The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety

Advanced Emotion Regulation Skills 169

There are six steps to creating opposite action:

1. Start by acknowledging what you feel. Describe the emotion in words.

2. Ask yourself if there’s a good reason to regulate or reduce the intensity of this emotion.

Is it overpowering you? Does it drive you to do dangerous or destructive things?

3. Notice the specific body language and behavior (see the “Emotion-Driven Behavior”

column in the table on page 171) that accompanies the emotion. What’s your facial

expression, your posture? What are you saying and how are you saying it? What,

specifically, do you do in response to the emotion?

4. Identify opposite action. How can you relax your face and body so it doesn’t scream “I’m

angry” or “I’m scared”? How can you change your posture to convey confidence and

vitality rather than depression? How can you move toward, not away from, what scares

you? When you are angry, how can you acknowledge or ignore rather than attack? Make

a plan for opposite action that includes a specific description of your new behavior.

5. Fully commit to opposite action, and set a time frame to work at it. How long will you

maintain the opposite behavior? As you think about making a commitment, keep in

mind why you want to regulate your emotions. What’s happened in the past when you

gave in to emotion-driven behavior? Were there serious costs to you, to others?

6. Monitor your emotions. As you do opposite action, notice how the original emotion may

change or evolve. Opposite action literally sends a message to the brain that the old

emotion is no longer appropriate—and it helps you shift to a less painful emotion.

Now it’s time to do some advanced planning. You’re going to identify some “frequent flyer”
emotions and commit to opposite-action strategies that can help you with regulation.
Filling out the Opposite-Action Planning Worksheet is simple but potentially very important.
In it you’ll identify emotions you can expect to feel in the future and prepare a radically different
response than you’ve had in the past.
Here’s an example. Remember Linda and the Emotion Log she filled out just before Christmas?
When she began working on her Opposite-Action Planning Worksheet, she identified several oppo-
site actions that she thought might help with her anger, feelings of rejection, and guilt. Here’s what
she decided.