The holiday season is not always merry and bright. It can be ripe with painful memories, unfilled hopes and expectations, and challenging interactions with loved ones. Today’s post is going to focus on the latter. How do we navigate setting limits and asking for what we need amid the holiday cheer?

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) includes a set of skills called interpersonal effectiveness. Interpersonal effectiveness is the ability to ask for what we need and say no. It calls upon the other DBT modules of mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation. As such, I think of it as the calculus of skills – it makes a world of difference to have all the skills that come before. And, unlike calculus, we we can start trying now with the skills we’ve got!

The main skill I’ll be talking about today is called DEAR MAN.

Before We Begin

It is crucial to note that we measure success of interpersonal effectiveness, not by the outcome, but rather our skillfulness with how we handled the situation. By definition, interpersonal effectiveness involves another person. No matter how skillful we are, we cannot ensure that someone else will respond how we want them to. If we focus on the outcome, we run the risk of believing that it’s all about finding the magic words to make the other person see and understand.

And if we aren’t successful, then we can fall into the trap of unfairly blaming ourselves and continuing on the never-ending quest for those magic words. Put another way, interpersonal effectiveness isn’t about being perfect. It is about being genuine, authentic, assertive, and fair to self and others.

Lastly, when we are truly skillful, we’re able to hear how the other person is responding (which can provide us with invaluable information about their behaviors, willingness, skills, needs, etc.) and in turn react accordingly.

Clarifying Priorities

One of the ways we trip ourselves up is not knowing our priorities. DBT offers three categories of priorities: the objective, the relationship, and our self-esteem. I’ll use a simple example to map this out.

Say we lend a friend $50 dollars with an understanding they will pay us back and they haven’t yet. Depending on whether our goal is to get our money back (objective), ensure the relationship stays strong and intact (relationship), or establish our limits for lending money again (self-respect), how we ask for our 50 bucks is going to look different.

Objective: Sam, I need my 50 bucks back. You told me you’d pay me back by now and haven’t. When can I expect my money?

Relationship: Hey Sam, I know things have been rough lately and cash is tight. We talked about you paying me back by now. Do you think you’ll be able to get me the money soon? I’d really appreciate it.

Self-Respect: Sam, I really don’t appreciate that you haven’t paid me back like we agreed upon. If you aren’t able to get the money to be my tomorrow, I won’t be willing to lend you money again in the future.

And in real life, it’s rarely so cut and dry. More often, we want our relationship to stay strong, we want to be kind to our friend and we also want our money back and maybe to not lend to this friend again. Then what do we say?

That’s where DEAR MAN comes in handy.

DEAR MAN

DEAR MAN is an acronym road map for difficult conversations. It stands for describe, emotion, assert, reinforce, be mindful, appear confident, and negotiate.

Describe: What is the situation you’re talking about? Stick to the facts. This invites the other person to be on the same page without triggering defensiveness. It’s the difference between, “we agreed you would pay me back on Tuesday” and “where’s my money [insert expletive of choice]?”

Emotion: Now we share how those facts are impacting us. Not every situation requires this detail as not everyone is deserving of our emotional vulnerability. This is most often the case when the objective or self-respect is the priority. For example, if we are setting limits for a coworker to stop inappropriate behavior, the other person doesn’t need to know that they are making us uncomfortable (especially if there is a chance of that being used against us for being “too sensitive” or “unable to take a joke.”) They just need to stop.

This step is quite important for dynamics where the relationship is the priority, and when it would be valuable for the person to understand our experience and we want them to know how we feel. 

Assert: Here we ask for what we want or set our limit. Knowing our priorities helps us be clear and concise in this section.

Reinforce: This step is outlining why it would be advantageous to fulfill our ask and/or the consequences of not accepting our limits. It can sound manipulative or like we’re establishing a tit for tat. That’s not how it’s intended. Rather it is about acknowledging that relationships are a dynamic reciprocal interplay, that we are serious in our request, and that follow-up may occur.

Sometimes, just the DEAR is all you need.

Time to Talk about the Holidays

There are a multitude of scenarios during the holiday season where we may need to ask for what we want or set a limit.

Such as:

• Not talking about politics over holiday meals
• Talking about politics because not to feels inauthentic
• Responding to comments on body shape/size and how much food is or is not not being consumed
• Opting in or out of alcohol consumption
• Sharing preferences about gift exchanges
• Establishing how much time will be spent at different celebrations
• Voicing new norms around teaching children they can say no to hugs
• And so many more!

Oof! Not quite as easy of a picture as I painted before. The key again is clarity on what your priorities are and confidence that you deserve to have a voice.

Example:

Describe: Aunt Sam, you’ve made a number of comments about my weight since we arrived and just did again when you questioned the portion of sweet potato I put on my plate.

Emotion: I really don’t appreciate it when you do that, and it’s hurtful and makes me self-conscious.

Assert: So please don’t say anything else on that subject.

Reinforce: I’ll be able to enjoy the meal and celebration, and my time with you more, if I don’t have to worry about my weight being talked about. Ok?

In this example, self-respect is the priority, with the objective a close second. And the relationship is still pretty important. Thus the inclusion of the emotions and a reinforcer that comments on the quality of time spent with Aunt Sam. It’s a bit wordy and a lot to get out in the moment. We’ll talk more on that in a bit…

In our ideal world, Aunt Sam would immediately apologize and drop the subject.

Of course, that isn’t always how it goes. I can imagine our hypothetical Aunt Sam coming back with an, “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just noticed you’ve changed!” or “You know I worry about you” or “I don’t know what you are talking about.” And quite possibly more comments would be made as the meal progressed. In such cases, we turn to the rest of the DEAR MAN acronym.

The MAN of DEAR MAN

Be Mindful: This is where we stick to our message. We strive not to get pulled off into a side-step of the conversation or get defensive. We may use the broken record technique which is where we literally keep repeating ourselves as much as we need to.

Appear confident: Our body language including eye contact, posture, tone of voice, etc., is equally important to the content of our words. Even if we are nervous or shy, having an alert posture, appropriate eye contact and a clear voice helps communicate we mean business.

Negotiate: There are some instances where we seek compromise, maybe because the other person isn’t ready to meet us all the way or they’ve brought up fair points that making an adjustment on our part would be fair.

How does this apply to Aunt Sam?

be Mindful: This might look like replying to Aunt Sam’s statement of not meaning anything by it by saying, “I know you don’t and it still hurts, so please stop.”

Appear confident: And saying this while making culturally-normed and appropriate eye contact.

Negotiate: Negotiation could look like Aunt Sam committing to doing better and recognizing it will take her some time to stop and thus you being willing to cue her that she’s “doing it again.”

Practice Practice Practice

This is all very well and good for me to script out from the comfort of my laptop. It’s a totally different story when it’s live and in the moment; thus why I refer to interpersonal effectiveness as the calculus of skill.

As such, I highly recommend drafting DEAR MANs in advance, especially for the holidays where family patterns tend to emerge with a vengeance. If you can safely bet Aunt Sam is going to comment on your body, write out a DEAR MAN. Read it out loud. Share it with a friend or your therapist. Get feedback. Revise. Read it out loud again. Worst case scenario, you don’t need it and get some solid confidence-boosting practice in.

For Clinicians: If this is your first encounter with DEAR MAN, I hope you found it helpful and equipped to incorporate it with your clients!

For Those Seeking Therapy: I hope you found DEAR MAN to be a viable and helpful road make to be more confident finding and sharing your voice. Remember, practice practice practice!

More of an auditory learner? Check out a video I did with colleague from the Southern Arizona Psychological Association for the Pima County Library’s Synapse Mental Health Minutes on Setting Boundaries at the Holidays.