we've all had mornings when it's really cold in our home and the last thing we want to do is get out of bed but we get out anyway and when we muster the strength to get up we're reflecting a skill called opposite action opposite action comes from dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT for short in DBT you do the opposite of what you want to do as one particular skill I spoke to psychologist Liz Dexter Maza about opposite action and how she uses it to help her teen patients manage intense emotions
here's Liz so opposite action is a skill where you do the opposite behavior of what your emotion wants you to do we know that like every emotion has a behavior like when I'm anxious my urge is to avoid when I'm sad my urge is to withdraw when I'm um when I'm angry my urge is to attack for for everybody this is for everybody with just what we know about emotions when I have shame or guilt my urge is to hide and so opposite action says if you know if you're scared of something that you don't have
to be scared of something that you're not in true Danger from then you should do the opposite behavior of what you have the urge to do so if you're scared and you there's nothing to be scared of like asking somebody out and them saying no like that's not going to be the end of the world for you so doing the opposite Behavior instead of avoiding would be to approach to do the thing that's making you um scared and by doing it your fear will go down doing the thing that makes makes you anxious wil
l bring it down over time um and same thing with like if you are really sad and depressed and withdrawn we know like the urge to do is to kind of climb into bed and do nothing and we know one of the most effective treatments for depression is behavioral activation and so it's saying get active do pleasurable activities do something when you have the urge to do nothing so that's what opposite action is is getting yourself to be active like with our kids we talk about like when you want to make th
e fear go down what do you need to do you need to do the thing that's making you scared one of our goals with our clients is to get them to engage in non-mood dependent behavior that I can feel this and I don't have to act on my emotion and so opposite action is like that you can feel scared and act opposite to the feelings of scared you can feel shame and embarrassment and act opposite if it doesn't make sense or fit the facts in that situation thank you for watching this video we publish new v
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