wall, whatever your urge is, generally comes and goes in about 30 minutes. So if you're having this overwhelming anxiety feeling, it's going to come and it's going to go unless you keep feeding it. If you keep focusing on all the negative stuff, you're going to stay anxious. If you choose to focus on what you do have control of in the present moment, so, you know, if you're waiting for that court hearing, look around your house, go, what can I do right now that is beneficial for me? Because I can't do anything to affect that. That will help you get through that and that feeling, that anxiety feeling, if you quit thinking anxiety-laden thoughts will dissipate over about 20 minutes. Emotions will go away if we don't feed them. If we continue to feed them, then they are going to stay and continue to increase. So you need to figure out a way that works for you to change the course of your thoughts. For me, another thing that I will do, I'll go out and I'll do yard work. You know, the bigger the power tool, the more fulfilling it seems to be. Or I'll put on music that helps me get into a different mind space. I'm sort of music oriented, so that works for me. What works for you to help kind of jar you into a different mind space where you're not thinking about something, maybe where you can clear your mind. When I listen to music, I focus on the words of the songs, so I don't have time to think about whatever else is out there. That's the time when I'm just focusing on the here and now. There's a lot of mindfulness stuff you can do with the stress tolerance as well. And again, we'll get into that a little bit later. And emotion regulation skills. So when you're feeling upset and you can't do anything about whatever it is that's triggering that upsetness, you can practice some emotional regulation skills, which means take out any stressors that don't have to be there. Be kind to yourself. Make sure you're eating healthfully. Make sure you're trying to get regular sleep. Don't stay in bed all day long because that messes up your circadian rhythms. Get up, get some sunshine. Go to bed about the same time each night so you can try to get some reasonable sleep. And address anything else that tends to make you feel down, energy-less, unhappy, depressed, fatigued, foggy-headed, any of those things. And a lot of them are physical. Some people, exercise helps. For some people, that's just exhausting. So you need to figure out what your vulnerabilities are and how to address them. Cognitive bias, negativity, or mental filter means that you focus on the negatives and you worry about the future. So, and I know a lot of people are like that. They don't like just focusing on the here and now. They have to know what's coming up. They have to be working towards something. And there's a difference between having goals or good orderly direction, you know, and knowing that six months from now I want to be here and looking at everything you do each day and going, is this getting me closer to my goal versus looking at that goal and just striving for that and ignoring what you're doing right now? Because if you ignore this, then a lot of stuff can get out of control and you may end up going backwards when you don't realize it. So things you can do to address negativity. Ask yourself, what is the benefit to focusing on the negative in this situation? You know, back to the rain shower. Wake up in the morning. It's a gross day outside. It's supposed to be gross all day long. What's the benefit to focusing on the negative of that? Absolutely none. And I've realized over, you know, almost 50 years that I can't control the weather. Surprise. I cannot will it to be sunny outside. So the benefit to focusing on the negative is none. All I can do is focus on the positive. You know, what is it that I can do to kind of make lemonade out of lemons, if you will? Find the positives of the situation back to walking that middle path and finding optimistic things about it. For example, you know, moving away from the weather, you lose your job. You get fired, you get laid off, whatever it is. That's a pretty negative, you know, kick in the gut there and it can suck. What are the positives? Well, you know, you can get unemployment if you got fired or you got laid off as opposed to if you quit. So you can get unemployment. You can find a job that's a better fit for you. You know, try to look for maybe the positive reasons that it happened and maybe the reasons that you're glad you're not there anymore. What are all the facts, you know, going back to that separating feelings from facts? Is this situation the end of the world? Some people, when something happens and, again, losing your job is pretty catastrophic. But expecting that I lost my job so I'm going to be homeless and living in my car is probably a big leap for most people. You know, you need to figure, think about, you know, yes, that could happen if you stay unemployed for a long time. But in the here and now, what can you do to change the situation? Go to the unemployment office, start looking for a job, be willing to accept jobs that you don't necessarily want to make your career, but they're going to put food on the table. You know, you may not want to work in fast food for the rest of your life. But if that's a job that you can get right now that will put gas in your car and food in your belly, then it might be a good stop gap until you can find a job that you want to stay at. So look at the facts and be realistic about how dire is this situation and what's my plan? We can always make a plan. Another thing you can do when you're feeling negative and if you happen to be a person who's just a negative Nelly, you'll look at the negative and everything you want to complain about everything. You turn on the TV, you watch the news and you find the negative and everything. The news tends to be pretty negative. Don't get me wrong. Cointoss activity. You wake up in the morning, you toss a coin. If it's on heads, you need to act like the most obnoxiously positive person you have ever met. And if you try to act that way, you're probably going to get somewhere closer to normal because you're probably not going to actually make it all the way to that obnoxiously positive scenario. But try and see how your day goes. See what you notice differently. If it lands on tails, be your normal self. Keep a little journal of your energy levels and how people interact with you and how the days seem to go for that entire week. And see if there's a difference on the days when you try to be positive. Now, I'm asking you to go from one extreme to the other. And there's going to be middle ground. You know, when there's a positive, there's generally a negative to kind of balance it out, which goes back to walking that middle path. So don't expect that, well, I tried to be positive and bad stuff still happened. You know, what bad stuff is going to happen? That's just life. It sucks sometimes. But you can focus on the sucky part or you can focus on, well, at least this didn't happen. So remember when you're doing this activity that, you know, everything is not going to come up roses. But how you interpret it and how you let it impact you can be radically different if you exercise an attitude of gratitude versus being a negative Nelly. Another error we often make is disqualifying or minimizing the positive. How many times have you gotten a promotion or gotten a job or done something? And somebody said, wow, that's awesome. And you're like, ah, no big deal. You know, anybody could have done it. I used to say that about one of the programs I went through in school. I was like, you know what, a trained monkey could have passed that, which is not true. You know, in reality, it was a pretty selective program. There were only eight of us in the cohort and, you know, I graduated from it. Not everybody goes on to graduate school. So accepting the fact that that actually was a pretty big deal. So ask yourself, when you start minimizing the good things that you do, would you minimize this if it was your best friend's experience? What's scary about accepting the positive? If you said, you know what, yeah, I did that. What's the downside to that? And some people have a hard time differentiating between being arrogant versus having a strong self-esteem and being proud of your accomplishments. So you may need to examine that for yourself. And look, I always say, get outside yourself. And what do you want your children to be like? Do you want your children to minimize every accomplishment that they have? Or do you want them to take their accomplishments and be able to say, I did that. You know, good for me. I worked hard and I accomplished it. So what is it that you want to see in other people? And how can you reflect that in yourself? So think long and hard about what's scary about accepting the positive. Another reason people don't like to accept the positive, they may not feel like they deserve it. Or they may be afraid that, you know, if I admit that I did this, now I've raised the bar and it's going to be even easier to disappoint people because they're going to expect more out of me. So think about the reasons that it might be hard to accept the positive. Sometimes we disqualify the positive because it fails to meet someone else's standards. So ask yourself, might that be true here? You know, the example I give people is when I graduated from graduate school. You know, I got my PhD. I got my doctorate. I should have been like, I did that. Instead, what I heard from my family was, well, you're not a medical doctor, but. So that's what I responded with. I always responded with, yeah. I'm not a real doctor, but you know, I went to school for a while. So I minimized my own accomplishments because that's what I had heard from my family. Looking at facts, how many people in the U.S. actually get a doctoral degree? You know, and you want to look kind of broadly because if you're living in a college town, you know, there's probably going to be a lot of people with doctorates because they all have to staff the university. But if you look at the entire state or even the entire county, you'll probably find that, you know, in that particular example, there are a lot fewer people. So it is something to be proud of. When you disqualify the positive, think to yourself, am I saying this, or is this something somebody else from my past is telling me? Because maybe you grew up in a situation where your family of origin, people in that family of origin minimized everything you did or wanted you to do something else and didn't accept if you dissented and chose to go a different direction. You know, are you proud of yourself? Are you happy with yourself? How do you want your kids to view or your significant other or your best friend? You know, again, if they accomplished that, what would you say to them? Availability heuristic. Talked about that a little bit with the airplane. We remember what's most prominent in our minds. So ask yourself, what are the actual facts? If you're afraid of flying, what are the actual facts? How often do planes actually crash? And how often, and you know, you want to look if you're flying on a commercial jet, how often do they crash versus, you know, personal airplanes? Because commercial jetliner pilots have a lot more experience and there's a lot more safety things in commercial liners. Spiders, people have dreadful fears of spiders. Every time they see a spider, they like freak the freak out. Now, there are about five, I think, poisonous spiders. All the rest of them are relatively harmless. So if you know what those five spiders look like, you can look at a spider and go, yeah, that's one I should be concerned about or no, not a big deal. It's just going to help kill the bugs. I happen to love spiders. So, you know, I have the facts of the situation. That way, I don't have to be afraid and I can appreciate little creatures that God gave me to keep all the mosquitoes and gnats away. So ask yourself, what are the facts? Should I be scared in this situation? If you go hiking, you may have the same experience with spiders or snakes. So know what poisonous snakes are in your area. Most areas don't have a whole lot. So if you know what the poisonous ones look like, then if you come across a harmless one that's sunning itself in the middle of a hiking path while you're out camping or hiking, you can look at it and go, you know, not my favorite thing in the world, but not anything to freak out about. Ego-centrism is another thinking error. My perspective is the only perspective. If I say it's right, it's right. If I say it's scary, it's scary. Well, let's look at some alternate perspectives. You know, try to get outside of your own head. Try to be a scientist and argue the opposite. Play devil's advocate. If you think it's scary, argue all the reasons it shouldn't be scary. If you think it is overwhelming, argue all the reasons that you can handle it. It's not going to be overwhelming. Ego-centrism also comes into play when we're interpreting events. I told you about in the first half about the family I came from. We are tend to be kind of loud and demonstrative, you know, Italian American background. So we're like, you know, all over the place. That's just the way I am. It's no aggression meant by it. It's just kind of the way I am. But if someone else came from a different background where when some when people were being demonstrative and loud, it meant that they were arguing and it was a dangerous situation, then they will perceive anytime somebody gets loud as a threatening situation. So stepping back and going, OK, my perspective is that when this happens, it's very bad mojo. In this particular situation, are there other potential interpretations of what's going on? Personalizing and mind reading. Again, what are some alternate explanations for an event that didn't involve you? If your best friend doesn't call when they say they're going to call. Are they sliding you? Are they mad at you? Oh my gosh, did they get into a car wreck? What are some alternate, you know, more benign explanations? Maybe they got held up at work or their phone died and they got stuck in a traffic jam. So they couldn't call you until they got home. You know, there are potential alternate explanations. If you take everything personally as a personal affront or that somebody's going to abandon you or they hate you, if it's all about you, you know, if you can put that you in the explanation, you want to step back and go, what are some reasons this might happen that's not about me? If you go through a check outline and the cashier is particularly grumpy that day, you know, could it be you, you know, possibly, you know, check yourself, see if you were rude or, you know, inconsiderate. But cashiers have to deal with hundreds of people every day plus their managers and everything else. So it's possible that they had had a bunch of cantankerous people ahead of you and they were in a bad mood or maybe their dog died before they came to work or something else happened that had nothing to do with you and they're just in a bad space. So, you know, taking something personally, especially when somebody else does it, maybe you consider it a little arrogant. So look at all the other reasons what might, what else might have affected them. And as you do this, as you go through this experience and start paying more attention, pay attention to how many times it's actually really about you. Most of the time you'll probably find it's not. And if it is, then you can look at what you might need to change about yourself. Magnification, are you confusing high and low probability outcomes? Sometimes we expect something to be the worst thing ever. And, you know, like the example I gave of somebody losing their job and expecting that they're going to be homeless and living out of their car. It's possible, you know, that is definitely a possibility of an outcome. How probable is it? How likely is it that next week you're going to be living out of your car? So look at the probability of things happening. You know, if you are living in Florida, it's a place where they have hurricanes, high and low probability outcomes. You know, you look at the weather and you know that the probability of having a hurricane in, you know, early December, next to none. So don't be stressed about it then. You know, there's hurricane season when there's a high probability that you could have a hurricane. But even then, it's usually only one or two mild hurricanes. Every once in a while you've got a bad year. But when you look over 20, 30 years, the chances of that happening are really still statistically pretty low. What can you do to prepare yourself ahead of time for something, even if it's a low probability outcome? If something happens, you know, catastrophic, that you're worried about, you're magnifying it, how much will this matter six months from now? You know, you lose your job. Bad stuff. How much will this matter six months from now? Well, you can focus on all the negatives and, you know, well, if I don't get another job and if this doesn't happen, if this doesn't happen, it'll be a big deal. Well, yeah, it will. But what's the probability that you're not going to get another job that you're going to lose your house and that you're going to be living out of your car? High probability or low probability? Only you can answer that. You know, you may have been living paycheck to paycheck and be behind on your rent six months already. I don't know. But most times, or a lot of times, that's not the case. And we are looking at the absolute worst case scenario when there's a lot of intervening time and opportunity. What have you done in the past to tolerate events like these? Again, reminding yourself that you've been through struggles before and you've made it. So build on your strengths and your skills. How have you made it through sucky periods before? Another thinking error, all or nothing thinking. Love versus hate. This person loves me or they hate me. They may love you and hate a particular behavior. Now, that's not all or nothing. That's kind of middle of the road. Think about your kids. I love my kids to death. They are my world. However, there are some things that they do that I greatly dislike. I don't dislike them as little human beings. I dislike the behavior. So encouraging yourself to look at that middle of the road. Perfection versus failure. Do we ever do anything that's 100% perfect? You know, I don't think that's, I think perfection is something we strive for. But most of the time, somebody else, even if it's like an essay exam, somebody else could look at the exam and go, you know what? You might have added this here or changed this. Nothing has ever or very few things are ever 100% perfect. But very few things are ever 100% failure. You can look at failure as a devastation, or you can look at failure as an opportunity to adapt and grow and become more perfect. You know, whatever it is, if you try to start a business and you fail, a lot of people do. You know, they start a business, doesn't work out, business closes, they start another business and it goes on. But with each failure, they learn something. So they are stepping closer and closer to being able to actually own and operate a successful business. Failure is a learning opportunity and a stepping stone to perfection versus the opposite of perfection. Looking at something or someone is having all good intentions or all bad intentions. Most of the time, you know, there's a little bit in there of everything. You know, even when we do something nice for other people, a lot of times, you know, 90% of it may be because we really want to do something nice for them. But the other 10% is because we're doing it to help ourselves feel good about ourselves. You know, looking at it in terms of not all or nothing, but reality, what's the middle of the road? Belief in a just world or the fallacy of fairness. Well, life isn't fair. You know, if nobody broke it to you before now, I'm gonna break it to you now. Life ain't fair. Identify four good people in your life who've had bad things happen. I know a lot of really good people who've had really bad things happen. And it's unfortunate, but they've made it through and they've used it as a growth opportunity for the most part in order to become the person that they are now. Another thinking error would be what we call attribution errors, labeling yourself instead of the behavior. If you have, you see somebody walking and I actually saw this the other day and I thought of this example or I thought of this presentation. This woman was walking along and she tripped and stumbled. Now I could have thought, well, wow, isn't she the most clumsy person in the whole world? Or I could have looked and gone, hmm, I wonder what was what she tripped over. There must have been a crack in the sidewalk or something. And there was, I mean, it was where a carpet and a hard surface meant and there was a little transition piece and she tripped over the transition piece. Had nothing to do with her, it was the external environment. So global versus specific means that I am completely and utterly useless, helpless, stupid, whatever. Well, that's disempowering. Now, am I useless at certain things? Oh yeah, when it comes to fixing a car, I stand there with my hands in my pockets. I am completely useless when it comes to that. But that's a particular skill or thing. Now, can I change it? Possibly, if I was motivated to do so. But it has nothing to do with me as a person being useless. It's just in terms of that particular activity, it's not my strength. Stable, can it be changed? Am I always gonna be useless when it comes to fixing cars? Well, if I was so motivated to learn how to fix cars, I could, but that's not something I'm real motivated to change right now. But stable means always and forever. Internal, it's about me as a person versus it's about a skill, a skill deficit or something in the environment. Like that person who tripped. Was she a klutzy person? Or was there something in the environment that was a trip and fall hazard? So look at things and try to not be global about negative stuff. Be global about positive. If you think you're all that in a bag of chips, we'll score. But for the negative stuff, look for specifics. We all have strengths and weaknesses. So focus on the fact that it's a behavior or a strength or a characteristic that is not a strength of yours. Not as you as an individual. So some questions and you're not gonna go through all these every time you start having a unhelpful thought. You're gonna pick two or three that seem to resonate for you. But let's go through them. What are the facts for and against my belief? And you need to look at facts, hard concrete facts. Is the belief based on facts or feelings? So if you're having a belief based on facts, then you need to look at the totality of the situation. The example with me getting a shot. The facts were prior times I'd gotten shots it hadn't been an unpleasant experience. And I had just had my hepatitis series and those hurt like a bugger. So I had some facts there. My feeling, I was expecting this to be a bad situation based on prior experiences, but I had no facts to support that this nurse and this experience were going to be negative. So what are the facts about this situation right now? Does the belief focus on one aspect or the whole situation? But the shot example, I was focusing on one aspect, the shot. Not looking at the whole situation that different nurses have different techniques and different shots hurt more than others. Does this belief seem to use any thinking errors? And we went through all of those. What are alternate explanations? Does this have to be a miserable experience? Does this have to be a scary experience? Does this have to be the end of the world? What are some other explanations? Can you turn this lemon into lemonade? What would you tell your child or best friend if they had this belief or they were going through this experience? Generally we're great cheerleaders for other people, but not ourselves. Once you figure that out, ask yourself, well, what would you want somebody to tell you about this belief? And most of the time, it should be the same thing you would tell other people. Finally, how is this belief or feeling you're having, moving you toward what is and who is important to you? Or away from what is who, what and who was important to you? If you hold on to negativity and failure and fear and anger, is that moving you toward your goal of being happy and having fulfilling relationships? Probably not. So you need to choose whether you're motivated to look for ways to deal with that. There are a variety of thinking errors we make each day which adds stress to our lives. When you start to get upset, evaluate your thoughts that are supporting those thinking errors and practice refuting those thinking errors. If it's all or nothing, look for exceptions. If it's personal, if you're taking it as a personal attack or a front, look for reasons that may not have anything to do with you. Find ways to refute your common ways of unhelpful thinking. If you like this podcast, you can subscribe on any podcast app, join our Facebook group at docsnipes.com slash Facebook or join our community and access additional resources at docsnipes.com. Welcome to this week's book review. Each week I review a book I believe would be helpful to the general public and our clinicians. I'm never paid to do the reviews. However, in some instances, I may receive a small commission if you purchase the item, which helps to fray the cost of our podcast and providing the free educational videos. The cost to you, however, remains the same. This week we're gonna talk about the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook. And this one was written by Matthew McKay. He is one of my favorite writers, so you're probably gonna see a lot of books by him. This is an excellent tool to use in conjunction with DBT Made Simple by Sherry Van Dyke. This is more the client workbook. It provides practical tools and is much lighter on theory in terms of what DBT is, et cetera. But it does provide a lot of activities to help people build skills in the areas of distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. So the book really progresses in four segments. It starts out with helping people develop distress tolerance. If you've got emotional dysregulation, you feel overwhelmed by your emotions a lot of the time. This is probably where you wanna start anyway, so great. He presents activities to help you learn techniques such as radical acceptance, distraction, self soothing, how to create a relaxation plan, exploring values and committing to behaviors that help you get closer to what is important to you and forgo behaviors which move you away from your goals. So all of those things can help you use your energy in a positive way and learn how to tolerate or get through emotional turmoil. The next part moves on to mindfulness and he presents activities such as the single object focus to help you start learning how to become more mindful. Now mindfulness does not have to be meditation, which is what he teaches you in this book. There are ways to be mindful, to be present, to be aware without actually engaging in meditation. So if that makes you uncomfortable to do meditation, well, he's got a lot of suggestions for you. He moves on to thought diffusing and unhooking so you can step back from your emotions and instead of being consumed by them, you can see them as something that is there and will eventually go away. Then he talks about focus shifting to help you learn how to train your mind to focus on what you want it to instead of being all over the place, which is what sometimes we call monkey mind. He talks about beginner's mind, which is basically the principle that no matter what's going on right now, every moment is a new opportunity, every moment is a new beginning. So you don't have to wait till tomorrow or next week to try to make things better. You can start right now in the next moment. He talks about negative judgments and mindfulness and gives you activities for daily mindfulness practice. So you start becoming more aware of what's going on with you and what your needs are so you can prevent distress as often as possible. So now that you have some tolerance skills and you're becoming more aware of what you need, he introduces concepts of emotion regulation and helps you recognize and explore the rewards and costs of self-destructive behaviors. Helps you look at ways to reduce physical and cognitive vulnerabilities such as cognitive distortions, not getting enough sleep, poor nutrition, et cetera. And talks about things such as using opposite actions and problem solving in order to help you regulate your emotions and not feel like they're overwhelming you. The last section he focuses on interpersonal effectiveness because no matter where you are, you're going to interact with other people. And part of being effective and getting your needs met is first knowing what you need and want, then assertively asking for it in a win-win sort of way and learning how to set and maintain boundaries, say yes when you want to, say no and be okay with that when you need to. And finally, he ends with coping with resistance and conflict because some people are not going to take kindly to it right away if you start setting boundaries and you haven't had boundaries before and he talks about why it's important to maintain your boundaries and how to deal with conflict when it happens. My favorite parts are that it's a workbook. So the activities for the individual or group are already created. They're in the book, the workbook is fillable. So you don't have to have extra pieces of paper or notebooks or anything like that. It's an awesome self-help guide for clients. So if you're not interested in going to therapy or you're not in therapy right now, it's a great place to start. Or if you are in therapy or if you're a therapist, this is a great adjunct to individual and group therapy. If you're a therapist, you may wanna also look at DBT Made Simple by Sherry Van Dyke, which is a book I have all my supervisees get. So they understand the concepts of emotional dysregulation and some of the tools of distress tolerance and the mind, body connection and vulnerabilities. Both of these books provide excellent tools for coping with life in general. You don't have to be running a DBT program. As a matter of fact, like I said, neither of these books will make you a DBT practitioner. They will introduce you to the skills and tools and help you develop skills and tools that are helpful in feeling happier and living a healthier life.