Real-time practice of the #DBT skill of Opposite Action. Here we go! #dbttherapy #therapistsontiktok #selfdirectedDBTskills

You are currently witnessing a DBT skill in practice. I am a clinical psychologist who specializes in DBT and I am going to practice with you today, one of my all-time favorite DBT skills for reducing unwanted emotion, opposite action. I often teach my clients the idea that emotions love themselves. And what I mean by this is that when we feel in emotion, especially for feeling one particularly intensely, we often have urges to engage in behaviors that keep that emotion around. So if we're feeling super depressed, we have urges to isolate and stay in bed, which then leaves us to miss a party or something with our friends, which then makes us more depressed when we have loneliness about having missed out. And so this is where opposite action comes in as an emotion regulation skill. It basically is interrupting that self-loving cycle of emotion by having us be aware of what we're feeling, be mindful of the urges that we feel in that emotion, like what the emotion makes us want to do, and then act opposite to those urges. How am I practicing opposite action right now? Well, I have been wanting to join TikTok for a few weeks now, but have been feeling quite intense anxiety and kind of shame related to lots of thoughts about, I don't know what I'm doing, don't kid yourself, people are gonna hate it, no one's gonna watch it, lots of things that had me being reading articles and watching other TikToks and planning what I could do and say basically at the end of the day, right? My anxiety and shame is leading to avoidance. Me just avoiding not going ahead and posting a video. This video is me acting opposite to my anxiety and shame by avoiding avoidance and posting this video. I'm also coming straight from the gym where I had this idea, so I'm dressed and I didn't plan this and I'm gonna try my best to not do a lot of over-editing or take a lot of takes because in the spirit of opposite action, I just want to post this. The next time that you're feeling an emotion that's making you do things that is making you feel worse or just getting in your way of being effective and doing what you actually want to do, I encourage you to remember the DBT skill up opposite action. I will still be here making more videos in the future, at least hopefully, and I will give you more details about this skill and others in the future, so stick around because it can be tricky, but it's worth the effort.