Cut That Cord! A Parent’s Guide to Using Opposite Action

Here we are again. You’re staring at a sink filled with food-crusted plates, overflowing cups, and more silverware than you can count. How many times have you said, “Clean up after yourself!”? How many conversations have you had about the importance of taking accountability, being responsible, doing your part? You can feel the pressure in your chest, the lump rising in your throat. You’re going to yell. You’re going to finally be heard! You’re going to…be met with sighs and protests and rolled eyes, and find yourself back here in twenty minutes, elbow-deep in dish soap and fighting back tears of guilt and a feeling of total hopelessness.

Sound familiar? Parenting is hard. Parenting when you yourself are feeling frustrated and frazzled is something of a Herculean task. Sometimes, our emotions simply get the best of us. It happens to everyone. Fortunately, in DBT we have a skill that is designed to override the automatic behaviors that piggy-back on hot-tempered emotions and help us regain control over how we respond to the situation at hand. It’s called Opposite Action.

Opposite Action involves purposely doing the opposite of what your emotion tells you to do. When we feel an intense emotion, our natural instinct is often to act on it. It’s what psychologists call engaging in mood-dependent behavior. You feel something—Boom!—you do something. Of course, this can lead to unhelpful responses like yelling, threatening, criticizing, grounding, or other forms of punishment that have the potential to not only damage the parent-child relationship, but to produce lasting and harmful psychological effects on youth.

The good news is there is a way to cut the cord between our feelings and behaviors. By using Opposite Action, we can intentionally choose to respond in a way that is opposite to our emotional urge, which can help us to regulate our own emotions and improve our relationships with our children.

So how do you do it? Follow these steps:

Notice your emotions and urges: Remember, you’ve got to name it to tame it. Tune into your body to help you identify what emotion you’re experiencing. Are you feeling angry, ashamed, and/or disappointed? What is your emotion telling you to do? Notice the strength of the urges.

Check the Facts: Oftentimes, our interpretations of an event can ramp up our emotional intensity. Our kid leaves dishes in the sink and our brain says, “They’re so inconsiderate! I’ve raised an entitled brat.” Such thoughts only serve to escalate our perfectly natural emotion of mild irritation and transform it into seething resentment. Taking a moment to catch those thoughts and rephrase them into more accurate descriptions (e.g., “He left his dishes in the sink”) and come up with more charitable interpretations of the events (e.g., “He’s had two big tests this week and is stressed out. Sometimes I leave things out when I have a lot on my plate”) can help keep our emotions in check.

Consider the consequences: Often we call this practice consulting your Wise Mind. Ask yourself, “Is acting on this emotion going to be effective in the situation?” Meaning, is following your emotional urges going to bring you closer to your long-term goal? For many parents, their long-term goal is to have a healthy relationship with their children and to share their values with them. Although it might seem like yelling, criticizing, or punishing is the only way to get through to your child, it’s important to note that the context of our words will be more salient than the content. Basically, your kid isn’t going to understand your message if their brain is focused on how you delivered it.They’re not going to empathize about dirty dishes and correct the behavior if they are being yelled at by you.

So even if in the moment your mind is telling you to just lay into them, think about the long-term consequences of acting on your urges. Will it improve the situation, or will it make things worse? Will it damage your relationship with your loved one? If so, move onto the next step.

Figure out the opposite action: Instead of yelling, criticizing, etc., choose an opposite action that is more likely to improve the situation and your relationship with your child. Oftentimes when we are angry, our emotion tells us to pounce. We get all fired up and tense and are ready to attack. Opposite action would have us adopt a different posture.

Unclench those hands (bonus points if you turn them up into a willing hands pose), release that jaw, breathe slowly into your belly.
Instead of leaning into your child, take a step back. It’s perfectly okay to take a moment to collect yourself. Call a time-out and take a break from the situation. You can always revisit it when your emotional temperature has lowered.
Soften your tone of voice and channel your most empathic self. See things through their eyes. Imagine what it’s like to be them for a moment (especially if you wish they demonstrated empathy for you). Modeling is a powerful form of teaching new behavior.

Practice opposite action: Act on the opposite action, even if it feels uncomfortable or unnatural at first. With practice (a lot of practice), it will become easier to cut the cord between your emotions and actions, putting you in the driver’s seat of your behavior. Like parenting, rehearsing opposite action is a challenging and rewarding process. If at first you don’t succeed? Resist the urge to beat yourself up and instead meet yourself with some compassion (AKA: Try using Opposite Action on yourself!). Remember that you are learning a new skill and acknowledge the effort you’re making.

To learn more about Opposite Action and further applications of this skill, check out Episode 12 of our DBT podcast House on Fire.

Trick or Truth? How to Change Unwanted Emotions by Checking The Facts

Picture this: You’re alone in your home and hear a loud sound coming from the next room. Immediately you think, an intruder is in the house. Panic sets in and your heart starts racing. You’re terrified, of course, because you’re in danger. . .or are you?

Research shows that often it’s our interpretation of an event, rather than the event itself, that leads to unpleasant emotions and potentially ineffective responses. Take the above example: If you thought an intruder was in your home, perhaps you’d barricade yourself in your room and listen for hours until you felt sure it was safe to come out. Maybe you’d try shimmying down your fire escape to get to safety. Maybe you’d freeze in your tracks, paralyzed with fear. But let’s step back for a moment and think about what are some other possible reasons a person would hear a sound coming from the room next door when they thought they were home alone?

Maybe the heat turned on and the radiator is the culprit.

Maybe a pet knocked over something.

Maybe a family member came home early from school or work.

If you came up with any of those reasons or other benign possibilities, then you probably realized that scaling the firescape or building a barricade might not have been the most helpful move. Altering your interpretations and assumptions about a situation can help you change your emotional reactions to it and even respond more effectively to it. But how do you go about shifting those beliefs? In DBT, we use a skill called Check the facts.

Checking the facts helps us figure out whether our emotions, their intensity, and/or duration, are actually working for or against us in a given situation. It encourages us to ask ourselves, Am I responding to what’s directly in front of me right now, or to my own thoughts about it?

So how does one check the facts? Follow these six steps:

Step 1: Ask yourself, What is the emotion I want to change?

I always say, “You gotta name it to tame it!” Labeling emotions is a powerful first step in being able to manage them. Take a moment to observe your thoughts, physical sensations, and urges. You can also rate the intensity of the emotion on a scale from 1-10 or 1-100. Rating your emotions before and after trying a skill can help you evaluate if it was an effective intervention.

Step 2: Ask yourself, What event sparked this emotion?

Here you want to be sure to only describe the facts that you directly observed. Use your five senses to help you. What did you see? What did you hear? Oftentimes our descriptions of events are infused with assumptions, judgmental language, and extreme interpretations, which can spark intense unpleasant emotional reactions. Sticking to the facts of a situation can help us balance our emotions.
Take a look at the two statements below and consider which one evokes a stronger or more unpleasant emotion:

I blew it. She’s not texting me back because she hates me and thinks I’m an idiot, which obviously I am, or else she would text me.
I texted her three hours ago and she hasn’t texted me back yet.

Step 3: Ask, How am I interpreting this event? What assumptions am I making?

In the texting example, the first statement contains a few different assumptions and interpretations of the facts. First, the narrator assumes they aren’t receiving a text back because the other person “hates” them and thinks they’re an “idiot.”
Once you’ve labeled the judgments, assumptions, and extremes in thinking, come up with some other possible innocuous interpretations. Oftentimes, we have a negativity bias that keeps us from viewing all sides of a situation, so considering benign alternatives can help balance things out. Here are some examples:

Maybe she’s busy.
Maybe her phone is off.
Maybe she forgot to hit “send.”
Maybe she is still thinking about how to respond.

Step 4: Ask yourself, Am I assuming a threat?

Oftentimes unpleasant emotions are the byproduct of thinking that some type of feared outcome is on the horizon. You get a D on a test and figure you’ll fail the course. You wave to a friend who doesn't wave back and assume he’s angry with you. You get passed over for a job opportunity and conclude that you’ll never rise up the ranks.
Once you’ve labeled the threat you can ask yourself, How likely is it to occur? What are the chances that this horrible thing I’m imagining actually comes to fruition? Usually, once we step back and start asking critical questions, we see that the undesirable outcome isn’t as likely as we’d originally thought.
Going back to the texting example, it’s possible that the narrator has concluded that not receiving a text back means the texter is angry with them for something they did, or maybe even that the relationship is over. It’s now up to the narrator to consider what are the odds of those threats coming true.

Step 5: Imagine yourself coping with the catastrophe

Sometimes the threat really does happen, but spiraling out rarely helps the situation and frequently exacerbates it. Instead, DBT encourages folks to consider what coping with the situation would look like. So how would you deal with failing the course or losing a job? How would you handle it? What would your next move be?
It can be helpful to actually visualize yourself coping well with the situation. Picture yourself handling it effectively, and jot down the steps you would take to do so.
If the narrator in our example was broken up with, perhaps they’d start off by talking to a friend about how disappointed they are that the relationship is over. Maybe they’d spend some time doing fun activities they enjoy to bring some positive experiences back into the picture. Having an action plan and envisioning things going well can help lower the intensity or reduce the duration of an unpleasant emotion.

Step 6: Reflect on your emotions now

Now that you’ve gone through the above steps, you can ask yourself, Does my emotion fit the actual facts of the situation? Remember, a lot of times our emotions are set off not by the events themselves, but by how we think about them.
That said, there are totally times when your emotions will fit the facts. Every emotion, including fear, anger, sadness, jealousy, and more, has its place and makes sense in certain situations. Even if you find that your emotion was justified given the facts, I’d encourage you to check your emotional temperature. Is it as high as it was in step one? Sometimes walking through the above steps is enough to help modulate the intensity of an emotion or curb its extent.

Stay tuned for more ways to get unstuck from emotions in our next blog post!

How to Talk about Consent With Your Children

Sex. It’s a topic parents often cringe at when thinking about how to broach the subject. And while teaching children about the birds and the bees is an important step toward sexual health and safety, allow me to make another suggestion: talk to your kids about consent too.

A recent study demonstrated that receiving consent education before college was a protective factor against sexual assault and with unwanted sexual contact occurring every 68 seconds in America, the importance of talking to kids early and often cannot be understated. In addition to preventing harassment, teaching toddlers, tweens, and teens about consent helps them develop a healthy relationship with themselves and others throughout the lifespan.

Talking to Children

Although often linked to sex, consent is all about giving permission—a concept that can be applied to many childhood experiences, such as sharing and hugging. Here are some tips for talking to children about consent:

Let children set their boundaries.

For young children, conversations about consent can start with bodily autonomy. For example, if your child doesn’t want to hug or kiss a family member, let them know it’s okay. Try saying, “It’s alright if you don’t want to give hugs. Do you want to wave or say a silly hello instead?”

Or, if you and your child are having a tickle fight and your child says, “Stop!” pause the play and say, “I heard you say stop so I’m going to stop. Let me know if you’d like to keep playing or do something else.”

Model how to respect the boundaries of others.

Children often learn through play. If your child is upset that a friend of theirs doesn’t want to play the same game, use this opportunity to tell them, “Games are only fun if both friends want to play” or “Sounds like your friend didn’t want to play that. I wonder if you can find a game you both want to play?” Teach your child to say, “Okay, thanks for telling me” when someone says no.

Instead of telling your child, “Give your sibling a hug,” switch the script to, “Ask your sibling if they’d like a hug” to model how they can practice asking for consent.

Remember, consent isn’t limited to physical touch. If we teach children that getting consent means getting permission, then we create more opportunities for children to get comfortable saying no and respecting no. For example, parents can model asking their children, “Can I have a bite of your mac and cheese?” rather than reaching over and helping themselves.

Talking to Adolescents

As kids get older, conversations around consent should be much more direct.

Discuss what consent means for them.

Oftentimes, consent is confused with a simple “Yes.” In reality, it’s often much less clear. Use the FRIES acronym to teach your teen about what true consent means.

● Freely Given: consent is always given without pressure or coercion.

● Reversible: people can change their minds and decide to stop at any point — even if they’re in the middle of sexual activity.

● Informed: everyone involved needs to know exactly what they are consenting to, every single time.

● Enthusiastic: if the “yes” isn’t excited, or if the person is disengaged, it’s a “no.”

● Specific: consent is specific to what is being asked in the moment; it is not a green light for future requests.

Encourage them to reflect on their personal values.

We want adolescents to feel confident in their sexual decision making. By asking them to consider their reasons for wanting to have sex, what types of intimacy they are comfortable with, and how they intend to be safe during sexual activity, we open up a space for them to reflect on their feelings and their personal readiness level. Parents should also encourage teens to not only think about their own boundaries, but to have open conversations with their partner regularly. Remind teens that sex is never owed regardless of how long they have been with their partner or what other people are doing in their relationships.

Talk about substance use and consent.

We want to make it clear that consent cannot be given if someone is intoxicated, asleep, or incapacitated in some way. Any sexual behaviors with a person who can’t consent is assault. Ask your teens to reflect on how they will be safe at parties and collaborate on a safety plan, whether that means having a trusted friend by their side throughout the night or calling you to pick them up if they feel uncomfortable at any point.

Keep the conversation going.

Be proactive in talking to your kids about consent. One conversation is not enough. By regularly discussing consent with children and adolescents not only are you modeling that it should be an ongoing conversation to have with their peers and partners, you’re also empowering them with the knowledge and language to do so.