Hi everyone! My name is Diana Garcia and I’m a licensed mental health counselor in Florida and founder of a private practice called Nurturing Minds Counseling.
I’ve been doing 12 tips for the holidays, and today we’re on tip number six. The other tips don’t necessarily build on each other, but they are helpful, so you might want to check those out first!
Watch Video: “12 Days of Tips for the Holidays: Day 6: Opposite Action”
Read Blog: “12 Days of Tips for the Holidays: Day 6”
For today’s tip, we’re going to be talking about a DBT skill that’s called opposite action. In past videos, we’ve talked about identifying your triggers, knowing which thoughts are related to that trigger, knowing what the feeling is, naming that feeling, and allowing yourself to feel that.
Opposite action is a really good tool. Sometimes, if we plan for a situation but something happens that we didn’t plan for, or even though we planned for it in the moment, our emotional reaction feels intense. With the emotional reaction, there is a desire to act on it. Let’s say I have the urge to yell at someone, or I want to punch the wall, or whatever the emotional reaction is, sometimes that reaction isn’t always helpful. A lot of times you’ll hear people say “Oh! I was acting out of emotion. I really didn’t know.” This is because you’re just acting out from that feeling before pausing, so a nifty tool to remember is called opposite action.
A lot of times, especially with my clients, they struggle with reacting and then regretting their actions later. To prevent that, I’ll tell them to think opposite action so, if the desire in that moment is to want to yell, the opposite of action of that is to keep quiet. Or if the reaction is to want to blow up someone’s phone or text someone 20 times, even though you probably know you shouldn’t do that, opposite action would be to completely take your phone away from your reach.
Opposite action is literally just reminding yourself to do the opposite of what that urge is. This is especially helpful to do if you feel like you’re acting out from emotion, and you haven’t had time to think it through. Sometimes our urges aren’t helpful but recognizing in that moment if we’re overwhelmed by the feeling and we’re not pausing and stopping it can be helpful. Opposite action is pausing and, if you think about it and you do still want to engage in that behavior, at least you’ve thought through the consequences. This allows you to see that you’re making a conscious choice to engage in that behavior instead of an emotional one.
I hope that tip six on opposite action helps you in the upcoming holidays or even in general. You can use that tip whenever and just remind yourself do the opposite in the moment, and then you can always come back and evaluate that situation. I hope that was helpful and you have a great day!