DBT Crisis Survival Skills Series

[Music] for [Music] hi I'm Marshall lahan I'm a professor at the University of Washington and a researcher there. The kind of research I do is on behavior therapy. And in my research over the last, well, frankly, a lot of years, I've been developing behavioral skills. And I've been developing these skills and then I do research to see if the skills work. And the good news is, most of the skills that I've developed work, at least for some people, some of the time.

So there are lots of different sets of skills, but the skills that I'm going to teach you on this program are called crisis survival skills. Now, if you happen to have my book, or if somebody's giving you pages from my book, then you're going to want to open your book or get out your pages. And the ones that you're going to be looking for are called distress tolerance handout one, crisis survival strategies. And the first one's called distracting. So we're going to review all those skills. And then the second one is called distress tolerance handout one, crisis survival strategies, self-soothing. And we're going to go over all those skills too. So that's what we're going to do in this program. We're going to work on how to survive a crisis without making it worse. That's the basic idea.

Now, there are a few things I have to tell you before we get going. These are really important. The first thing is, the skills I'm going to teach you in this particular program are not the skills they're going to solve all your life problems. And they're really not going to be enough skills to build a life worth living. They're not even going to be enough to figure out how to change everything about yourself you don't like, or how to change your life and all the things in your life you don't like. I'm all for solving life's problems. I'm sure you are too. I'm for building a life worth living. I'm sure you are too. And well, I'm all for changing every single thing about yourself that you don't like, if it's possible, I'm for it.

The problem is, is that in order to do that, in order to build your life up, well, it's just not going to work out if you don't stop tearing your life down. In other words, if you're a person that sometimes makes things worse, well, I hate to give you the bad news here right at the beginning of the program, but I'm telling you right now, you're going to have to stop that. You cannot continue to make your life worse.

So the question, of course, is how would you do that? How would you stop making your life worse? Most people only make their lives worse in dire situations. That is to say, in crisis times of terrible trauma. Are you one of those people? Think about it for a minute. You just think back on your life. Do you do things that actually make things worse instead of better? Maybe you go for the bottle, maybe you eat too much, take drugs, you think about killing yourself. Some people do. If you're one of those people, these skills are for you.

The first thing we're going to ask is, what is a crisis? I mean, if you're going to learn crisis survival strategies, it'd be a good idea to know what a crisis is. So what is a crisis? Well, first, a crisis is a stressful event. Often it's a traumatic moment. Usually there's a lot of emotional stress in a crisis. That's the first characteristic. The second characteristic is, they're short term. I mean, crises don't last forever. If it's something that lasts forever and you think it's a crisis, it's your life, not a crisis. Cris. Third, what goes on a crisis? You want it resolved right now. Generally, there's this sense of urgency, like I've got to get it solved, or I've got to get out, I've got to get out, I've got to get what. So that's what a crisis is.

There are two main rules of crisis survival. The first rule is, if you're in a crisis and you can solve the problem now, solve it. Okay? Rule one, solve the problem if you can solve it. All right. The second rule of crisis survival is, if you can't solve the problem, survive it. Got that? What are they? The first rule, solve it. The second rule, survive it.

This program is going to assume, for the moment, that you've got a crisis. It's got a problem in it that you can't solve. So we're going to focus not on how to solve the problem, because we're assuming that even though you may be able to solve it another time, you can't solve it now. So we're going to assume that. So what we're going to focus in is how to actually survive it. How in the world would you do that? I mean, how do you survive in times of trauma and stress and all you want to do is run away, hide, get in bed and pull the covers over your head, or do other things?

Well, in this program, I'm going to focus on two different kinds of skills. The first set of skills are going to be the distract skills, and the second are going to be the self-soothing. Two of my favorite sets of skills. Now, before I get going on these, I just want to say a couple of things about them before I tell you how to do them. First thing is, have you been told by somebody that you distract too much? And you're thinking, hey, wait a minute, what is she doing teaching me how to distract? This is ridiculous. My therapy, or my friends, or my mother, my partner, somebody tells me, stop distracting. All right. If you distract when you can solve the problem, not a good idea. The time to distract is when you can't solve the problem. So we're going to talk about that. But just remember, I'm not advising you don't go tell everybody I'm saying this either, to distract all the time.

Now, the second set of skills, I don't know, lots of people I work with have loads of problems with them. They're self-soothing skills. So you may be thinking to yourself, well, I'm going to listen to distracting, and I'm not planning on paying attention to self-soothing. People say that who think I don't deserve to self-soothe. I'm not worth self-soothing. If you're saying that, well, just put that thought on the shelf. You're going to be surprised you could actually learn it.

Okay, I just have one last thing to say before I get going. I know you're wondering if I'm ever going to get going, but don't worry, this is the last thing I have to say before I get going. I've got a lot of information. In fact, most people learn this information best if they take notes. So my advice to you is to get paper and pencil and take notes while you're listening. Now, if you don't have paper and pencil right now, well, if I were you, I'd get up, go to the program, switch it off, put it on pause, go get your paper, get a pencil, come back, get yourself all comfy, turn the program on, and we'll get going.

Are you the kind of person who, if a crisis hits, you usually make things worse? If you're the kind of person who does that, either a lot of the time or some of the time, this is the program for you. This is a program about how to get through a crisis without making it any worse than it already is. So when do you need crisis survival skills? You should look at the situation and see if it fits three criteria. First, it needs to be a real crisis. That is, it's highly stressful, short-term, and there's a pressure to resolve the problem quickly. Second, needs to be a crisis that can't be resolved in the short term. In other words, you can't solve it right this minute. And third, has to be a situation you can't afford to make worse than it already is. If you put it all together, the basic bottom line is, you need crisis survival skills when you're in a crisis and you've got to tolerate it until you can make it better. So that's what these skills are for, that kind of crisis.

On this program, I'm going to focus on two different kinds of skills. The first set of skills are going to be the distract skills, and the second are going to be the self-soothing. So we're going to start with distracting. Distracting is a skill a lot of people already know because distracting is when you throw your mind off of the problem. In other words, you think about or do something else. You know people when they say, "I threw myself into my work." That's when people are distracting. I've got seven distract skills. I'm going to teach you. The way to remember them is the first letter spells out the word ACCEPTS.

Let's start with A. A, A means activities. Now, the idea here is to just throw yourself into activities. You can't do activities that you can do mindlessly. You know how sometimes you do things and while you're doing them, all you're doing is thinking about your problem? This is not a good idea. That's not an activity for distracting. You need a distracting activity, one that'll just fill up your whole mind. Where are some examples? Reading is a really good activity. It's one of my favorites. That you can't do reading if you can't concentrate. So you could try reading if you can get yourself involved, or you've got some great book and you're dying to see how it goes. That's a really good one. If you can get involved, it's always a good thing to keep a few books around that are really involving. That's why I like junk novels, really serious novels, serious reading. I like to do that sometimes. Well, actually, I mostly do that at work, but at home I keep spy stories and novels. I keep the kind of stuff that you could just really get your mind into. Or if you can't concentrate, just reading's out. How about exercise? Now, with exercise, you've got to do an exercise that will really get your mind involved. So the best kind are the kind that are really hard exercises or involving exercises, ones that focus the mind. Maybe you're a person who has hobbies. That's what lots of people do. They throw themselves into their hobbies to distract from their problems. That's always a good idea. Do you have any hobbies? I have friends who throw themselves into cleaning their house. I really do. I've got a friend, she says, "Well, whenever I've got troubles, I clean my house." Now, I do that too sometimes. If I just can't solve a problem, especially at work, I start cleaning my desk. You can always tell when I've got lots of problems, my desk is very neat. You could go to an event, you go to a movie or a concert, open the paper, try to find something to go to. Movies are good. Lots of people distract from their problems by getting together with friends. Now, the trick here is, if you get together with friends to distract, what would you not want to do? You guessed it. Don't spend the whole time talking about your problems. So that's the list. Now, you should add to it. Think of all the activities that have ever done you some good and add them to the list. You'll probably be able to think up lots of them. The trick is, think up the activities when you're not in a crisis. It's really hard to think them up in a crisis. If the crisis is really bad, you want to just be able to open your list, go down it, do the first thing on the list. If that doesn't work, go to the second. If that does work, go to the third. Just keep right on going. What do you do if you don't have any activities that fill up your mind? Either you can't think of anything to do, or everything seems boring, or every time you try to do something, all you do is think about your problems anyway. Move to the next skill.

The next one starts with C. C, contributing. So what's contributing? It's where you distract from pain and suffering by focusing your mind on someone else or something else that you can contribute to or somehow make better. The idea here is to distract. That's the good part. And the second good part is, you try to distract in a way that will actually make you feel better about yourself. To make it even better, you try to distract in a way that'll actually make the world a little bit better. So even if you're suffering, at least you're doing some good in the world. You could do volunteer work. Lots of people do volunteer work as a way to kind of get their mind off themselves, get their minds off their troubles. You could do something nice for someone. If you're in the middle of a crisis, you could think, "Well, what would someone else like? What could I do for them?" Maybe you could give them a call. You could call people you haven't talked to in a long time who might be missing you. You could do something surprising for someone else. There are lots of things you can do that are contributing. You just have to think of something. Think back in your own life. What's something that you do that contributes to other people, makes someone happier, that you could do in a crisis? If you can think them up, write them down. Now's the time. Write them down now. It's really important to remember that contributions don't have to be big. The facts of the matter are, in the middle of a crisis, when you're just trying to survive, you're probably not going to do something really big. That's probably not the time. So what you want to do is try to think up small things you can do. For example, there's a grocery store two blocks from my house. I go there, I don't know, a couple times a week. So I always think to myself, whenever things really get me down, I'm really in trouble, having a bad day, I say, "All right, Mara, all you have to do to make this day worthwhile is walk down to the grocery store, get in line, and smile at the checkout lady." I figure they have really difficult days. Have you ever noticed how rude people can be to checkout people in grocery stores? So you can just make the whole world better by going down, smiling. That's what I do. Now, you may be one of those persons who, when you get in a crisis and then you think of contributing, you start thinking, "Oh, it isn't going to make a difference. It's really not worthwhile. It's not my time." In a crisis, sometimes we start putting ourselves down, thinking we're worthless, thinking whatever we have to do doesn't contribute. So this is my advice: stop that. That's not effective. Go ahead and do it. Even if you don't think it's going to help, try it anyway. Well, what if you've already tried it? You either tried it and it didn't work, or you decided, "I'm not doing it. I'm the one in trouble. I'm not giving something to someone else. I need someone to give something to me." Okay, give it up. You're not going to contribute.

Let's go to the next one. The next letter in ACCEPTS is C again, but this time it's C for comparisons. When you're trying to distract by using comparisons, what you're trying to do is, you're trying to compare your current situation or the current crisis to a situation that's worse than the one you're in now. So, for example, you could compare yourself to people who have less than you have, or you could compare yourself to people who maybe have the same thing you have, but they have a lot harder time coping with it. Or you could look at your own life and you could think about times in your life when things have been a lot harder, or you didn't have the same resources you have now. The whole idea is to try to feel better by comparing yourself to a time when you could feel worse. In other words, you're trying to get yourself to sort of say, say in your mind, "Could be worse." So how does this work? Well, when it does work, it's probably generating a sense of gratitude, or a sense of feeling lucky, or even a sense of relief. So that's when it works. It works, you feel relieved, you feel better about yourself, feel a little more confident, maybe you're not quite as incompetent as you thought.

E is for emotions. The idea is to distract from one emotion by figuring out a way to create another emotion. So how in the world would you do that? Well, one really effective way that you're probably already using anyway is music. The secret to using music as distraction or crisis survival is to pick your music so that it changes your emotion. You'd be surprised at the people I know who, when they're sad, what do they do? They put sad music on. How do you think they feel? Do you think they get less sad? No. So the idea is, if you feel sad, what kind of emotion would you like to have? Well, you probably want to feel energetic, or even happy, if you could. So you've got to put some energetic, happy music on. Now, what's happy for one person may not be happy for another. That's really important. I was once running a group of people who all had drug problems, and in the groups before that, we had always used music at the end of group to sort of rev everybody out, make them feel better. So in this group, I said, "All right, let's put the music on." They said, "No, no, no." I said, "Why not?" And they said, "Well, every song we like makes us think of you drugs." I said, "Fine. Good. We're not doing that. Don't put that on." Now, if you're feeling really anxious and tense, you could try putting music on that's soothing and calming, sort of soft music, maybe background music, maybe classical music. That might help. So think about what kinds of music change your mood. That's what you want to do. You want to get that kind of list going. And then when you're in a crisis, first, what do you do? Check out how you feel. Second, pick your music. Third, put it on. Fourth, make sure it's loud enough you can hear it. You don't do background music. What else could you do? Well, you could try reading. The most important thing, though, about reading is that you've got to find a book that's emotionally involving. No newspapers, no magazines, nothing scholarly, nothing informational. You can't read the encyclopedia. You've got to find a story that's emotionally involving. So it all depends on what's emotionally involving for me. It's spy stories. So I, if I'm really find myself worrying, kind of in a crisis, and I'm just making things worse by all the stuff I'm thinking, I'll often just get up and try to read a book. But I try to pick a book that I can get engaged in, I get all involved in the story. Then when I close the book, I try to keep my mind in the story. So I try to keep that emotion of somewhat excitement. What else could you do? You're trying to get another emotion going. Well, one way is to try to find some humor. I did that once. I was driving cross-country, and I was driving all the way from Washington D.C. to Seattle. So I had to drive across the middle of the country. So I was thinking as I drove across the middle of the country, I figured I was going to be really bored because, you know, what do they have in the middle of the country? This is how I was thinking at that time in my life. I figured, "All right, they're going to have cows and cows and cows. I thought, well, that's not going to be interesting. I'm going to get really bored." So I'm going to take my comedy records, put them on tapes. You can tell it was records, this was quite a while ago. Put them on tapes. Then I was going to listen to them when I was going across the middle of the country when I had nothing to look at but cows. So as it turns out, going across the middle of the country turned out to be really interesting, and I actually didn't ever listen to my records. But after I got across the middle of the country, I came to mountains. You know how sometimes when you go up mountains, and you can be on the side of the road that's near the mountain, or you could be the side of the road that's right near the ledge? Now, if you're on the side of the road near the mountain, you're not going to be so scared. But if you have fear of heights, I have fear of heights, and you're driving your car on the side that's on the ledge, you're going to get afraid. Well, take it from me, I not only got afraid, I got panicked. I kept seeing the edge. So I started thinking I was going to go over the edge. I couldn't even concentrate. There was nothing I could do. What was I going to do? You can't just stop your car and get out. I thought of doing this, though, stopping at getting out and saying, "I'm too scared to drive. Would you drive my car?" But I didn't think that would work out too well. So I pulled my car over to the side. There turned out to be a little indentation where you could take your car. So I pulled my car over, and I thought, "I've got to get through this." So what did I do? I put my comedy tapes on, and I started listening to comedy tapes. Then I finally got myself back over onto the road. I'm listening to the comedy tapes. They took my mind off the edge of the highway where I could have fallen off, and I started, well, I didn't start laughing, actually, but I did start smiling. And sure enough, I got through the driveway. Now, that's a really good example of crisis survival skills. You can do it with humor. What else? Well, you could go to emotional movies. Movies are like reading, though. If you're going to go to an emotional movie, be sure you don't go to a movie that's going to intensify the emotion you've got. So if you go to a movie, don't go to a sad movie if you feel sad. Don't go to a love story if someone just broke up with you.

What's the next letter? P. P is for pushing away. It's a really good set of skills to do when you just can't cope. This is really hard. So I'm going to give you a couple of things to do that can make it a lot easier. The first step is, get yourself a piece of paper. Get something to write with. The second step is, to make a list. One, two, three, four, five. You're going to want to make a list of the main problems that are on your mind right now. So, for example, you might say, "One, my mother. Two, my bills. Three, no one likes me at work." And so on. Okay? So that's the first thing. You make your list. Put a number by each one of them. All right. And the second thing is, you go back over your list one at a time. And for each item on your list, you ask yourself the following questions. Question one: "Can I do anything about that right now?" And question two: "Is this a good time to work on it?" Now, if the answer to both those is yes, "I can work on this problem now," and "This is a good time to work on it," okay, skip pushing away. Go to the first rule of crisis survival. Solve that problem now. However, lots of times you'll say, "No, I can't do anything now. It's midnight. What can I do about my mother?" Nothing. "Is this a good time to work on it?" This is not a good time to work on my work problems. I need sleep. If I work on it now, I'll be exhausted tomorrow. So if you say no to both, then what you do is, you put a check mark next to it. So let's say you've got the first one, "My mother." You've got that checked. Now you go to the next problem and you ask the very same questions. You say, "Is there anything I can do about this problem now?" and "Is this a good time to work on it?" And if you say no to either one of those, you put a check by it. And you just go on down your list. Now, the idea is to use the first rule of crisis survival strategies on any problem on your list where the answer to both questions is yes. And where the answer to either one of those questions is no, then you can use the pushing away skill.

So what is the pushing away skill? What you do is, you go through each one of the items on your list. And in your mind, you imagine picking the problem up, putting that in a box, and putting it up on a shelf. You want to do this for each one separately. The trick is, you're trying to send a message to your brain that says, "Brain, cut it out. Stop dealing with this problem. Put this on the shelf." You're really trying to send a message to yourself that says, "This is not effective. This is ineffective. This won't work. I have nothing, nothing to gain by working on this problem now." And when that's true, pushing away can be a really good skill. So that's the skill. It's blocking, censoring, shutting off, putting away, getting rid of. But remember, you can only do that. This only works if you convince your mind that it's not a good idea that you can't do anything if you work on it now. Because if your brain keeps thinking that somehow it's going to get somewhere with this, you're going to actually solve the problem if you keep thinking about it, you won't get it on the shelf. It just won't work. All right, so that's that skill. Shall we go to the next?

The next letter in ACCEPTS is T, and T stands for thoughts. This one is the skill of distracting yourself from a crisis by focusing your mind on thoughts. Has anyone ever told you to count to 10 when you're angry? The idea is that if you count to 10, you won't yell or scream or do something you'll regret. Most of us have been told that at least once. Well, that's the skill. I know it sounds sort of silly and like a not really important skill, but it can really work. It's especially good in some situations. And the situations it's really the very best in is when your emotions are really intense and you're trying to keep yourself still. In other words, you're just trying to keep yourself from doing anything until the crisis passes. Or you could start naming things. Like if you're with your boss, he's being really, really critical of you, you could be sitting there and in the back of your mind, you could just be looking at him, counting or naming the various things he has on. You could say, "Tie, shirt, jacket, hands." Just about anything that occupies your mind is good. When you're in an overwhelming crisis and you're trying to keep yourself from doing anything else, you're trying to get your mind busy with something. Thoughts, thoughts will work. Sometimes you could use just the same thought over and over. Because if your mind is empty, what do you think will happen? The crisis will go right into the middle of your mind. Take it from me, you'll never make it. So what do you do? You focus your mind on a word. That can be any word. All depends on what words work for you. When we work with our clients, we sometimes say, "Breathe in the word 'wise.' Breathe out the word 'mind.' Wise mind." What's good about that is you're, you're trying to get into a wise mind when you're in a crisis. The whole idea is to act wisely, not unwisely. So you might try that. Why don't you try it right now while you're listening? Breathe in wise. Breathe out mind. Now, you want to try to really make that mind go for a long time. Now, the idea when you do this is, try to become the words. You want to just throw yourself into the words. You want to try to fill your whole mind, your entire self, up with the words. It's often hard to do at the beginning. It's hard to keep your mind focused on one thought. If your mind gets distracted, you start thinking about something else, don't worry about it. The minute you notice it, just come back to the thought, or the counting, or what you're doing. Just bring your mind back. Start over again. If you practice this a lot, it actually gets better. You'll get really good at it.

The last letter in ACCEPTS is S, and S stands for sensations that will distract the mind. This is a fabulous skill. It's really helpful if you're in extreme emotional pain, or you have physical pain, or you're overwhelmed with an urge to do something not in your best interest. I sometimes tell people I work with, if they're really feeling overwhelmed, or they have an urge to do something destructive, try a hot bath or a cold shower. Another thing people sometimes do, especially if they have an intense desire to do something destructive and they don't want to do it, but they feel like they're about to lose control. Have you ever had that feeling like you really want to do something destructive, you really don't want to do something destructive, and you're afraid you're losing control and you're going to do it? Go to the refrigerator, open it up, get a piece of ice, hold it in your hand, and keep it in your hand while it melts. Take it from me, this will distract the mind and it really works. I don't, I don't exactly know why that works so well. I've been kind of amazed. I got people doing this, and I figured, "Okay, it was a so-so skill." But lots of people told me it's the most effective thing they do. What's important is that you distract your mind with a sensation that does not harm you. The idea here is to make things better, not worse. Those are the distracting crisis survival skills. You can remember them by just going through ACCEPTS.

So we've gotten through the distraction skills. Now we're going to move to a new set, and these are the self-soothing skills. Now, self-soothing has to do with nurturing yourself, comforting yourself, being kind to yourself. That's exactly what you need in a crisis. In a crisis, you're going to try to soothe yourself through it. There are lots of ways to soothe yourself, but almost every way has something to do with one of your five senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch. So let's talk about each one of them.

The idea of self-soothing with vision is that you want to do something that soothes the eyes, something that soothes your sight. What could that be? Well, lots of people think flowers are beautiful. That's one of the reasons that we plant them in our yards, and it's really wonderful to have a flower. You could get just one flower on a really awful day when you're in a total crisis. Go to the store, find one really beautiful flower. Just because I knew we were going to be doing this, I brought a beautiful flower. So I'm going to keep that here just to remind you of soothing through beauty. Another way to soothe through beauty, or through your eyes, through vision, is to try to make something nice in your house. Have you ever noticed how when you walk into the house and just see them as that, you can feel like you're in more of a crisis than you were before? So the idea here is to make one part of your house beautiful. Now, I'm not adverse. You could clean your whole house up. I mean, you could make the whole thing beautiful, but that's kind of a big task. Probably not what you want to do in a crisis. So in a crisis, the thing to do is just find one nice place. In fact, if your whole house is a catastrophe, you could clean up one corner. In fact, you could take everything from that corner that's a mess, put it somewhere else, put a flower, have your chair face that corner, and try to find a way so that you just see the beauty. If you like pictures or art, and go to an art museum, you go to a bookstore and look through art books. You could have art books at home and look through them. There might be a magazine where you really like the pictures. That's always a good thing to do. What you want to remember is that your environment counts. And if you can improve the environment around you, make the environment more beautiful, it'll make a crisis easier to get through.

The next sense, hearing. Music soothes the mind. Sometimes you'll have a song that's a favorite song that's really soothing, like a lullaby. You could sing it to yourself. Have you ever noticed how some people when they get really stressed, they start humming? You could hum. Humming can be a very soothing sound. You know how to play an instrument, like the piano, guitar, violin? You could play music. Now, lots of people find another human voice soothing. This is really good if the crisis is that you're alone. So how could you hear another human voice? Well, you could call somebody, listen to them talk. That's always good. I have some other ideas. You may think these are silly, but take it from me, in a crisis, you've got to do anything that could help. So if you want to hear a human voice, you could call 800 numbers, listen to the voice on the number, or you could call reservations people, talk to them. You could call your crisis clinic, talk to someone there. There are lots of places where there's sounds of voices. You could turn your TV on, listen to the voices. You know how some people leave a TV on all the time, no matter what they're doing, even when they're not watching it? Why do they do that? Because it's soothing. They just feel more comfortable with the sound of voices in their house. And if you're that kind of person, turn it on. If you don't have a TV, turn the radio on. Just keep it on. It can help.

So what's the next sense? Smell. Now, if you're going to use smell to soothe, you've got to think about what smells do you find soothing. A lot of people find flowers soothing. You could put on a little bit of perfume. I love putting on perfume. When they sell new houses, they often put things on the stove so that the house will smell really good. You just want to try to get smells from the kitchen wafting all through your house. It's really nice. Most people find smells from the kitchen really comforting. Some people just like the smell of fresh air. That's good. If you're in a crisis and it's stuffy, go outside, smell the air. So smell, try to surround yourself with soothing smells.

What's the next sense? Taste. Some people only use food to comfort. I hope you're not one of those people, but if you are, plug your ears up while I talk about food. This is not going to be the skill for you. You might want to go to the store and get some tea, like a special tea. Some people carry candy around. My mother always carried around peppermint candy. I swear, any crisis that showed up in her life, my mother would pop peppermint candy into her mouth. She put so much peppermint candy in her mouth and so many crises that we all told her when she died, we were putting peppermint candy in her casket. That's exactly what we did. We went and put a whole bag of peppermint candy right in her casket.

How about touch? Touch is unbelievably important when it comes to soothing. There's been a lot of research on this, and a lot is being done. And it turns out that touch can really soothe, relax, and lower stress. Getting close to someone or holding someone's hand, having someone put their arm around you can be very comforting. Sounds great, doesn't it? What if you don't have anybody to touch you? You can put your hand on your hand. You could soothe your hand. You could soothe your arm. You could rub your arm. Massage can be very soothing. Another way to soothe with touch is to put lotions on. You know, you can buy creams and salt rubs and things like that. Touch, I really love. I love clean sheets. I love the feel of clean sheets. I like them sort of starchy. You could put clean sheets on your bed. One of the most common things people I work with do when they're in a crisis and they want to soothe themselves with touch is they go and find their animals and hold them and pet them and stroke them. You could pick up a dog, pick up a cat, stroke the cat, stroke the dog. This is a great skill because do you like it? The cat likes it. The dog likes it. In fact, this seems so important that they now have animals in a lot of care facilities for older people. The great thing about self-soothing is that not only can it make a crisis a lot more survivable, it gets you through really tough times, but if you can get self-soothing into your life on a pretty regular basis, it can actually prevent crisis because it makes you stronger, makes you less vulnerable. You're better able to cope with life.

Now, there's some problems with these self-soothing. Can be on the complicated side. And the ordinarily one of two problems: either you already know how to self-soothe, problem with you is that you self-soothe too much, or you could be a person who never self-soothes, you can't do it. So let's start with the person who is too easy. For some people, self-soothe all the time. In fact, that's their problem. They are always soothing themselves. That's how they get into the crisis in the first place. So if you're that kind of person, you already know these skills. You might want to think about, should you be doing self-soothing a little bit less? On the other hand, some people who soothe too much can't do it when they're in a crisis. They can only do it when they're not in a crisis. Ask yourself if you're that kind of person. If you are, then you're going to want to practice self-soothing in the middle of crisis.

Now, what if you're the other kind of person? You know, I can't begin to tell you the people that I have worked with who simply cannot do this. They say, "What? Me? Soothe myself? I can't do that." Often they say, "Look, I don't deserve it." Or I say, "Listen, why would I do that? I feel worse. I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. I'm not going to do it." If you're that kind of person, you need to learn to self-soothe. Now, if you feel more ashamed or guilty when you soothe yourself in a crisis, don't do it in a crisis. Do it when you're not in a crisis. You just have to start practicing self-soothing. The idea is to get to the point where you really get soothed. But it's an essential skill. Every single one of us has to be able to soothe ourselves. So it's really important that you learn how to do it. But practice outside a crisis until it starts having some positive soothing effect.

Okay, so we've gone over a lot of material. Let's put it all together and we're going to review. And as I review with you, you try to review with me. Okay? So see if you can remember what you've learned in the program. Okay, what's a crisis? Remember, it's got three criteria or three components. What are they? Do you remember? Well, first, crisis is highly stressful or traumatic. Second, it's momentary. That means it's short-term. Crisis is not your entire life. And third, there's a really strong urgency and pressure to get it resolved right now. Seems like sort of an emergency. All right, so that's a crisis.

What are the skills that we covered in this particular program on how to do that? I'm sure you remember. There are two sets: distracting skills and self-soothing. Remember? Now, there are seven distracting skills, and the way you remember all seven is with the word ACCEPTS.

A, what's A stand for? Activities. So you want activities that will fill up your mind or take your mind off your stress. C, C, well, C's contributing. You want to contribute to other people and take your mind off yourself or your current mood. The idea is to sort of throw your mind to somebody else. Okay, what's the third one? Well, it's another C. C, comparisons. And this is when you compare yourself, your state of mind, your current distress, trauma, or crisis to either another time in your life when it's actually been worse, or to someone else whose life is a lot worse than yours. The idea here is to try to replace distress with a sense of relief. You're trying to kind of generate that idea that it could be worse.

What's the fourth letter? E. E for emotions. Here we're looking for opposite emotions that are intense, opposite to the ones you've got now. So don't try to get your current emotions more intense. That'll just make things a whole lot worse. Remember, you got to switch emotions. All right, we got P. What's P? Do you remember? Pushing away. The idea here is to push away your troubles, put them on the shelf, wrap them up, put plexiglass in front of you, get distance, push your problems away.

Okay, what's the next letter? T. You know what T stands for? Thoughts. Now, the idea here is to try to switch your thoughts. You're going to try to fill your mind up with some new thoughts that are not the stressful thoughts. So you're going to try to push out your current worries by throwing your mind onto some other thoughts. A word, a mantra, a verse, any sorts of thoughts. It could be a saying.

And the last letter? S. S stands for sensations. Now, remember, you're looking for sensations that are really strong and ones that are going to distract you. So what would those be? Do you remember? Well, you could do hot water. My favorite one, though, and I recommend you try it if you haven't tried it before, is in a real crisis when you feel like you're going to fall apart, you're emotionally aroused, you just can't stand it. Run, don't walk, for the freezer and take out some ice. Put ice in your hands and hold it.

Now, I have to ask one thing. How many distracting skills have you written down? Have you written some down? Do you realize if you get in a crisis, you're not going to be able to remember any? Your mind just won't be able to think any up. That's what most people experience. So if you didn't write any down, my suggestion to you is, put the program on pause again and write some down. Now, you can't just write the word "activity." You got to write, "Activity: What am I going to do?" Okay, my activities will be: I will one, two, three. I'll go running. I'll bake a cake. All right, so get activities written down. Go through the whole list. Write something down for each one because you need lots of distracting skills to try. All right, so that's the distracting skills.

Now, the next set that we went over were the self-soothing skills. And you can probably remember self-soothing if you can remember the five senses. So let's go through them. First, vision. You're going to want to find beauty to soothe your eyes. Second, hearing. You're going to want to find some sounds that'll soothe your ears. Next, smell. Well, you're just going to try to figure out a way to get some wonderful aromas to soothe your nose. How about taste? Well, delicious foods, really nice drinks. You're going to soothe your appetite, soothe your tongue. And how about touch? Well, the idea here is to try to find something sensuous that you can put close to your skin to soothe your body. So those are the self-soothing skills.

All right, so that's the self-soothing and the distracting skills. Now, if you remember all those skills, what do you have to do to make it work? Well, what do you have to remember to make all this work? First, you got to know when a crisis is coming your way. You got to notice when you have an urge to do something destructive. So you're going to try to get yourself to be a little more aware. Second, when a crisis comes your way and you have an urge to do something destructive, you need to immediately say, "What's the problem and can I solve it?" If you can solve the problem right now, why not solve it now? If you can't solve it, you're going to want to remind yourself that making things worse is going to make your life worse. You got to remember that. You got to repeat that over and over: "Making things worse will make my life worse." Got to remember that. Then once you decide, "Okay, I don't..."

Want to make things worse? You got to figure out a skill to use now. The problem is there are lots of skills. The question is, which one do you use?

Well, it's really helpful if you actually have them written down. If you've got my workbook, or if you've got some of the handouts, you can go look at the list and just see if you can figure out one to try. The idea is to try any skill that you think might work. If that skill doesn't work, well, go to the next skill. If that one doesn't work, well, go to the next. If that one doesn't work, go to the next. You just keep going right through the skills till you get to the bottom.

What if none of the skills work? What do you think you should do then? Start over. Just start right back over from the top. The idea is, don't give up. Keep trying skill after skill after skill after skill. You'll find one sooner or later. And you have to remind yourself that crisis survival skills work if you survive the crisis. All you're trying to do in a crisis, when you can't make it better, is not make it worse. Some people think, "Oh, I didn't feel any better, therefore these skills don't work." Well, feeling better is almost always going to require solving the problem, or at least starting to solve the problem. Crisis survival is when you can't solve the problem and you can't even start solving the problem. So they're just trying to get you through it. So you have to ask yourself, "Did I get through it? Did I carry on? Did I avoid making it worse?" If you can say yes, then you can say, "I was skillful." So that's the whole point of these skills.

Listen, I know making your life better is going to take a lot of work. I'm not forgetting that little detail. I know it's true. And these skills, they may seem sort of trivial, like they're not important. But take it from me, they are important. Important because to make your life better, to get where you want to get, you have to survive crisis. There is no other way. You can't make it if you don't. It's life and death. You've got to do it. And these skills, I think, well, I think they'll help you. They've helped a lot of people.

So this is the end of the program. So I'm going to have to say goodbye. That's the bad news. The good news is I've got a whole another program with another set of crisis survival strategies. So if you went all the way through this one and are just desperate to have some more skills, you can watch that other program. I hope, though, this was helpful. If it was, I hope you'll let me know. My email address is coming up in just a few minutes on this program. Write it down. Send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. And if you've got any good ideas, news, skills that I haven't thought of that have worked for you, I hope you'll send them to me. You just may find your skills in my next program. Take care.

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If you're interested in ordering other videotapes in the "From Chaos to Freedom" series, please contact Behavioral Tech at 206-675-8588 or visit our website at www.behavioraltech.com.

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Hi, I'm Marsha M. Linehan. I'm a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. I'm on this program to teach some behavioral skills. Now, these behavioral skills are ones that I've been developing for a really long time, years, and I've done lots of research on them also. And good news is, these skills are very effective. The skills I'm going to teach you are a special set of skills, and they're called crisis survival skills. I'm going to go through two sets of skills. So if you happen to have the skills manual that I've written, or if someone's giving you some handouts that have these skills on them, you probably want to pull those out now. What you're going to want to be looking at, if you have it, is "Improve the Moment" skills and "Pros and Cons" skills. Those are the two sets of skills that we're going to go over in this program.

So when do you need crisis survival skills? Well, of course, you need them when you're in a crisis. But they're really great skills for any situation that's really distressing and has any one of the following characteristics. First, if you're in a situation where the problem can't be solved right this minute. For example, imagine you're on your way to your mother's funeral, and you have to switch planes in the middle on the way. So you're going the night before, and you get to the airport, and you miss your connection. They have mechanical trouble in the first plane, you missed the connection. There are no more connections. There's no train. There's no car that'll get you there. That's not only a crisis, but it's a crisis that can't be solved. What do you need? Crisis survival.

So what's another situation? Well, it's any situation where you've got a big problem, and it could be solved, except that you don't have the skills. So imagine you're driving in your car, you're out on the highway, and you have a flat tire. Now, that's not a crisis. You know how to change a tire. And it's not a crisis if you're in town somewhere and there's someone who'll come by and change it for you. But what about you're out on the road somewhere, you're far away, there's nobody nearby, you've got everything in the car to change the tire, well, no one taught you how to change a tire. You don't know the first thing about how to even get the jack up.

What about a situation where it's a crisis? The problem can be solved, it could actually be made better, and you've even got the skills. Problem is, you just can't figure out a way to get those skills to come out of you. Maybe you're sick. You're so sick that you can't act skillfully. Maybe you just had 10 other crises, and frankly, you're worn out from dealing with all those crises, and this is just one crisis too many. So what do you need when this happens? You need crisis survival skills.

Now, it's important to distinguish a crisis where you need crisis survival skills and a life problem where you need to use problem-solving skills. Most of the time in life, we need problem-solving skills. What I mean by this is, you know, you can't live your entire life in survival mode. Have you ever noticed how some people do that? Life itself is a crisis. Now, if that's true for you, if life itself is a crisis, if you're saying, "Hey, listen, I'm always in a crisis," then you're going to need problem-solving skills to figure out why you're always in a crisis.

So what is a crisis? Generally, crises are highly stressful, very intense, and immediate. Crises are short-term. They don't last forever. And in a crisis, there's a really intense pressure to resolve the problem now, or right this minute. So when do you need crisis survival skills? You need them in any situation that doesn't have an immediate problem solution, and that's really intense. And you need crisis survival skills in any situation where you have a really strong desire to do something that's going to make your life worse. Got that?

Think about it for yourself. Think of two types of situations. One, it's a crisis, it's intense, it's got to be solved now, and there's no solution. Or two, may not even be a crisis, but you've got an intense desire simply to do something that's going to make your life a whole lot worse. So what kind of situations are we talking about? Why don't you imagine that you've had a really terrible day? I mean, you've had everybody screaming at you all day, and you come home, and frankly, all you want to do is get drunk, and you're a recovering alcoholic. You need crisis survival skills.

Or what if you're on the highway, you're driving, someone cut you off, and you get so angry, you have an immediate urge to run that person right off the road? You need crisis survival skills. In other words, you need crisis survival skills anytime you have an impulsive, intense urge to do something that in your better moments, you would never do.

So generally, what sorts of situations are we going to look for? Well, the first thing to do is look for situations where you're trying to escape. You're either trying to escape the situation, or you're trying to escape from your feelings. That's usually when we have urges to do things that half the time make things worse. What are those things? Well, think about what do you have urges to do when you want to escape situations that you can't solve? Well, sometimes what people want to do is they want to quit important things. If you wanted to quit things that you knew weren't in your interest to quit, but you wanted to do it anyway, and you had to figure out a way to get yourself not to quit.

Or if you ever had such a just a bad day or a bad week, and you just decide to have sex with the next person that walks by. Now, you know that's not a good idea. You're trying to get yourself not to do that anymore. Maybe it's become kind of a habit with you. Or are you a person who throws tantrums? Lots of times, have you notice how you just start throwing tantrums? You get so angry, you get so upset, it just becomes a crisis all by itself. You're trying to get yourself not to scream. Keep cool.

You know what some people do? They try to kill themselves. They get in a crisis situation, they can't stand it, they decide to kill themselves. Now, those are people who actually think that they're not going to have a crisis if they're dead. Just in case you're thinking of that, which I certainly hope you're not, but I just want to remind you of one thing, just in case. There's absolutely no evidence that killing yourself will help a crisis out. There's no data whatsoever. It's not been in the New York Times. You want to remind yourself of that. You know, a crisis could be worse if you were dead. Who knows? You don't. Neither do I.

Some people take drugs. Are you one of those people? I hope not. But the urge to take drugs, especially if you're a person who's taken drugs in the past, well, that's a crisis. You need crisis survival skills to get yourself through that. So think through maybe there's other things that you're thinking about that I haven't mentioned. Just kind of reviewing your mind. When do you need these skills?

Now, my experience is teaching people these skills that you're probably going to learn them a lot better if you take notes. So my advice to you is that before we get started, you hit the pause button on this program. Get up, go get yourself some paper, get yourself a pen or a pencil, sit back down, and hit the start button and get the program going. And while you're doing that, I'm going to go get myself ready. I'm going to get all my notes together, get all my thinking clear. I'm going to be ready to roll as soon as you get back. I'll be back, and we'll get going.

We're going to go over two sets of skills in this program. The first set is "Improve the Moment" skills, and the second set is "Pros and Cons." If you can't solve the problem, if you're in a crisis, got to function, you could try improving the moment in your mind. So, improving the moment is trying to make the whole thing better in your mind. I'm going to give you seven "Improve the Moment" skills. And the way to remember these skills is to remember the word IMPROVE: Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing in the moment, Vacation, and Encouragement.

So let's start with Imagery. Imagery is when you try to change a situation in imagination. In other words, you're going to try to imagine that the situation is different than the one you're in. So if you're in the middle of a crisis, you could just imagine that you're somewhere else. You could imagine you're lying on a nice beach or in a forest. It's beautiful. You're imagining being somewhere else. Your mind gets you out of the crisis. Now, another kind of imagery can be really helpful, which is you can imagine that everything is going well. In other words, rather than trying to imagine that you're somewhere else, try to imagine that you're coping well. Imagine that the crisis is happening, but you're doing really well. Or imagine that it's turning out okay.

The other thing you can do that can be extremely helpful if you feel threatened by something, especially if you feel threatened when you're not really threatened, is to imagine a place inside yourself that's safe. So, for example, you could imagine that inside of yourself there's a room, and in that room you're very safe. It has locked doors. Everything about it, it's really wonderful. Now, the trick to using this skill in a crisis is to practice it when you're not in a crisis. So what you have to do, out of the crisis, kind of build the room. You're going to want to build the room and practice going into it. Get pretty good at that. Then when you get in a crisis, you can just use that skill. Go within yourself. Practice being in the room.

So the next letter is M, and M stands for Meaning. It can be really hard to go through extreme pain or lots of problems if you start thinking it's irrelevant. Look back on your own life. If you ever had just really painful things happening in your life, and you found yourself saying, "Oh, this doesn't matter. Surviving this is not going to do me any good. I got to get out of this." If you said yes, ask yourself next, "Did that help?" My guess is it didn't. Throwing away meaning usually makes crises worse. So how do you find meaning? Well, if you're spiritual, you can try to find a spiritual meaning. You can read spiritual books. You can listen to tapes, listen to radio shows, watch TV shows that are spiritual. Try to find some spiritual value or meaning in what you're going through. If you're spiritual, you might talk to a minister or rabbi, your local priest, spiritual director. You might ask someone else to help you find a meaning. If you're not spiritual, you might ask yourself, "How could I grow? How could I find some purpose or value?" So what you're going to do is look for value. Try to figure out what's in this. Maybe all right, 99% crisis, 99% trauma. So you might want to look at how does this fit into the universe as a whole? Or how does this fit into the world? Or how am I connected to other things through this? You might realize that you're going to understand other people who are in pain, that you'll be able to cope with pain in the future. So that's finding meaning. Meaning can help.

Let's go to the next skill. The next skill is P. P is for Prayer. Prayer can be really helpful in a crisis. It's amazing to me how many people pray, but they don't pray in a crisis. Now, there are two kinds of prayer that can be helpful in a crisis. The first kind of prayer is the kind of prayer with words. You just talk, either to God, or to Buddha, or to the spirit, or to the universe. It really depends on what you believe in. But you can talk, or you can read spiritual things. If you can't think of a prayer, you might be able to find one in a book.

The other kind of prayer is the prayer of opening up. And that openness is the openness of acceptance. Prayer can really help if you're trying to accept. And you don't have to have words. Don't worry about finding words. You don't really need words. You need an attitude. You need a willingness. You need to turn your mind. But that's it. That's all you have to do. I just gave you two ways to pray, but you may have a way to pray. What is your way? Do you have a way? If you do, and you have a way for prayer that's been helpful to you in the past, you want to remember that in a crisis. That's all you have to do. Remember what you've always done. Prayer is for everyone. I'm the first to admit, but if it's for you, don't forget it.

The next skill starts with R, and R is for Relaxation. Ask yourself, are you the kind of person who in a crisis, you tense yourself up? Do you get all tight? If you're a person who does that, it can really be helpful to relax. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Probably people have said to you, "Just relax." And you've thought to yourself, "Listen, if I could relax, I would relax." So I'm going to tell you how to relax. The first thing to know about relaxation is it's not as hard as it seems if you know a few little tricks. So what are the tricks?

The first trick is this: If you tense a muscle and then relax the muscle, it will get more relaxed than it was before you tensed it. So to do this, one, you want to scan your whole body and ask yourself, "Where in my body am I tense?" So just look for the parts of your body that are tense. And when you find those parts, tense them. Let them go. Tense them. Let them go. Try that right now. Do that with me. Take your fist. We'll just try with our fist. Tense your fist. Hold it tight. Pay attention. Notice it. Let go. Tense. Let go.

I'll tell you another one that really works in public. That one's kind of hard to do if there are a lot of people around. What if you're in a crisis? You're at work, or you're in a meeting, or at a funeral. So I'll give you another one. Try tensing your stomach muscles. Just sit there. Try to be unobtrusive. But while I'm talking, you do it too. I'm doing it. I'm pulling my muscles in. So just sit here and pull your muscles in. I mean, tight, like as tight as you can. Feel them. Really tight. Pull them in. Feel it. Are you doing it now? Let go. You might not want to let go all the way, but let go. Do that two or three times. You'd be amazed.

You could try breathing. You know, lots of times when people get in a crisis, they start to panic. And if you start to panic, you should notice that you're starting to breathe really fast. In and out, in and out, in and out. Listen. In and out. In and out. In and out. That'll create more panic. Not the thing to do. Breathe slowly. Hold it. Breathe out. The idea is to try to breathe a little bit further out each time. For the first couple of breaths, you could even try walking and noticing your breath. Try walking and breathing in and breathing out. You could try counting your steps. That can be useful.

The next letter is O. O stands for One thing in the moment. The idea here is to stop making one moment worse. And the way a lot of us make the moment that we're in worse is we start thinking about the past. Have you ever noticed that? Do you do that? You're in this moment, and then you spend a lot of time thinking about, "Oh, it's always been this way, and look what happened before, and this happened before, this is my eighth crisis," and on and on and on. So what's that do? I mean, this moment may be bad, but think how much worse it is now. You've got not only this crisis, but every other crisis you've ever had in your life. And then what? Some of us also do is not only do we bring the past in, but we start imagining every crisis we're going to have in the future. So it's not only do I have this problem, but now I've got all my future problems. This is terrible. It's never going to stop. It's really awful. I can't stand it. What am I going to do? Da da da da. I mean, really, you can go on and on. So what happens? You not only suffer this moment, but you suffer the past moments and the future moments. Now, I've got to tell you one thing. When you're suffering, usually the moment is enough. In other words, the current moment is all filled up with suffering. You don't really need more suffering. And if you add more suffering, the crisis just gets worse. You're more likely to do something that'll make it worse. It's not a good idea.

The idea and "One thing in the moment" is to throw yourself completely, totally into the moment. You'd be amazed. This is one of the most effective skills I teach. Most people don't like it at the beginning because it's hard to imagine it would work. And then people come back a couple years later. I say to them, "What's the most important thing you learned?" You'd be amazed how many people tell me this was the most important skill they learned. I'll give you an example how you do it. This happened with me. I sometimes go to this really big church in Seattle. It's the cathedral. It's really beautiful. And I have to tell you, the service, it's a little bit on the long side. So I was there one time, and they had this visiting person talking who was giving a sermon. So he starts talking, and I'm, I'm not saying it was a terrible sermon, I just would say it was boring. I mean, really boring. So what did I do? Well, I was sitting. I thought about getting up and leaving. I couldn't, though. I was right in the middle of the row. In fact, I was actually with a friend, so I really couldn't do that. So what did I do? Going like this. Have you ever done that? You know how just, you know, it's amazing the people behind me could tolerate. I was so distressed. Going like this. Oh God, I'm thinking this. I wasn't saying it. I think I was hoping that that preacher was going to look down and see me and say, "Oh, this must be boring. I think I'll stop." However, I'm not kidding. He never did. I'm not even sure he saw me. And if he did see me, well, he wasn't stopping that sermon just because of me. So after a while, I kind of noticed that I was just staying, staying upset. I mean, this was doing me no good. He wasn't quitting, and I wasn't feeling any better, and I couldn't get out of there. So I started asking myself, "Is this really worth it? I mean, really, is this worth it being this miserable?" So I thought, "No, I think I'll try to feel better. I think I'll try to get through this." So what did I do? I decided I'd practice "one thing in the moment." What I did, so I looked up at this guy and I said to myself, "I'm attending." I just decided I was going to pay attention to every single word that guy said. I was going to just hang on every word and every phrase, and I just threw myself into it. You'd be amazed. The first half must have taken six hours. The second half took six minutes. It was over in no time. It's a fabulous skill. I recommend that you try it.

So the next letter, V. V stands for Vacation. The idea here is to try to figure out a way to get a vacation from your troubles. Try to get out of things just for a little while. If you're ever found yourself thinking in the middle of a crisis or when things are really going terrible, you're not feeling good, you say, "I need a vacation." Well, if you can take a real vacation, like get on a plane, or get on a boat, or go to the mountains, or do something like that, that's fabulous. By all means, take the vacation. But sometimes, well, you just can't do it. So what do you do then? How can you take a vacation? The good news is, you could still take a vacation. I'm going to give you some examples. The idea here is to think about it as a mini vacation. You can buy some chips, get yourself something cold to drink, turn on some good television, enjoy life. Sometimes just lying down on the couch. You know those things that you put over your eyes? You lie down, put them over your eyes, breathe in, breathe out, relax. You could do that for five minutes. You could even take one of those for work. You could just close your office door, or go someplace private at your office, put one of those over your eyes, close your eyes, turn the timer on, or ask someone else to tell you when five minutes are up, and just relax for five minutes. So that's the idea of vacations.

Now, I'm going to give you a few rules about vacations because it is sort of easy to mess up vacations. Some people take too many vacations. Are you one of those people? You ever notice how some people are always taking vacations? So these are the rules. First, don't take vacations that'll harm you. If you got a big deadline at work, this is not a time to take a vacation from work. You don't want to take a mental health day when everyone's expecting you to be there for some really important meeting. If you've got one crisis, and then you do that, you'll now have two crises. The whole thing will just get worse. So don't take vacations that harm you.

The second rule is, don't make your vacation too long. Sometimes people say, "Well, I think I'll just take a little break from studying. Oh, so hard. I've studied so much. I think I'll just take a little break. I'm going to go walk around the block." So that's the vacation. Walking around the block. Then I'll come back to study because I've got three more hours to do. They do that at 9:00. So they meet friends. They keep walking. They decide they need a second vacation. They decide, "Well, maybe I'll just add in one TV show." And they get talking. They think, "Well, a little snack." Go on and on. Before you know it, you've used way too much time for your vacation, and now you've really messed things up. Now it's late, and you're tired, and you have an exam tomorrow. What's happened? You have a new crisis.

So those are the two rules: Don't take a vacation that will harm you, and don't make your vacation too long. If you keep those two rules, vacations can be really helpful. They'll give you energy. They'll help you get through the crisis.

The last letter in the word IMPROVE is E, and E stands for Encouragement. This skill is all about how to encourage yourself. What the skill has to do with is talking to yourself. It's kind of simple, really. You just talk to yourself. You say things like, "I can do it. I can stand it. I'll get through this. I've done it before. I'm not a jerk. I can do it." The problem is, in the middle of a crisis, it can be really hard to think of those thoughts. It can be hard to say those things to yourself. So one of the rules of encouraging is you have to say it like you mean it. No halfway statements, no tentative, "Maybe I can do it, maybe it'll be all right." Imagine if you said that to a friend, or if a friend said that to you, how would you feel? It's not very encouraging. You've never seen a cheerleader yell and scream, "Maybe you can win? Maybe you can make a first down?" I mean, cheerleaders don't do that. Cheerleaders cheer. So that's the rule that you've got to follow, otherwise it really won't work.

So try it in your mind right now. I want you to say to yourself, say, "I can get through things." Say it to yourself like you mean it. "I can get through things." Did you say it? How'd it feel? Let's try and experiment out. Put your arms out. I want you to put your arms out with me. Watch. I've got mine out. Now, throw yourself into the moment because we're going to do this for a little while because I'm waiting for your arms to hurt. So just keep sitting there. Just notice. Let your fingers go down. Just notice your arms. Are they starting to feel sorry? Starting to want to drop them? We're just going to away. I want you to just notice how your arms feel. Pay attention. How do they feel? Is this getting hard? All right. Now start saying in your mind, not out loud, "I can't stand it. When's she going to stop? Oh, so awful. Just can't stand it. Oh, so terrible. When is she stopping? Oh, can't stand it. Arms, they hurt. Oh, keep doing that." Notice how it feels. Do this in your mind. All right. Now say in your mind, "Ah, no big deal. I can do this." Now say in your mind, "Oh, I can handle it. I can cope. I can do this. I'm strong. This ain't going to kill me. I can do it." Keep at it. You could say, if you're a woman, you could say, "Go girl! Go girl!" How you doing? Pay attention. Okay. You can drop your arms too. Now, what's the difference? Did you notice the difference? Most people do. It just feels better. It's easier.

The second rule is, when you encourage yourself, you have to say things that are true. You don't want to go around telling yourself you can do things that you could never do, that really no one can do. You're not going to say, "Okay, I've never lifted weights. I can do it. I can lift 500 pounds." No. Be realistic. Encouraging can be really effective. In fact, there's actually a lot of research on this. And the research shows that people who encourage themselves, who say to themselves and think to themselves, "I can do it. I can do this," can actually increase their ability.

Those are the IMPROVE skills: I - Imagery, M - Meaning, P - Prayer, R - Relaxation, O - One thing in the moment, V - Vacation, and E - Encourage Yourself. We have one set of skills left, and this is the skill of Pros and Cons. Thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of particular courses of action or doing certain things. So you think about the advantages of doing things and the disadvantages of doing them, and you think about the advantages of not doing things and the disadvantages of not doing things. There are three steps in Pros and Cons, and we're going to go through each one of them.

So the first step is that you have to actually figure out what's the behavior you're trying to figure out whether you're going to do it or not. So if you're in a crisis and you're thinking of doing something really destructive, you might think about what is that destructive behavior like? You're having an urge to binge, cheat, drink, use drugs, drive too fast, stay in bed all day, drop out of things. You start right now, just for a minute, think through what are the things you do to get you in trouble, make your life go worse. If you could just get yourself revved up, mobilized, motivated, on course, stop doing those behaviors, especially when you're in a crisis, your life would go a whole lot better. So that's step one. Write those behaviors down.

Step two is actually doing the pros and cons. First thing you want to do is get out a piece of paper. Now, on the piece of paper, make a grid. On the top, you're going to want to write "Pros" and "Cons." And then go over to the left side, write "Yes" and "No." So now you've got your pros and cons grid. Let's go through an example. Let's say that you're a person who's had a lot of problems with alcohol. Fact, maybe you were an alcoholic at one point in your life. Now, well, you just got fired from your job. Life's really difficult. You don't really have anything to do. So you start wanting to have a drink. It's kind of a crisis, and you want to have a drink. What are the advantages? Well, you might be thinking, "I'll feel calm immediately. I won't be in so much pain. I'll get to experience that really pleasurable buzz, that warm feeling I get as alcohol is going down my throat." What do you have to lose? Well, you might think, "I'll hate myself. I'll have to start over, and it'll be really hard. I'll feel ashamed." So you've got the pros and cons of drinking.

Now let's look at what are the pros and cons of not drinking. What do I have to gain from not drinking? Feel really competent. I can look my children in the face. I won't feel hung over tomorrow. I won't have pain and suffering in the long run. Now let's look at the cons. If you don't drink, what's the disadvantage? You're going to keep on having pain and suffering, at least for the moment. You'll be more irritable. It's possible you'll keep on drinking. You'll have to start all over. Now you've got the pros and cons. What do you do next? You're the only one who can decide. No one can decide this for you, because no one can tell you what's really important to you. But if drinking is a problem for you, and you know it, then you have to hope that you're going to decide that the disadvantages of drinking and the advantages of not drinking far outweigh anything you've got to gain from drinking. And my guess is, if you do this honestly, thoroughly, thoughtfully, that's what'll happen.

The secret to a really good pros and cons is the first time, do it when you don't have the urge. Do it when you're calm, secure, not in a crisis. So that's step two. You've done your pros and cons. I'm going to assume that you've done it. What's step three? Step three is, don't throw that piece of paper out. You want to keep those pros and cons because you're going to need them in a crisis. Have you ever notice that sometimes when people get in crisis, it really seems like not only do they not want to get out of the crisis, but actually they kind of want to stay in the crisis? Sometimes people think, "If I stay in the crisis, someone else is going to do something. I'm going to stay in the crisis to prove to them how bad it is." Or, "I'm not getting out. Who's going to help me?" Remember that story I was telling you about being in the church and moving around and being sort of miserable the whole time? What was going on? I was trying to get somebody else to do something. It was like, "If I stay miserable, he'll quit talking." Did he? No. Usually it doesn't work. I just have to tell you, that's not a road you want to go down. A lot of people have been down that road. I've never seen that road work. The price is just too high. So do pros and cons on whether to use your skills. But if you decide you want to be effective, you want to survive, you want to get through this in one piece, you don't want to make things worse, these are the skills for you.

All right, so we've gotten through all the skills. Now let's let's review. So what were the first skills we went over? They're the IMPROVE skills, and you can remember them. You just have to remember the word IMPROVE. So start with I. I - Imagery. Imagery is when in a crisis, you create a place inside yourself, sort of a place inside your mind's eye, that you can go to and that you will feel safe in. So that's I - Imagery. You can also, in imagery, remember, just imagine you're somewhere else, like in Hawaii. M - What's that skill? Meaning. The idea here is to see if there's some way that you can create meaning or purpose. Can you find something inside the suffering that you're in that has some sort of value that makes this crisis a lot easier to get through? If you can do that, what's the next letter? P - Prayer. If you're a person who prays, now's the time to pray. A crisis is definitely a time to pray. Well, what kind of prayer? Most of us pray, "Get me out, get me out." That's that's okay. So all right. So maybe you're going to do that. However, a prayer that might be more helpful getting through the crisis is going to be an acceptance prayer. It's going to be an "I accept" sort of prayer. "Thy will be done." What's the next letter? R - R is for Relaxation. Relaxation is a great way to cope in a crisis, mainly because it changes your body. When you change your body from very tense to relaxed, you can often survive a whole lot better. So when you relax, you might just want to go through your body, find each part, see if any of the parts of your body are tense. You can either say the word "relax," let them go, or you can tense them first and then relax them. So that's R. What's the next one? O. What's O stand for? My very favorite skill. One thing in the moment. This is a fabulous skill. Do you remember it? This is when in a crisis, feels overwhelming, what are you going to do? You throw yourself into the moment. The key thing to remember is that if you're in a crisis, generally the crisis is bad enough. You just want to suffer the crisis. "One thing in the moment" is the way to set it up so that you suffer the moment, but not every past crisis you've ever had, and you don't suffer everything in the future. So how do you do that? Do you remember? You throw yourself into an activity. Just one thing. What's the next letter? V - Vacation. So, divine. This is the one where you just take a vacation. Now, what's the secret of vacations? Do you remember? What is the secret? You weren't thinking of taking a long vacation, were you? No, that's not going to help. That might take it, make it worse. So vacation is short, brief, kind of short and sweet. We just have the last letter, and what's the last letter? You got it. E for Encouragement. Encouragement is when you encourage yourself. It's when you talk to yourself. You're sweet to yourself. You cheerlead yourself. You say, "Hey, I can do it. I can make it. I'll get through that." That's encouragement.

All right, so those are the IMPROVE skills. Now let's go on to the Pros and Cons. Pros and Cons, you're going to think about the advantages and disadvantages of doing things. So the pros, which is the advantages, and the cons, which is the disadvantages. Now remember, there are three steps in Pros and Cons. What are they? The first thing you want to do is figure out what's the behavior that you've got a really strong urge to do. In other words, what behavior are you trying to make a decision about? Are you trying to figure out, "Shall I do it or not?" So figure out that behavior. And the second thing you do is you get a piece of paper, and you write down the advantages and disadvantages of the behavior. The third step is that you review your pros and cons. You read it over and you think through, "What's the weight of the argument my pros and cons say do what?" And based on your pros and cons, most of the time, you're going to know what's the wise thing to do. All right, so then, of course, there's the fourth step. You have to do the wise thing. So that's Pros and Cons.

Now, let me just give you a little hint. You're a lot better off if you write out the pros and cons for behaviors that you sometimes do that make your life go worse. If you write out those pros and cons when you're not in a crisis. Because the facts of the matter are, when you're in a crisis, it is unbelievably difficult to write out pros and cons. Why is it so difficult? Well, you're urged sometimes to do something to run away or escape or do something destructive. Well, it's so high that if you write out the pros and cons, they're going to convince you to do it. The only reason they're convincing you to do it is because you want to do it. So write your list out some other time. Now, if you do that, you can't lose the list. So you've got to put it someplace where you remember where you put it. So do, do your pros and cons. Keep your list somewhere. If you get in a crisis, you're overcome with an urge, pull your list out, read it over, do the wise thing.

All right, so those are the two sets of skills: Improve the Moment and Pros and Cons. Now, one final thing is really helpful to remember, and that's the following: Crisis survival skills work if you survive. Lots of times people say, "Oh, I don't feel better. I wanted to feel better. I'm not happy. These skills don't work." Or they'll say, "Well, the problem's not solved. The skills don't work. Well, I've still got the crisis. These skills don't work." You want to remember, these are not skills for solving problems. And they're not skills for improving your life. And they're not skills for making changes in yourself. And they're definitely not skills that right this second are going to make you a lot happier than you already are. What these skills are for is to help you get through the moment without making it worse. So ask yourself, "Did I make it worse?" If you say no, the skills worked.

So it's the end of this program. The really bad news is I have to say goodbye. The good news, well, there is another program that has a whole another set of crisis survival skills. So you may be interested in those skills also. But I'm hoping that the skills that we reviewed in this particular program, well, I'm hoping they help for you. If they do, I hope you'll write and tell me. My email address is going to come up on the screen in just a moment. So write me now. Now, I actually want to hear from you also. If none of this works, and I, in particularly, want to hear from you if you happen to know a skill that really works, that's not on this type. Send it to me. It'll be wonderful. Thank you. I wish you well.

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If you're interested in ordering other videotapes in the "From Chaos to Freedom" series, please contact Behavioral Tech at 206-675-8588 or visit our website at www.behavioraltech.com.

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Have you ever wondered why some people get so destroyed by suffering, and other people, when they suffer, they don't get destroyed? In fact, some people not only don't get destroyed by suffering, but they, they seem to become even stronger just by going through suffering. Have you ever thought about that? Well, I didn't think about it for a long time because I was brought up believing that suffering is something everybody can grow through. So I was just brought up thinking that. So I always thought it was true. If you wanted to grow through it, you could. Then when I started working with people who suffer a lot, both as a psychotherapist, but also I've worked a lot with the poor and with the homeless, I started realizing, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not so sure this is true. Everybody doesn't go through suffering. Some people get destroyed by suffering despite their best effort. Some people simply get destroyed." So I started asking myself, "What was the difference?" I mean, what's the difference between the person who gets destroyed and the person who doesn't? Why is it that when some people get knocked down, they keep going? They get knocked down, they get up, and they go again. Other people, they get knocked down, and they just stay down. They never get up. So I thought to myself, "Well, I need to find the answer to this question." Mainly because I work with a lot of people who suffer, and I work with a lot of people who seem to be getting destroyed by it. So I thought, "Well, if I could find the answer to that question, I could teach it, and I could help the people that I work with." So I started trying to figure it out. So I thought a lot about it. I also did a lot of reading. I decided, "Well, all right, the thing to do is I'll try to read as much as I can about people who've had lots of suffering in their lives, tragedies, and traumas, and the people who somehow make it." And I'll try to figure out what's the difference between people who make it and people who don't make it. The purpose of this program is for me to teach you what I've learned, and all the readings that I've done, all the thinking that I've done, and all the people I've talked to. What we're going to focus on in this program is how to make it, how to keep yourself from being destroyed, even how to grow or to build when a life that you're living feels like it's not worth living. We're going to talk about three sets of skills, or three sets of behaviors, or three things to practice that seem to be what the people who grow all have in common. So there's

A lot of information that's going to be coming your way in this particular program. You may want to take some notes. Most people find that pretty useful. So, if you want to take some notes, I recommend that you do.

The thing to do right now is to get up and put this program on pause. Go get yourself some paper. Get a pencil or a pen. Come back, hit the start button, get yourself all comfy again, and get ready to go.

Now, while you're doing all of that, I'm going to get myself all organized. I'm going to get organized and be ready to teach the skills when you get back.

One more thing. If you just so happen to have my skills training book, when you get up to go get paper, go get your skills training manual. If you don't have the manual but you've got the handouts, well, go get your handouts. Bring them back. And when you come back and sit down, you're going to want to open your book up and you're going to find the following handout. You're going to find "Basic Principles of Accepting Reality." And there are two pages. On the first page, you're going to have "Radical Acceptance" and "Turning the Mind." We're going to go over those skills. And on the second page, you're going to have "Willingness" and "Willfulness." We're going to go over those two. And when you get back, I'll be back. I'll be ready. So, I hope you are. Let's go.

There may be an infinite number of really painful things that can happen to you, but there are not an infinite number of responses you can make to pain. In fact, if you sit back and think about it, there are only four. The only four things you can do when painful problems come into your life. What do you think they are? Think for a minute. Problem is in your life, pain, suffering, something you don't want in it. How can you respond?

Well, the first thing you could do is you could solve the problem. You could figure out a way to either end the painful event, or you could figure out a way to leave the situation that's so painful. So that's the first thing you can do: solve the problem.

What's the second thing you could do? You could try to change how you feel about the problem. You could figure out a way to take a negative in your life, make it into a positive. All right, so that's the second thing you could do.

What's your other option? You could accept it. So that's the third thing you could do. You could just accept the problem. Okay. That's not everything you could do. There is a fourth alternative. What do you think it is? You could stay miserable. That's the only other option you've got.

So, you're going to have to either solve it, change how you feel about it, accept it, or stay miserable.

The skills I'm going to be talking about, you could call them reality acceptance skills. And, and they're three: radical acceptance, turning the mind, and willingness. We're going to start with the first one, radical acceptance.

Can you think of any really serious problems, really serious pain, serious traumas, things that make you really unhappy that you can't change? Maybe you've had a child who's died. People who've had a child who's died never get over it. Maybe you have a permanent disability. What are your options? You can be miserable, or you can accept the reality that you've got it. Maybe you've had a really painful childhood. You know, a lot of people have to live with that. You just have to live with the fact that those happy childhoods that you see on TV aren't in your life, and there's nothing you can do about it. Maybe you didn't get a job that you really wanted. There's nothing you can do about it. These are just not the kinds of things you can start being happy about. So what are your options? You can either be miserable, or you can figure out a way to accept the reality of your own life.

So, what's radical accepting? What do I mean by the word radical? Radical means complete and total. It's when you accept something from the depths of your soul. When you accept it in your mind, in your heart, and even with your body. It's total and complete. When you've radically accepted something, you're not fighting it. It's when you stop fighting reality. That's what radical acceptance is.

The problem is, telling you what it is and telling you how to do it are two different things. Radical acceptance can't really be completely explained. Why not? Because it's something that's interior. It's something that goes on inside yourself. But all of us have experienced radical acceptance. So, what I want you to do right now is try to focus in on some time in your life when you've actually accepted something radically, completely, and totally.

So, let's think about it. When might that be? Well, think back in your own life to either something you've lost, perhaps someone you've loved has died, or something that you really wanted that you didn't get, a job you really wanted and you didn't get it. Think about something that you wanted that you either didn't get, or something you had that you've lost. Now, sit back, close your eyes, and go back in time to right before you found out that you lost what you had, or right before you found out that you weren't going to get what you wanted. Imagine that again. Kind of go back there. And then go through that period where you weren't accepting it. And then move to imagining when you did accept it. So, kind of like relive that. Most people can find someplace in their life where that's happened to them and where they've accepted it. And that's what I mean by radical acceptance.

I'm guessing some of you tried that exercise and you just couldn't think of a time when you've accepted something, so you couldn't imagine what it felt like because you, you couldn't even remember a time when you'd done it. Don't worry about it. Just try it another time, maybe after the program today, tomorrow, some other day. Just see if you can go back to a time when you've accepted. But for the moment, let me tell you what it might feel like. Often, when you've accepted, you have this sense of letting go of a struggle. It's just like you've been struggling and now you're not. Sometimes, if you've accepted, you just have this sense of being centered, like you feel centered inside yourself somehow. You may have a lot of sadness. Acceptance often goes with a lot of sadness, actually. But even though you've got sadness, there's a feeling like a burden is lifted. Usually, if you've accepted, well, you feel ready to move on with your life. You sort of feel free, ready to move. So that's what it feels like. Let's keep going.

Pain is pain. Suffering, agony, are pain plus non-acceptance. So if you take pain, add non-acceptance, you end up with suffering. Radical acceptance transforms suffering into ordinary pain.

There are three parts to radical acceptance. First part is accepting that reality is what it is. The second part is accepting that the event or situation causing you pain has a cause. The third part is accepting life can be worth living even with painful events in it.

So, let's start with the first: accepting reality for what it is. What do we mean by that? Well, I'll give you an example from my own life. This is a good example because it makes the point that acceptance can actually do you some good. I once had this job. I was a clerk typist for a big insurance company, but I really wanted to be a social worker. So I applied for a new job. I went to an employment agency and I asked them to help me get a new job, and I told them I wanted a job in social work. So they got me a job in social work. So I gave notice to the job that I had, which was a really good job in the sense that the people were fabulous, and I got paid at least enough to live on. And I gave them notice. I quit that job and I went to the social work job. I was so excited, I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I was. Finally had a job in social work. So I went in. So the first day, you know, I have to do training and stuff. So what did they have me do? Well, they had me typing. So I typed all day. And I was thinking, oh, well, it's not so terrible. I'm not going to have to keep typing. But the second day, what did they have me do? I was typing again. So I went and talked to my supervisor and I said, "Well, when am I going to get to do the social work?" She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, I mean, when, when do I get to do something like social work work?" She said, "What do you mean? Your job is typing." And the first thing that went through my mind was, "No, that's not true. I took a job with a social work agency. This can't be true." And I actually thought of staying. I thought of staying and trying to make it into a social work job. That would be denying reality because the facts of the matter are, it really was a typing job. So what are my options? Well, I could have stayed miserable. I could have gotten hysterical. I could have stayed there, fought, told them that they should make it into social work, how mean they were for not doing that. I could have done a lot of things. My other option was just to accept this was not a social work job. I made a mistake. I needed to correct the mistake. And the way to correct that mistake, well, it was to get another job. So that's just what I did. When my next break came, I called the employment agency. I told them I'd made a mistake. I needed another job. They said, "Fine." They looked for it. Took two weeks, but I found another job. I was a lot happier.

Now, think about your own life. What is the reality you're denying? What are you not accepting for what it is?

The second part of acceptance is accepting that every event and every situation has a cause. Accepting that every event has a cause is the opposite of saying "Why me?" Now, there's another opposite for thinking events have causes, and that opposite is when you say things should not be the way they are. Now, "should not be the way they are" is non-acceptance. We never say that about things we're accepting, or we like, or we want. We say "should not" about things that we think aren't caused. They should not be this way. So the opposite of "should not" is "should." And once you think that everything has a cause, then you think reality should be the way it is. Acceptance from this point of view is when you say, "Everything should be as it is."

So, let me give you an example. Imagine that there's a child on a bicycle, and the child's on a hill, and the child is racing down the hill, going really fast on his bicycle, and he goes into an intersection. And coming the other direction is a car. And that car is driving, let's say, at the speed limit. That car is not speeding. But the intersection is unmarked. There's not a stop sign, there's not a stop light, and there's not a yield sign. So we're going to imagine the kid is racing down the hill, the car is coming the other way, and they meet up right in the middle of the intersection. The car hits the kid, and the kid dies. If you say, "It should not have happened," I would say, "Well, it should have." There wasn't a stop sign, there wasn't a stop light, there wasn't a yield sign. The kid was going fast. The car was going the speed limit. Something blocked the driver's view. The child was a child. Children go fast. If you wanted to say that should not have happened, you would have to create causes for it not to happen. You'd have to do something about all those causes. That's an example of accepting reality as it is, and accepting that reality has causes.

Now, do you think I approve of this? Do you think I think it's good that the child got hit by the car? No. Is that what I want? No. Are, were the child's mother? Am I going to go on a campaign to get stop signs put there or make the speed limit lower? Yes. Well, I teach my child not to race downhills. I would certainly try. But until the causes are different, that event should happen. It was caused.

So, think of a situation in your life. Can you think of one? Can you think of one where you've been saying, "Why me?" or "It shouldn't have happened"? See if you can think of one.

What's acceptance? Radical acceptance is not necessarily knowing what the causes are. Like in the example with the car, well, all right, I don't know if the problem was it wasn't a stop sign, or the speed limit was too fast. I don't really know. But I accept that there was a cause, even if I don't know it. So, think of a situation in your life. See if you can radically accept that even though it's not clear what the cause is, there is some cause. Think back in your life to something either about yourself that you found hard to accept, or something that someone else, you found hard to accept. But it's not really a catastrophe. All right? You got it? Now, think through what caused that event to happen. So, what you want to go through in your mind is just be thinking now, "Why did that happen? What caused it?" Cuz often, when we don't accept something, you know, you say, "It shouldn't have happened," like somehow the rules in the universe should be different. So the first thing you want to say when you're trying to accept is, you say, "Wait a second. The rules of the universe are the rules of the universe." Then you try to figure out what caused it.

Now, you know, most of the time, when people don't accept things, they start saying things shouldn't be the way they are. Have you ever noticed that? Do you say, "This shouldn't be that way"? We all do it. So, if what you're trying to practice is acceptance, you're going to try to go the other way. You're going to try to say, "Everything is as it should be." That's the way you practice. First, you think, "What caused it?" And as you notice what caused it, you're going to notice that what happened should have happened, given those causes.

Sort of sounds like I'm saying if you can change your thinking, everything will be all right, right? Does sound that way? But it's not true. Now, acceptance is a lot easier if you can change your thinking, but that's not all there is to it, especially not with radical acceptance. Whole idea in radical acceptance is you've got to accept all the way. You accept with your mind, you accept with your heart, you accept with your body.

Now, how would you do that? Well, the short answer is, you practice. What do you practice? Well, what you want to practice is letting go. You're going to let go of tension, tightness. Let go of your muscles. You know how when you're not accepting, how you get all tense? Face gets tense, your arms get tense, your hands get tense. If you ever notice that people get sick to their stomach when they're not accepting? I mean, it's all around. Your whole body just tightens up. So, if you want to accept, start with just letting go. You can start letting go of your forehead, let go of your eyes, let go of your cheeks, let go of your jaw, let go of your shoulders, let go of your arms, let go of your stomach, your legs, your calves, your feet. Just start letting go. Sometimes, when people start letting go, they say, "No, I don't want to." You tighten back up. It's all right. Don't worry about it. That happens. Start over. Just start relaxing again. Just keep letting go.

You know, acceptance, it's all about the word "yes." It's yes to reality. It's yes to the moment. It's yes to just what is. So, another way to practice is you could just walk outside, maybe late at night, look up at the stars, and you could just say the word "yes." It's yes to the universe. You could go out and practice every night. You could say "yes" two times a night. So, there are lots of ways to practice. You might think of other ways. You could practice them.

Let's go back to the program. So, what else do you have to do? You have to do one final thing. You have to accept that life can be worth living, even if really painful events are in your life. What's that mean? Well, it means that you have to find a way to not say that life is a catastrophe. How about if we take an example? You get thrown in jail for a crime you didn't commit. You are innocent. And now it's gone to the Supreme Court, and they didn't overturn your conviction. So it's looking like, not only you in jail, let's imagine you're in there for something really serious. So you're in there for life. What are your options? Well, you certainly can not solve that problem. You're not going to get yourself out of jail. And to be honest, it just doesn't seem to me it's going to be possible for you to start being happy that you are an innocent person in jail. So I think we're going to rule that one out. So what are your options? Okay, you could be miserable, distraught, upset. You could cry every day for the rest of your life. Or you could accept it and figure out a way to build a life worth living inside a prison. To go from unendurable agony to endurable pain, you're going to have to accept that you can build a life. Because if you don't accept it, well, what happens? You're not going to build a life. And building a life worth living actually takes a fair amount of work. Believing that you can't do it makes it almost impossible. Believing that you can do it makes it a lot easier. So the chances are a lot higher that you'll actually do it, you'll build a life worth living.

So, what gets in the way of radical acceptance? Lots of things do. The most common thing that gets in the way is the belief that if you radically accept, that means you're approving, you're going to be passive, you're resigned. People I've worked with, they almost always say this. They say, "What are you talking about me radically accept? I thought you were trying to teach me to stand up for myself. How could I do that if I radically accept it?" Other people say, "Are you kidding? That's the problem with the world. We accept too much. The world's going to hell on a handcart and no one's doing anything about it."

If you want to change something, you have to accept it first. You can't change something you don't accept. If you don't face the reality as it is, if you deny it, how are you going to change it? If you think there's no cause, that it is just happening magically or fate or luck, how are you going to change it? So acceptance is required.

Don't believe me? Huh. All right, I'll give you an example. Imagine the following: You're a person who's buying a new house, and you finally found the house of your dreams. There's only one problem with the house: it's purple, and you hate the color purple. So you say when you buy, "All right, I'll pay you this much money, and you get it signed, sealed, delivered. When you get to that house, it is not going to be purple." Fine. The big day comes. So exciting. You get your keys. You go to the house. Not only is the house still purple, but the owners have moved, and you don't even know where they are. All right. Who do you think would get that house changed the fastest? The person who walks in and says, "I can't do it! This is a disaster! Oh God, where are those people? We got to get up this! I'm so mad! What? I'm just not going to tolerate this! I just can't believe..." And that person goes on and on and on. Maybe they storm out, get in the car, leave. They say, "We're not buying that house." But can you get out of it? No. That's one person.

Now, imagine the other person. They go in, they say, "Huh. I'm so disappointed. I didn't want the house purple. All right. Where's the nearest paint store?" Who's going to get it changed first? The person who accepted that the walls were purple, or the person who threw a tantrum? What do you think? Well, it's the person who accepted it.

So, if you want things to change, accept them, then change them. Because when we talk about accepting reality as it is, we're not saying accept reality as it is and believe it can never change. Reality is always changing. If you want to have an influence on how it changes, it's in your interest to accept how it is right now. It's really easy to accept things you like. And when you're happy, you probably don't even think about accepting it. When things are going your way, they're what you approve of, they're what you want. Acceptance is really easy.

So, when is acceptance hard? Well, it's the hardest when you hate what's happening to you, or you really disapprove of it, or it's causing you a lot of pain. So the bottom line is, is the higher the pain, the harder the acceptance. Let me give you an example. You get married to a nice guy, then you discover this guy has lots of wonderful qualities that you had actually never noticed. He's completely different than you thought. He's 10 times more wonderful than you thought. Do you think that'd be easy to accept or hard to accept? Right, easy.

Well, let's take another case. You marry a guy. He's a nice enough guy. Now you're married. You get to know him. You discover he has lots of negative qualities. In fact, he's got a lot of things about him that you had not known and you do not like. Easy or hard? Hard.

Now, why do you think that is? Why is it harder to accept really painful things? Generally, it's because secretly, somewhere inside us, we actually believe that if we refuse to accept something that we don't like, all we have to do is throw a tantrum or refuse to accept it.

The next skill we're going to talk about is the skill of turning your mind. Now, turning your mind is a great skill because radical acceptance is not something you can do once. It's something you have to do over and over and over. And how do you get yourself to do that? You get yourself to do that by turning the mind. What you have to practice is turning the mind towards acceptance. It's a little bit like walking down a road and, and you keep coming to forks in the road. One direction, accepting. The other direction, rejecting. Turning the mind is when you keep turning your mind towards the acceptance route. So in life, you keep coming to forks, and you have to keep turning the mind to the accepting route.

Getting yourself to do it can be really hard. You have to practice over and over and over. The good news is, if you practice turning the mind towards acceptance, eventually you'll practice acceptance more often. And if you do that, what happens? Suffering gets less intense. Suffering goes down to ordinary pain.

How do you do it? Well, the first step is you have to actually notice that you're not accepting. The tip-off to not accepting generally is going to be anger, bitterness, annoyance, or you may be falling into the sea of "Why me?" So you're going to want to notice that. Or you might find that you're always trying to escape reality. You're trying to block things out all the time. You're hiding behind other things, or you're covering up how you're really feeling with other things. Do you find yourself saying all the time, "Why? Why is this happening? Why is this happening?" So notice. Notice that you're not accepting.

The next step is, make an inner commitment to accept. The inner commitment is the turning the mind to the road of accepting. So this isn't accepting. Don't worry. You don't have to do it right away. You just have to make the commitment. So go within yourself and make the commitment. In other words, go inside yourself and simply turn your mind towards acceptance.

The third step, do it again. Sometimes you may have to do it again, over and over, many times in a minute. Sometimes you have to do it many times in a day. So that's how you do it. Step one, notice. Step two, inner commitment. Step three, do it again.

So, let's take an example. Let's imagine that you're on the bus, and the bus is taking a really long time, and you want to get where you're going. See, look at your watch, and it's already 45 minutes, and it's usually only 20. You may start noticing you're having lots of non-acceptance thoughts: "I can't stand this. They have to hurry up. This shouldn't be taking so long. How much longer? How much longer?" Well, let's say that you've noticed all this. Then you want to practice turning the mind. The first thing you might do is look at all those thoughts and see if you could replace them. How could you do that? Well, you could say, "All right, this is a pain, but it's not a catastrophe." You could say, "I don't like it. I'm frustrated. I can stand it." You could say, "Everything has a cause. There's a reason the bus driver doesn't drive better." Then you could notice yourself, see that you're starting to get annoyed, fidget again. You just repeat it over and over and over.

So the key idea here is that if you're trying to get from non-acceptance to radical acceptance, you first have to turn the mind.

So, what's willingness? Willingness is the realization that you are part of and connected to some cosmic process. Not only that, but it's a commitment to active participation in that process. Willingness is when you allow the world to be what it is, and no matter what it is, you agree to participate in the world. So willingness has all to do with the attitude or the stance that you bring to life.

Life is a lot like being a batter in front of a pitching machine. So what happens when you're in front of a pitching machine? There's a machine, and it's throwing balls at you, and you're standing at one end, and the machine's at the other, and the balls start coming. You've got a bat. Now, if a ball's coming at you, and the pitching machine is throwing it, what are your options? Well, you could either take your bat, pull it back, try to hit the ball. Or you could throw a tantrum. You could get really upset. You can say, "It's coming too fast! I don't like it! I'm not doing it! I'm not hitting that ball anymore! Stop!" Do you think the balls would stop coming if you did that? No. Life is like that. You can get as upset as you want about life, but actually life just keeps coming, one moment right after the next. What are your options? You can stand there, do nothing, let the ball go by. Or you could stand in front of the ball and just get hit by it. Or you could try to hit the ball. Willingness is trying to hit the ball.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to explain willingness to people that I work with, I remind them that life is a lot like playing cards. So imagine that you're in a card game. You get a hand of cards, as does everybody else. Now, what's the objective in a card game? The objective is to play the cards you get, right? That's the game. You get the cards, you play them. So imagine you're at a card game, you get your cards, other people get their cards, and one of the players gets mad about their cards, throws them down and says, "I don't like my cards! I want more cards!" You say, "Well, those are the ones you got dealt." And they said, "I don't care! It's not fair!" Said, "Well, those are your cards." "No, I'm not playing these cards!" What would you think? Would you want to play with that player? Probably not. Who do you think is going to win at the card game? Well, it's probably the person who plays the cards that's willingness.

Throwing the cards down and walking out, that's willfulness. Sitting back and saying, "I don't care. Oh well. I got a bad hand. Poor me. Whatever." Just throwing any old card out, willfulness. The idea when you're playing a hand of cards is to play as skillfully as you can. That's willingness. It has everything to do with throwing yourself into life, participating in a willing manner.

Willfulness is the opposite of willingness. If willingness is realizing that you're a part of and connected to life, willfulness, it's when you forget life. It's when you deny it. It's when you refuse to be part of it. When you want to sit on the sidelines, or you try to ignore it, or you try to destroy it. Willfulness is a little bit like the terrible twos, when you start saying "no, no, no," but you're saying no to life itself. You're saying no to reality. You're saying no to what is.

All of us have experiences of willfulness. Let's say something's happened to you, it's really painful. Sooner or later, you figure out, "All right, I need to accept this." So you turn your mind towards acceptance. And just as your mind's turning, it's almost there. What happens? Up pops willfulness. "No! I refuse! I am not going to do it!" What do you do when willfulness shows up? Well, the first thing you want to do when willfulness shows up is just notice it. You observe it, you identify it, you describe it. You say, "Willfulness has shown up." Second, radically accept the willfulness. You've got to accept that it really is there. Third, turn your mind. You turn your mind to willingness. Turn your mind towards acceptance. Willingness, participating in reality just as it is.

What if you're having trouble getting yourself to turn your mind? You want to, but your mind isn't turning. What can really be helpful when that happens is to try a willing posture. You know, sometimes you can have a really willful posture. Your mind's going one way, and your body's going another. So try a willing posture. What would that be? Well, open your hands. Try it right now. Just open your hands. It is actually hard to be willing with clenched fists. Open your hands. Relax your body. Sit like this, or stand like this.

So, what if that doesn't work? What do you do next? The next step is ask yourself, "What's the threat?" Usually, immovable willfulness has to do with some sort of threat. We're thinking that if we're willing, we have something to lose, something terrible is going to happen to us. There's something dangerous out there. That may be true. Also, really immovable willfulness also involves some sort of catastrophe. We start saying, "Not only is there a threat, not only is it dangerous, but I won't be able to deal with it." So we deny it. We push it away. We ignore it. Willfulness allows us to do that. But remember, willingness is the active participation in reality. Willingness is what you need to overcome a threat. Willingness isn't approval, and it's definitely not lying down and letting yourself get rolled over. So ask yourself, "What's the threat?" Then you could ask yourself, "What's the catastrophe?"

Reality acceptance skills are the skills that you need when really painful events happen in your life, and you can't change the painful event. You can't solve it. You can't make it go away. And you can't turn it into a positive. It's a negative that just won't become a positive, and you're miserable. When that happens, practice reality acceptance.

So, what are you going to practice? First, you're going to practice accepting radically. You're going to want to accept that the event has actually happened. You're going to need to accept that there's a cause. It happened for some reason. You may not know what the reason is, but there is a reason. And you're going to want to accept that you can move through it. You can develop a life that has satisfaction, meaning, and worth in it, even with this painful event in your life. In order to do that, you're going to have to turn the mind over and over and over. When you reach the fork in the road with pain in the middle of it, turn your mind to acceptance, away from rejection, and practice willingness. Practicing willingness means recognizing that you're part of life, that you're connected to things. But it's more than that. You, it's not just recognizing that you're part of life, but it's actually agreeing to be part of life.

These are the skills of reality acceptance. Sounds easy? Well, it probably doesn't sound easy. Probably sounds hard. It is hard. It's really hard. All of us are still practicing this. This is not one of those things you're going to get perfect at. There's not going to be a day when you're going to say, "All right, I've got it. I've got it. I can radically accept. I turn the mind all the time, and I'm willing." That day is not going to come. This is the only set of skills that I teach that I would have to say just about everybody has to practice just about every day of their lives.

The way to practice these skills at the beginning, when they're really hard, is to find small things to practice on first. If you start trying to practice on the really big things, you're not going to be able to do it. So find something small. Practice on that. With willfulness, notice it. You could start by counting it slowly. Try to replace it. Radical acceptance, notice when you're not accepting. You could start with counting it slowly. Try to replace it. Turning the mind, write yourself a note. Put it somewhere in your house. Put it on the refrigerator. All you have to write is "Turn the mind." Put it up. Try to practice it. Practice it every time you open the refrigerator.

If you keep practicing these skills, they do get easier. It's really the truth. They do. You'll get better at it. Life will get easier. All right, so those are the skills: radical acceptance, remember the word radical, complete, total, all the way. Turning the mind, over and over and over and over and over. And willingness, entering life with willingness.

Now, I know that these are really difficult skills. They've been difficult for me. They're difficult for everybody I know. And the facts of the matter are, every single person I know is practicing these skills. But I think if you practice them, you'll find over time, may take a while, may be slower than you want, but I think you're going to find them really helpful. The secret is, don't reject them right away. Don't reject them if you don't feel better right away, or somehow your life isn't worth living right this minute. These skills take time to work. But if you keep at it, I think they will work.

So, I'd love to hear from you. I'd like to know, are they helpful or aren't they? My email is going to come up in this program in just a moment. I hope you'll write it down. I hope you'll send me an email and tell me what you think about the skills. Now, if you just so happen to know something that I haven't talked about in this program, you think it might improve my program the next time I do one, I hope you'll tell me that too. I'd love to hear from you. Take care. Goodbye.

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If you're interested in ordering other videotapes in the "From Chaos to Freedom" series, please contact Behavioral Tech at 206-675-8588 or visit our website at www.behavioraltech.com.

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Do you often feel that your emotions or impulses are in control and not you? Is your mind often filled with worries about the future or anxieties about the past? Do you feel like you can't live in the present? Would you like to be free? Free to live according to your own beliefs? Would you like to deepen your ability to consciously participate in your own life? Any of this is true for you, this program is for you. Welcome. I'm Marsha Linehan. I'm a professor at the University of Washington and I'm a research psychologist. And I do research to develop treatments. Basically, I develop treatments for people who have problems. I'm going to be talking to you in this program about a set of skills. Not really that I developed. These are a set of skills I'm going to teach you, but they're a set of skills that were taught to me. They were so valuable for me that I started thinking maybe they'd be valuable for someone else. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly had I learned and how exactly could I teach it to someone else. And that's what this program is about. And the name of the skills that I'm going to be talking about is mindfulness skills. So that's the focus of this whole program: mindfulness.

Mindfulness refers to the quality of attention, or the quality of awareness, or the quality of presence that you bring to everyday life. It's a way of living your life awake, which is to say with your eyes open instead of your eyes closed. You know, most people live their lives as if their eyes were closed a good part of the time. You know, life, it's a lot like walking across a room with the lights off. There's lots of furniture. You're trying to get from one side to the other. Mindfulness is when you're trying to get there as effectively and skillfully as you can. You turn the lights on so that you can see the furniture. You've got to admit that if you turn the lights on and you see the furniture, your chance of getting from one side to the other without tripping over the furniture is a lot higher than if you keep your lights off. A non-mindful life is the same thing as trying to get across a room with the lights off.

Mindfulness as a practice is thousands of years old. In fact, it exists in every single religious and spiritual tradition that I've ever heard of, both Western and Eastern spiritual traditions. It just goes by different names. Now, what's interesting about it is, and what is interesting to me also as a scientist, is that although that's the spiritual tradition and mindfulness has been there for years, what's been happening over the last, I don't know, 10 years or so, maybe 15, there's been an emerging tradition in Western science that's been looking at the very same practice. So you find now in psychology, also, a really big emphasis on the practice of mindfulness. The good thing about this is that what you find if you start looking at the spiritual tradition and if you look at the sort of Western science tradition is that they both start saying exactly the same thing. In other words, they're coming up with the same insights. And that's what I'm going to talk about somewhat in this program is the insights that you can get from the Eastern and Western spiritual traditions and the insights that you can get from Western science.

What are mindfulness skills? Well, they're two kinds. There's what you do and how you do it. What are the "what" skills? Observing, describing, participating. Now, the one thing about "what" skills that I'm going to ask you to remember is that when it comes to what you're doing, you can only do one thing at a time. If you're being mindful, part of being mindful is one thing at a time. So we're going to focus here on three "whats," but we're going to do it one at a time, and I'm going to have you practicing with me as we go through. And as we go through, you try to do one thing at a time. How many things are you doing right now? Have you gotten up to get a piece of paper to make notes? If you haven't, you don't want to get up and get a piece of paper to take notes while I'm talking. That would be two things at a time. So get up and pause this program. Go get yourself some paper, get a pencil. Come back. When you come back, get it started again. The good news is, watching a program and taking notes is like going to a class and taking notes. It's a complex thing, but it's one thing at a time. So you can do that.

Are you ready? Observing is the first "what" skill. Now, the secret to observing is to focus on just one thing at a time. So the idea isn't to be observing, you know how sometimes you could be saying, "I'm observing. I'm looking over here, and I'm looking there, and I'm looking here, and I'm looking there. Well, I'm just observing everything in the room." That's fabulous. It's perfectly fine to do it. I'm not telling you not to do it. I'm only saying that's not the mindfulness skill of observing. The mindfulness skill of observing is when you keep your mind focused on the same thing. So let's try that. Put your hand right now on the table in front of you, or you can put it on your leg. Just pay attention to your hand. All of your attention on the palm of your hand. Did you just notice what the palm of your hand felt like? That's noticing. That's just observing.

Now, let me ask you something. When you were just observing your hand, did you start describing what it felt like? Did you say, "Hot, cool, hard, soft"? It is really hard to notice things without at the same time starting to describe them. However, I guarantee you, it's an amazing fact of life that if you practice this, you'll find that over time, you will get quieter and quieter, quieter and quieter, and you'll actually learn how to observe things without a running commentary. You could observe things outside of yourself, or you could observe things inside of yourself.

If you want to get mindful, you've got to be able to look in and out. Now, let's talk about observing inside. First, some people are just downright scared to do that. They're afraid of what they'll see if they look inside. Some people say, "If I have to look inside myself, I'll be overwhelmed. Feelings will come up that I don't want. Thoughts will come up that I don't want. Who knows what'll happen? But it's not going to be anything I want. No, I am not doing it." All right. If that's you, that's not where you want to start. You're going to start practicing observing things outside of yourself. Now, that's not to say that you're not going to, sooner or later, going to have to look inside. But if it's too hard to look in, to start, look out.

Other people, on the other hand, that's all they ever do is look inside. They experience themselves all the time. No matter what they're doing, they're kind of sort of overwhelmed with thoughts running through their mind, emotions popping up. They can't get away from themselves. They miss just about everything that goes on outside of themselves. That kind of person is going to have to practice looking outside of themselves.

So, let's practice. First, just watch the screen. If you watch it, you're going to notice I'm going to disappear. Good news is, I'm going to reappear. But I want you to just watch it. Now, watch it and try not to describe it.

Let's do another one. This time, we're going to try listening to sound. Now, the trick to mindfulness is, don't close your eyes. I mean, what's the point of learning how to be mindful with your eyes closed? It's not that useful. You want to learn how to be mindful with your eyes open. But if you want to practice with your eyes open, you don't want to get distracted by everything in the world. So why don't you just find a place for your eyes? Find something to look at. You can look down. You can look at anything in front of you. It really doesn't make any difference what you're looking at. Most people close their eyes a little bit. I don't, because if I close my eyes even a little bit, I always want to close them all the way. So find a place for your eyes, but then pay attention to what you hear. Just listen.

Let's do one more. We're going to do the most common mindfulness practice in the world. It's the one that you find in every culture and just about every mindfulness group or class on mindfulness that you ever get yourself into is going to focus on this one. What's the one thing you're going to have with you your entire life that no one could ever take away from you? Your breath. So how do you practice this one? Well, first, sit back. If you're sitting, just sit back. Try to make your back sort of straight, mainly because you want to be comfortable. Find a place for your eyes. You're going to want to keep your mouth slightly open, or at least your teeth slightly apart. So you want to kind of relax the bottom part of your mouth. But...

You're going to breathe through your nose now. Just notice the breath coming in. Notice the breath as it goes up your nostril, then it goes down the back of your throat. Then notice your chest coming up. Try to breathe really deep and just notice breath coming in, down your back of your throat, and then notice your chest coming up. And breathe out. Breathe out through your nose, kind of slowly, not too fast. Just try that for a couple of breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. Just notice. Just pay attention. Be able to do that. That's observing. That's all it is. It's not really complicated.

Most people when they start practicing observing, notice right away that they can't observe anything for very long, that their mind just goes off. That if they're observing one thing, they start thinking about something else. There is a trick to this. The minute something else comes into your mind, observe it. You just notice it. You just notice it and then try to take your mind right back to what you were observing in the first place. Kind of like clouds in the sky, you just sort of let them go by. You can imagine that your thoughts were just birds flying by. Just let them fly out of your mind.

It can take a really long time to learn to keep your attention on one thing. And in fact, almost no one ever learns it completely. Why do you think that is? Well, it's because the job of the brain is to generate thoughts, and the job of the brain is to attend to sensations and feelings. So it's probably never going to happen that you're going to try to observe one thing that other things aren't going to come into your mind. So you don't want to start worrying about that or thinking you're not doing it. Because if you start thinking you're not doing it, then what'll happen? Then an emotion will come, like frustration, or anger, or fear, or worry, or hopelessness, or despair. And then you just have to notice that. So whatever happens, the secret to this practice is notice it, observe it, then try to turn your attention back to what you'd started observing in the first place.

You may be thinking, "Listen, give me a break, Mara. I have never focused my mind on one thing in my entire life. I can't do this. This is not anything I can do. Why would I try? If I can't do it, I'll get too jittery. I'll just quit." I know. Take heart. I was exactly that way when I started. In fact, when I started doing mindfulness practice, I used to sit there. I would try to pay attention to my breath. So I would sit there like this, paying attention to my breath. I don't know, maybe a minute into it, I'd get the urge to stop. I'd want to quit. So what did I do? I always quit. Never occurred to me if an urge to quit came by, I shouldn't just quit. It took me years to figure out that I could just sit there and wait for the urge to quit to come, and then I could just notice the urge to quit.

Let's move to learning how to notice what's going on inside you. So how would you do it? Well, first thing to remember is keep your eyes open again. But this time, what I want you to do is to sort of sit back, watch your mind, and see if a thought comes in. Just notice whether a thought comes in. And if a thought comes in, notice what it is. Did you notice one? Some people do, some people don't. You could have just been sitting there waiting for a thought, or you could be a person who has a million thoughts go through your mind, or you could have had a thought going really slowly through your mind. Really doesn't make any difference what you notice. The trick to noticing is just to notice.

Now, you may have been thinking, "I'm not doing that." You may be one of those people who figures that whatever you see in your mind, you're not going to like. You're going to have thoughts that are scary. So you may be thinking, "Well, I'm just avoiding that." Sooner or later, you're going to have to look at yourself. We all do it. It's just one of those things in life that no one can avoid. So this is a really good way to practice it and a good way to learn it.

Now, you may be thinking, "Well, if I look at my thoughts, I'll just have too many of them. So I'm going to get rid of my thoughts first. I'm going to squish my thoughts down, then I'm going to look at my mind." That is not going to work. In fact, if you wanted to figure out a way to have a thought stay in your mind, that's the way. Try to squish a thought, and it will come back. If you want a thought to go away, it's going to sound like a miraculous event, but actually, it's a fact. If you actually look at a thought, just observe, just notice, don't do one other thing with it, just look at it. You'll be amazed. It's like a miracle. The thought will go away.

You know, thoughts, sensations, feelings, emotions. You can think of them like their cars on a train. And mindfulness practice is a little bit like sitting on a hill with a train track down in front of you, and you're just watching the train cars go by. And one car may be a thought, others may be emotions, others may be physical sensations. Just watch the train. Watch them go by. They just sort of rumble past. Now, the secret is, don't get on the train. You know how sometimes if a thought goes by, and then you start thinking about something, and a little while later you say, "What happened? What happened?" All right, that's getting on the train. So the idea is, don't get on the train.

The best reason for practicing observing is that it brings you into the present moment. It's especially useful if you're having trouble getting your mind off the past or getting your mind off the future. Thoughts about the past are just driving you nuts, or thoughts about the future interfering with your life. Try observing. You could observe anything. Observe yourself walking. Let's imagine you're walking. Just be walking and observe. Describing, really, is applying words to what you notice. If you're looking at a painting of a landscape, you may say, "Trees, green, yellow, brush strokes." That's describing. Or you could describe something inside yourself. "A feeling of sadness has just arisen within me." Just like in observing, you can describe things outside of yourself or inside of yourself.

Let's start with something outside of yourself. So just watch the screen and see what comes by and describe it. Describe it in words. All right. So this red line, blue circle, heart shape, yellow spot. Great. It can be very useful also to try to practice describing your thoughts. In other words, you step back, you observe the thoughts going through your mind, and then you describe them. Now, describing thoughts can be hard unless you categorize them. So what you might want to do is try categorizing or sorting your thoughts out into different kinds of thoughts. You could be watching your thoughts and thinking, "Worry thoughts, planning thoughts, critical thoughts, thoughts about tomorrow," and on and on and on.

Doing this requires one really important skill, which is that you've got to know the difference between a thought and a fact. I'm going to give you a thought, and I want you to let it go through your mind. "I'm a green person." I mean, are you thinking that's a fact? Are you thinking you actually are a green person? Probably, probably not. Let another thought go through. "I'm a jerk." Do you know that lots of people, if they have a thought like that go through their mind, they actually don't think it's a thought, they think it's a fact. Now I want you to notice that "I'm a green person" and "I'm a jerk" are both thoughts. That's the secret here. The secret is to be able to tell the difference between thoughts and facts.

Why is describing such a good idea? The main reason is, it helps you react to what's really going on in the world, instead of reacting to what you think is going on in the world. The most important thing about describing is to try to describe only what you observe. Don't add to what you see, and don't subtract from what you see. Sounds really easy, doesn't it? It's not. It's actually really hard. So I'll give you an example. Now, I want you to just watch and watch my face. Okay? Now watch my face, and as you look at it, I want you to describe it. Okay? What did you say? All right, how many of you said anger? Raise your hand. Anger, irritation, something like that. Raise your hand. Most people do. You know. Now watch again, and tell me what you really see. Lips pursed, eyebrows together, staring eyes. That's what you saw. Almost everybody says that. That's why I use this example. It's a great one because just about everybody says anger, or irritation, or something. "She's mad at me." Something like that. What you're doing when you do that is you're making an interpretation, and then you're treating your interpretation as if it's a fact, as if you actually saw it. It's possible to be correct in interpretations. It's really possible. I could have been feeling angry. But it's just as possible that you're wrong. Not being able to tell the difference between facts and interpretations is the source of a lot of the world's troubles, and it's the source of a lot of our own troubles also.

The third "what" skill is participating. When you're participating, you just throw yourself into what you're doing. The idea in participating is to try to become one with the activity. Participating is when you lose self-consciousness, you lose consciousness of yourself in an activity. Participating is really the goal of observing and describing. I mean, the point of life is to participate in it. When we're participating and living in our life, we often run into problems. Then what do you do when you run into a problem? Well, you have to step back. You have to step back. You have to observe. Then you try to describe, try to figure out and understand what's going on. You try to explain what the problem is. Then, once you've figured out what's wrong, try to correct it. The correcting usually takes a lot of practice. So you may really have to describe what you're doing, observe and describe, observe and describe, observe and describe. And then, sooner or later, if you keep at it, what happens? You can participate.

Have you ever noticed how musicians become one with the music? Piano players, just all over the place, they just become one. Have you ever seen how dramatic they are? Horn players are the same way. That's participating. Now, imagine that you found out that the way you were playing the music was incorrect. You'd actually gotten the notes wrong. What do you think would happen? Well, you would step back. You would observe what you were doing that was incorrect. You would describe it. In other words, you'd explain it. You would say, "No, I'm playing an A when I'm supposed to be playing a C." And you'd pay a lot of attention. You'd observe and describe, observe and describe, observe and describe. But what's the point of all that? The point of all that is to get so you can participate again.

Participating is really hard if you're socially shy or anxious. When you're around people, very nervous when you're performing, it can be really hard to participate. You're a person then that has to work on it. Ask yourself, do you sort of stand in the corner? Do you stay out of things? Do you spend your whole time just observing what's going on? If you're that kind of person, practice participating. Are you the kind of person that when you go on a vacation, never looks at anything, you just take pictures of it all? I've done that. That's the non-participating vacationer. If you're that kind of person, you're going to someday want to go on a vacation and leave that camera at home. You're going to want to just look at the mountains. It's amazing. They actually look different when you're looking at them than they do in a picture.

Those are the three "what" skills: observe, describe, participate. And now we're going to do the "how" skills. And the "how" skills have everything to do with how do you observe, how do you describe, and how do you participate. And there are three "how" skills: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively.

What are you doing when you're judging something? Judging is adding something to what you observe. It's when you observe a fact and then you add an evaluation. And the evaluation that you're adding, in one way or another, is good or bad. That's the bottom line. That's really all it is. It's actually a pretty easy idea, and it's a really hard one to get. Let's talk about the difference between observing and describing, and observing and judging. So we'll take lying. What's lying? Lying is when a person says something that's not true on purpose. Okay? Saying something not true on purpose. So Mary said something not true on purpose, and she's bad. What a liar. Mary said something not true on purpose, and well, it had a lot of consequences. People don't trust her anymore. Some people who believed or made decisions that turned out to really hurt them. Lying had painful consequences. Now, notice in one, I was saying, "Lying is bad." So that's lying, that's an observation. "Bad," a judgment. And the other, I said, "Lying." That's an observation. And then what did I do? Instead of judging, I described the consequences. Judging actually is a shorthand way to state consequences. And if the consequences are negative, painful, destructive, disliked, we call it bad. If the consequences are positive, lead to enhanced welfare, improve the happiness of one and all, call it good. So judging is a shorthand. Therefore, judging is really needed some of the time. Sometimes we need a shorthand. When do you need a shorthand? Well, I'm a teacher. I give a shorthand by giving an A, B, C, or D. A is better than B, B is better than C, and C is better than D. I get paid to judge. If you go to the fish market and you go to buy fish, and you pick it up and you say, "Is this still good?" And the dealer smells it and says, "No, it's not good." What's he doing? Is he he's evaluating it, but what's he evaluating? Actually, it's a shorthand for, "No, this has germs. This is old. This could make you sick. This is not safe." All of which are consequences. However, my guess is you'd just as soon have the fish guy not say all that stuff. You just like him to say, "No, it's bad. Don't buy it."

Have you ever noticed that lots of times we just forget that judging is shorthand? Have you noticed that we make statements about people, they're either good or they're bad, they're stupid or they're smart, or they're this or they're that. And we forget that it's shorthand. We start thinking those are real qualities of the person. We start acting like it's, we start forgetting that we're describing the consequences of their behavior and act like we're describing characteristics of the person. "That person is good. That person is bad." A lot of us judge ourselves, and a lot of us judge others. And some of us do both. Which are you? You mostly judge yourself? Mostly judge others? Or are you an equal opportunity player? You do both.

There are two problems with judging. The first one is that when you're judging something, if you forget that you're doing a shorthand, you don't react to what other people are doing or what you're doing. You start reacting to your own thoughts about what they're doing. It's kind of like you think you're reacting to what someone else is doing, and you're really reacting to your own judgments. Have you ever noticed how people do that? I bet people do that to you. And my guess is you do it to other people some of the time. So that's the first problem. You're just inaccurate. You're responding to things that are might not even be happening. And the second problem is, judgments cause unending problem emotions. Have you ever noticed that it's really hard to be angry at someone without judging them? It's hard to be angry at yourself without judging yourself. It's almost impossible to get rid of shame if you don't reduce the amount of judgments that you make about yourself. So there are two reasons. Reason one, it's hard to react to the real world as it really is if you're reacting to judgments. It's a little bit like reacting to interpretations instead of the facts. And second, it causes no end of emotional pain. It's hard to reduce negative emotions without reducing judgments.

Okay, got it. Well, now the question, of course, is the $64,000 question: How in the world are you going to change judgments? This can be extremely difficult. That's the bad news. The fabulous news, you can do it. I cannot even begin to tell you how many people I've worked with who are really judgmental, judge, judge, judge, judge, judge, that have gotten it to go down. It could take some time, but there are a lot of things that are going to take you more time than this. So I'm going to go through the steps. And if you really want to get your judgments down and you follow these steps, this will work.

Well, the first step is, you have to decide whether it's actually important to you to reduce your judging. It's going to be hard to do this if you don't want to. So it's probably not going to work if you're stopping judging because someone else told you to do it, someone else wants you to do it, or other people have been critical of you. So you need to sit back and just say to yourself, "Do I or don't I? What do I have to gain?" Now, I'm going to assume for the moment that you have a lot to gain by being less judgmental.

The next step is to start paying attention to your own judgments. What you want to do is observe, notice, and then describe. By describe, I mean just label. You want to notice judgmental thoughts, judgmental actions, judgmental tones of voice. Judgments can be hard to notice. Listen to this: "Well, I went to this room, had yellow walls and a green carpet." Okay? Now listen to this: "Well, I went to this room, it had yellow walls and a green carpet." Okay? See the difference? You notice that in the second one? Didn't that sound judgmental? What do you think? You think I like the yellow walls with the green carpet? No. In the first one, no judgment, it's a description. Second one, judgment. So you've got to watch. You've got to watch for your voice tone and the content. Because the "I went in this room, it had yellow walls" is the same thing as saying, "I went in this room, it had yellow walls, and, ugh, they were terrible. Who is that decorator?" All right. So the first thing you do is notice.

Now, what you want to do, the first time, is you want to notice them and you want to count them. Especially if you judge a lot, you want to count them, and you want to count them each day. So how would you do that? Well, it kind of depends on whether you judge a lot or you don't judge a lot. But if you're a person who judges a lot, and a lot of people are, then you're going to have to find a way to remember how many judgments you've made during the day. What I tell the people I work with to do is to go and buy a counter. You can go to any sporting goods store and buy a counter, and you put that on your belt, or you put it in your pocket, or you carry it with you some way. And then all day long, every time you judge or you find yourself being judgmental, you just click it. At the end of the day, you look at the number, write it down, and you've got it for the day. It'll be interesting to see how many you have. I've had people who thought they had loads of judgment when they had seven or eight, and I've had people who had over a hundred a day. I had one person, she had so many, she couldn't count them. So she used to just count for an hour out of the day. She said she was judging all day long. So that's step one: count.

Now, what you want to do is write it down every night. So take a week out of your life and say, "I'm going to watch my judgments every day for a week." It's very interesting. If you want a behavior to go down, you want to do something less, and you start counting it. Just the very fact that you're counting it almost always makes it go down. It's really interesting, but that's just the way it works. Now, I have to tell you one really important thing. If you've decided that you want to stop judging, or at least reduce it, then you start noticing you're judging. You want to remember, remember, don't judge the judging. If you judge your judging, you'll have to click that counter again. You don't want to do that. That would double your number of judgments in the day. So don't judge your judging. Simply take a judgment and replace it with a consequence. That's the best way to reframe it. And know the difference between a judgment and a fact. And not to decide that everything that is negative is a judgment. Lots of times we think people are judging us if they say, "I don't like your lipstick," or "I don't like your hair." Your mother may say, "I wish you'd wear skirts." You think she's judging you? She may be, of course. But it's possible she just wishes that.

Now, some people think that the best way to reframe a judgment is just to turn a negative into a positive. "You're not bad, you're good." We often think that when we're thinking about ourselves. "I'm bad." So I say, "Oh, I should have affirming beliefs, positive self-views." So I'll change the negative to the positive. Now I've got to tell you, that's very dangerous. The reason it's dangerous is if you can be positive, you can be negative. The trick is skip both. Simply say, "I am neither good nor bad." That's the whole idea of being non-judgmental is to develop the capacity and the habit of seeing the world as it is, describing it as it is, and honestly stating your values. Having values is not being judgmental.

What's the second mindfulness skill? One-mindfully. One-mindfulness is the opposite of mindless. So ask yourself, how often do you do things mindlessly? What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, how often do you do things in an automatic way, sort of a non-conscious, automatic way, without thinking about what you're doing? For example, have you ever been driving somewhere where you, the car driver, and then you got where you were going, but you had no idea how you got there? You were thinking about home, or what you were going to do when you got home, or what you were going to do when you got somewhere. You were talking to someone else. In other words, you were doing everything else including driving. In other words, you were doing five things plus driving. That's the opposite of one-mindful.

Being one-mindful is also the opposite of multitasking. Most of the time, when I start trying to teach mindfulness skills, especially to professionals, they say, "Okay, look, I can do it, but I've got to do two things at once. It's the only way I can be efficient. I'll never get anything done. You can't ask me to do that. I'll do everything else but not this." That's a very typical response. Are you saying the same thing? What you may not know is that people have actually done research on this. People have gotten subjects to come into research, and then in the research, they give them a number of tasks to be done. And they ask one group of people to do everything mindfully, and they ask another group of people to try to get everything done as quickly as possible, multitasking. And then they look to see who's most efficient. Who do you think it is? It's the person who does it one-mindfully.

Now, you may be thinking, "Well, the reason multitasking wasn't efficient in that research is because they had subjects doing three things, all of which needed their attention. But how about when I have a lot of things to do and only some of the things need my attention? Like, why in the world would I pay attention to washing the dishes when I could be solving some problem in my mind? Why not wash dishes and think about my problems? Or I don't need to pay attention to driving. I get home anyway. So what's the point? I can have a really important conversation with someone, or I can listen to music, or I can do other things." So it's really ridiculous. Now, that may be true. So what's the point of one-mindfulness in those situations? The real question to ask yourself is, "How full do you want to live life? How much are you willing to miss in your very own life?" One-mindfulness has to do with not missing your own life.

What is one-mindfulness? Well, it's actually very simple. It really is one thing at a time. If you're eating, just eat. If you're talking, just talk. If you're worrying, just worry. Throw your mind into what you're doing and do that one thing. So the idea with this skill, one-mindfully, is to one-mindfully observe, one-mindfully describe, one-mindfully participate. When you're observing, only observe. When you're describing, only describe. And when you're participating, throw yourself in, just participate totally.

Now, doing one thing at a time can actually be difficult. One thing that makes it hard is just not liking the current moment that you're in. Often, when we don't like what's going on now, or we don't like doing what we're doing, we don't like doing one thing. We either start doing something else at the same time, or we start thinking about something else. So that's one thing that makes it really hard. The second thing that makes it really hard is when the past and the future get in the way. That's a big one. If you ever noticed how worrying about the past or thinking about the future can really interfere with the present? I had a client who had a lot of chronic pain. She had this terrible disorder that just gave her so much physical pain. It was just agony. She would call me sometimes on the telephone just to tell me how awful it was. And it would be really interesting. She would be saying things like, "Oh, it hurts. It's just been going on so long. It's never going to end." I would say, "Listen, you've got so much pain in the present. You've got plenty of suffering. You've got enough suffering without having to suffer everything from the past and everything from the future. You've got enough in the present. Keep your mind in the present. This one second. We only have to live this one second. So if you've got to suffer, it makes a lot more sense to suffer this moment. Just one moment. Just this moment."

I'll give you an example. So imagine you're walking somewhere. So you're just walking. So imagine that doing nothing else, you're not doing one other thing, just walking. Now let's add on to it. You're walking down an aisle to go up some stairs to a podium to get an award. We'll compare that to walking to the bathroom. And we'll compare that to what if you were walking to the guillotine? You're going to get your head chopped off. Do you know almost everybody in those situations would feel different while they're walking? The person walking to get an award, how do you think they might feel? Happy. Person walking to the bathroom, maybe neutral. The person walking to the guillotine, probably miserable. The facts and matter are though, what's the difference? You're not at the guillotine yet. You're just walking. You're not getting your award yet. You're just walking. That's the idea. The idea is, do one thing and throw your whole mind into the one thing. Walking is walking. Eating is eating. What are you doing now? Watching. Watching and listening. That's all you're doing. Not one other thing.

Why practice this? I'm going to give you three reasons. The first is more efficient. Doing one task at a time is more efficient than multitasking. So that's a good reason. The second reason is, it allows you to live life to the fullest. If you're living life in the moment, you experience and can be aware of your entire life. You don't miss your life. You don't miss what's going on. If you've got children, you live your children growing up. The third reason is that life has enough suffering in the moment. If you practice one-mindfulness, you just suffer the moment. And suffering just the moment beats out suffering the future, the past, and the moment. So, in effect, it reduces your suffering.

We've gone through two of the "hows": non-judgmentally, one-mindfully. And we have one more: effectively. Fating effectively means doing what works. You have to ask yourself, "Works for what?" So you have to know your goals. I mean, you actually have to think through, "What is it that I really want?" It's going to be hard to figure out whether you're doing what works if you don't even know what you want. So you have to do that. The next thing you have to do, though, is figure out, "What do I have to do?" In other words, you have to think through what's needed, what's necessary to act effectively. That means that you have to look at what's actually going on. Not only do you know what you want, but you have to figure out what's really needed, what's needed in this situation. So you have to pay attention to the situation and respond to what's really going on. You have to use your observing and describing skills.

So what gets in the way of being effective? Sometimes we just decide it's more important to be right than to get what we want. Have you ever noticed sometimes how people driving in the outside lane on the highway come up and get right behind other people who are driving slow? Either they're driving exactly the speed limit or even slower. Sometimes, then you notice, what does the car do? They start tailgating the driver. Have you ever had that happen to you? Now, ask yourself, is someone's tailgating you, what do you think they want? They want to go faster, right? Have you ever noticed how sometimes that happens, and that person could just go right over to the right-hand lane? They could just move right over and pass you by. They could just pass the slow driver by. But they don't. What do they do? They tailgate. Is that effective? It is. Sooner or later, most of the time, people will get over, and the person gets to go on. But I'm sure you've seen it because I have. There are times when that actually doesn't work. Sooner or later, they have to go and pass them. That's an example of wanting to be right instead of wanting to be effective.

All right. What's the next thing that gets in your way? Believing it's not fair that you should have to put all this effort into being effective. Generally, what gets in your way here is when you're very clear what you want, and you think that you should not have to do anything to get it. I'll give you an example. How about your birthday? You may be a person like a lot of other people who want to have your birthday remembered, but you don't think it's fair that you should have to go around telling other people that your birthday is coming. Leaving hands. So what happens? People don't remember your birthday. Then you get hurt. Your day goes down here. Then you get hurt. Now, what's effective? How could you be effective? Remind them that your birthday is coming sometime.

What gets in the way is you're just not thinking about what's important. You're not focusing in on your most important goals. Think about it. When your goals are just right in your face, you can't miss them. Usually, you're willing to be effective. I'll give you an example. Imagine that you're in a bank. While you're in there, you're just talking to the teller. A bank robber comes in, and the bank robber yells, "Down on the floor!" What do you think you'd do? Would you say, "Hey, against the rules. Not doing it. You're not even supposed to be in here. I'm not doing that." I don't think so. What do you think you'd do? You probably fall flat on your face. Why? It'd be hard to miss that your life is in danger. It's pretty obvious that your life's in danger. That's why you do it. But not only that, but it's a pretty important goal. So when it's really important and it's really obvious, most of us are willing to play by the rules. We're willing to be effective.

Now, lots of times in life, the consequences of being right instead of effective aren't so extreme. We may have something to lose, but we don't have a lot to lose. The problem is, is if you're always focused on being right, what happens to you over the long haul? If you look over over the years of your life, what happens? Being right costs a lot. You lose a little bit now, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit the next day, and all of a sudden, you may have lost a lot of things really important to you. So pay attention. Is this important to you? Are you a person who would rather be right than get what you want? If that's true, think about it. You may want to practice effectiveness.

Why practice doing things effectively? There's only one answer. It's a really simple one. It works. So let's look at all the skills together now. So what are the "what" skills? Observing, describing, participating. Now, remember, when you're practicing, do those one at a time. Practice observing. Practice describing. Practice participating. Then, what are the "how" skills? There are three "how" skills: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, effectively. The "how" skills, you can do all at once. So you can non-judgmentally, effectively, only observe. You can non-judgmentally and effectively, only describe. And you can non-judgmentally, effectively, only participate.

Now, that's actually the goal. The goal for all of us is to get to the point where we can participate in our own lives without judging, in the present, with awareness, and effectively. So that's the goal of all this practice. Remember at the beginning of the program when I asked you if you're free or if you want to be free? Mindfulness will set you free. The most amazing thing about mindfulness is that if you practice it intentionally and regularly in your life, you'll find that you'll start living in the moment. You'll find that freedom comes your way. And when you're freely living life in the moment, the moment will crack open. The moment cracks open, and you'll find joy.

Now, what do you think? Are you going to practice these skills? I hope you do. And if you do, I hope that you send me an email because I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to know if you practice them. I'd love to know what happens. Thank you for watching.

If you are interested in ordering other videotapes in the "From Chaos to Freedom" series, please contact Behavioral Tech at 206-675-8588 or visit our website at www.behavioraltech.com.