We often think about what we might change when considering our New Years Resolutions. How can I improve? What can I work harder on? How can I further myself? What do I need to change about myself so that I can then accept myself?

While change is important, and while we can always “do better, try harder, and be more motivated to change,” per Marsha Linehan’s DBT assumptions, for some of us a far more underdeveloped skill set is that of acceptance.

If you have found yourself geared towards change-based resolutions in past years, I encourage you to bulk up on your acceptance-based practices in 2024.

Accepting what is out of our control, accepting what “is,” and accepting what we cannot change in this moment are valuable tools, that when practiced can improve our quality of life tremendously by reducing our suffering.

We can practice acceptance with our mind, body, and soul. To jump start your practice, I will offer two DBT reality acceptance skills that begin with the body.

Have you ever noticed that when you are fighting your reality, your body is tight, tense, and unrelaxed? You may feel like you are bracing yourself for some threat that may never come.

We can reduce our suffering by communicating to our mind that our body is safe through two simple exercises: Willing hands and half-smiling.

Willing hands is a practice that involves uncrossing our arms, unclenching our fists, and opening our palms. We can even face our palms up to the sky in a relaxed way. This posture is the opposite of a defensive, cross-armed, or clenched posture and communicates that we are receiving whatever may come. We resist resisting and open ourselves up to our reality. This skill can be adapted to sitting, standing, and seated postures. Prompting events for this skill might include feeling anxious on the subway, feeling angered at the dinner table, or when receiving a disturbing message from a friend.

The second skill is called Half-smiling. Similar in theme, this change in body involves first relaxing the muscles of the face and then slightly curving the corners of the lips upward into a “half smile.” This communicates to our brain that we are calm and relaxed. Prompting events for this skill might include when feeling frustrated completing a task for work, while holding a difficult yoga posture, or when you notice you are ruminating while walking down the street.

To watch Marsha Linehan herself teach Willing Hands check out her demonstration.

 

Turns out I am anxiously attached…so now what?!

Thank you, readers, for patiently waiting! Now that we have learned about what the heck Attachment Style is, we can apply some DBT tools that can help assist us in owning our attachment in a way that maintains our self-respect, our relationships, and our needs!

Imagine…you have been on three dates with someone you met on the apps. It has been going super well…or so you thought. That is, until they left you on read for two days and now you are spinning…

What did I do wrong?

Not again… I am destined to be alone.

Why does this always happen to me?

I knew it was too good to be true.

I simply can’t tolerate it until I figure out what they are thinking!

Before you say or do something you might regret, let’s slow it all down and lean on our DBT skills with the steps laid out below:

Step 1: Check SUDS

Check your emotional temperature. SUDS stands for our Subjective Unit of Distress Scale. Think about asking yourself where you fall on a scale of 0-10, where 0 symbolizes pure serenity and 10 symbolizes the most distressed you can imagine feeling. If you are lower than a 6 AND you trust that you will not act in emotion mind, (hot headed, urgent, impulsive) then skip to step 3. Otherwise, continue to step 2.

SUDS are a 9.

Step 2: Tolerate distress

Take a beat. Before saying or doing the thing that will likely damage the relationship or your self-respect and most likely not get you any closer to your objective, try the STOP skill or one of your other DBT crisis survival skills: Distract with ACCEPTS, TIP, Pros/Cons, or Self-soothe. Set a timer for 20-minutes as you one-mindfully use your Distress Tolerance skills and allow your emotional temperature to reduce to a comfortable number. You may not feel “good,” but we are aiming for “slightly better.”

I put my phone down, take a 10-minute cold shower (TIP) to calm my nervous system, I set a timer for 20-minutes and one-mindfully watch an episode of Never Have I Ever (Distract) until I feel my emotional temperature simmer down.

Step 3: Mindfulness of internal experience

Now that your SUDS are tolerable and things feel a little less dire, try to label your emotions, body sensations, urges, and thoughts. Become a curious observer of your internal world.

My SUDS are a 4. I am feeling fear. I have a tightness in my chest and jitteriness in my limbs but it is not as bad as before. I have urges to reach out and I also have urges to ruminate about the unknown. My thoughts are telling me “this is over” and “I will never find love.” I am noticing that my anxious attachment is activated right now because I am feeling afraid of abandonment in the presence of disconnection and uncertainty.

Step 4: Identify your goals

Identify what your goals are (more specifically, your long-term goals). Sometimes your goals might compete with one another, and we must choose to prioritize one or two over the other at any given point in time. What is your self-respect goal, your objective/need goal, and your relationship goal?

Because I do not know this dating prospect well, my relationship goal is to continue seeing this person and continue to be in their good graces. I don’t want to blow it before giving it a real chance! My self-respect goal is to correspond with this person and also to regulate my emotions in a way that I can feel proud of. My objective/need is to connect with this person. I recognize that relieving my anxiety in the moment is a short-term objective whereas upholding my self-respect is a long-term objective.

Step 5: Act in Wise Mind

The penultimate step is to act from a place of wise mind. Wise mind could tell you something very different depending on who you are and what the context it. Your wise mind is your intuition and your inner knowing. We’ve all got one. It is a state of mind that guides you towards the life you want to be living.

Wise Mind tells me that for now, I want to prioritize my self-respect and my long-term objectives, which means tending to my emotional experience, without projecting my fears onto this person. While it would feel good in the moment to try to connect and double or even triple text (think protest behavior), I know it will compromise my long-term objectives. Wise mind tells me that it would be advantageous to soothe myself and validate my fears, focusing on connecting with well-established and safe relationships in my life. I may decide to voice my needs for more frequent communication in the future AND my wise mind tells me that it does not feel appropriate to the relationship right now. I will choose to accept the uncertainty in this moment.

Step 6: DEARMAN

If the context calls for it, you may lean on your effective communication strategies, such as DEARMAN, to accurately and effectively communicate your needs to someone else. Your aim is to accurately communicate your feelings and your needs in a way that is clear and fair, both to you, and the other person.

Instead of communicating to the person I have been on three dates with, I called my friend and let her know how painful it is to feel attachment wounds early on in dating. She was able to validate my experience and I was able to feel connected to my friend.

For more information on this topic, you can tune into our back-to-back episodes on our podcast, House on Fire.

References:

Mundin, Dr. Joann, and Katarina Schultz. DBT Self Help, 8 June 2023, dbtselfhelp.com/.

 

 

Do any of the following thoughts ring true for you when dating or in relationship?

I feel smothered.

She is way too needy.

They always leave.

He doesn’t respect my space.

I feel comfortable being close to my partner.

I feel anxious when I am away from my partner.

These beliefs in relationship held by you and/or your partner are best explained by attachment theory. I will be referring to Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S.F. Heller, M.A.’s book, Attached, which in my opinion is the holy grail of attachment style books.

What is Attachment Style?

Attachment theory, originally ideated by John Bowlby in the 1930s and further developed by Mary Ainsworth’s, Strange Situation experiment in the 1970s theorizes that as infants we develop styles of attachment to our caregivers, which often informs how we attach to our loved ones as adults. Bowlby proposed that we have a biological need to depend on others for our own safety and protection. We remain safe by maintaining connection with our caregiver, who is responsible for providing nourishment and security as early as our development in the womb. This attachment mechanism is impacted by our bond, or lack thereof, with our primary caregiver. Genetically, we are programmed to maintain connection; however, if we do not have a predictable or secure environment, then maintaining connection to our caregiver or trusting that our caregiver will be dependable, may be less adaptive and interfere with developing a secure attachment mechanism. If I know that when I cry and scream, my mother will sometimes be able to soothe me and sometimes neglect me, then I may develop an insecure attachment, unsure of how to get my needs met. Across the life span, attachment style is based on our view of intimacy, how we deal with conflict, attitude towards sex, ability to assert our needs and communicate our feelings, as well as our expectations from our partners and relationships. Ainsworth discovered that there are three main attachment styles described below: Anxious, Avoidant, and Secure. Less common (in about 8-9% of the population) is a fourth attachment style; Disorganized (or fearful).

Anxious Attachment:

Making up about 20% of the population, anxiously attached individuals are often preoccupied with maintaining connection in their relationships and fear perceived or real threats to abandonment. Someone with an anxious attachment often desires a lot of closeness in relationship, expresses insecurities, fears rejection, and often negatively interprets their partner’s actions. They often have a sensitive attachment mechanism. In an attempt to reestablish connection with their partner, they might engage in “activating behaviors” also known as “protest behaviors.” These behaviors might look like tantrums or crying spouts as a child and as an adult they can look like acting out, picking a fight, withdrawing, threatening to leave, or trying to provoke jealousy. While their need for connection is valid, these behaviors can often push others away, reinforcing their fear that others cannot meet their needs for emotional safety and further emphasizing that they are destined to be alone.

Avoidant Attachment:

Making up about 25% of the population, avoidantly attached individuals value their independence, are emotionally self-sufficient, and fear closeness in relationships as a threat to their emotional safety. These individuals, like anxiously attached individuals, also have an insecure attachment mechanism; however, it manifests differently. While avoidants also learn that they cannot depend on others, instead of activating or “getting louder” to get their needs met, they often prefer to withdraw and engage in “deactivating behaviors.” These behaviors include using distancing strategies (emotionally or physically) when their partner gets “too close,” thinking that they cannot trust their partner, difficulty committing to a relationship, shutting down, avoiding difficult conversations, and sometimes belittling or criticizing their partner. While their need for emotional safety is valid and while maintaining emotionally self-sufficiency has most likely been adaptive as a child, these behaviors create distance and thus conflict in relationships, which further reinforces their ingrained belief that they are better off alone.

Secure Attachment:

Making up about 50% of the population, securely attached individuals are comfortable with closeness, accurately express their needs and feelings, are dependable, are flexible in their thinking, are comfortable with commitment, are trusting of others, are consistent in their behavior, and do not often feel threatened by boundaries and healthy distance. Secure individuals still have needs, as we all do, they are just better able to identify them, communicate them, and tolerate them when they are not met. Secure individuals also take partial responsibility for their partner’s well-being.

The commonly held beliefs, “You shouldn’t need to rely on anyone” and “Depending on others is unhealthy” are myths. There is a healthy amount of dependence on others that is essential for our survival and happiness from the womb all the way to the grave. The trick is to identify your attachment style and subsequently learn tools to replace ineffective, activating or deactivating strategies, with effective strategies. While our attachment style is fairly consistent across the life span, it is malleable and possible to move from an insecure attachment to an “earned secure” attachment. Stay tuned for skills in the next blog post for how to own your attachment style, improve your relationships, and even earn a secure attachment!

References

Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2011). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find--and keep--love. TarcherPerigee.

Mcleod, S. (2023, June 4). Attachment theory: Bowlby and Ainsworth’s theory explained. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html