The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety

Basic Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills 187

SKILL BuILDING

Improving your interpersonal skills will take hard work. You don’t need anyone to tell you how
difficult it is to change relationship patterns. But you know why it’s important—some relationships
you value have blown up because you didn’t know how to fix things that went wrong. This chapter
and the next will give you new tools to manage how you function in relationships. Sometimes
they’ll work, sometimes they won’t; and sometimes you may forget to use them. But you’ll also be
amazed how much they can improve a conversation or help to solve a problem.
It’s hard, but it’s okay if you fall down sometimes—if you blow up or withdraw—because it
takes time to learn a new way. Practicing your new interpersonal skills will yield the following
results:

 Help you be more effective in your dealings with people

 Improve your ability to get your needs met

 Help you negotiate conflicts without damaging a relationship

 Strengthen your self-respect by giving you alternatives to old, damaging patterns

of anger or withdrawal

KEY INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

There are six core interpersonal skills that will change how your relationships feel:

1. Knowing what you want. How do you know what you want in a relationship? In some

cases, you sense a yearning. Or you’re aware of discomfort. The key is to pay attention

and look for a way to describe, in your own mind, what you’re feeling.

2. Asking for what you want—in a way that protects the relationship. The next chapter will

give you an effective method and format for doing this. But for the moment, the basic

idea is to put your needs into words that are clear, not attacking, and ask for specific

behavioral change.

3. Negotiating conflicting wants. The willingness to negotiate starts with a clear commitment

that there won’t be winners or losers. It assumes that each person’s needs are valid and

understandable, and it draws on a willingness to compromise so that each person gets

some of what he or she wants. A simple protocol for negotiating conflicting needs is

provided in the next chapter.

4. Getting information. One of the most crucial of all interpersonal skills is finding out

what the other person needs, fears, hopes for, and so on. The major blocks to getting