As a psychologist practicing primarily from a CBT/DBT perspective, I often think about ways to help people learn new things. After all, CBT is mainly a learning type of therapy. Clients often learn new ways to think, new coping strategies, and new behavioural, emotional and interpersonal skills. The idea is that, once these new things are learned and put into action in daily life, clients will move closer to achieving goals that are important to them. In DBT, we similarly try to help clients learn new skills, particularly in the areas of mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. Many of these skills are helpful not only to people seeking help for emotional challenges, but also to those who would simply like to improve their lives, cope better with stress, enhance their relationships and so on. How can we best learn these types of psychological or behavioural skills and use them to enhance our lives?
For those of you who hate homework, I’m sorry to say that learning new skills generally involves a fair amount of homework. What I mean by “homework” is practice. It’s very hard to go to a class on a new coping skill and then immediately use it effectively in all relevant situations. Using a new skill effectively requires a fair amount of practice. I am often reminded of this important point when I attend my martial arts classes. We are learning more and more complicated and refined techniques as time goes on. Often, when learning a new sequence of movements, a new self-defense technique, or a new weapon, I find the first class a little overwhelming. I’m just getting my bearings, trying to figure out what the instructor is asking us to do, watching the instructor while trying (sometimes in vain) to imitate what he’s doing, and so on. Sometimes, it seems like there’s no way I’ll ever learn or become proficient with the new technique. At times, I think perhaps I’ve peaked already and just won’t reach that next level. This happened a few weeks ago when we were learning something new. Instead of getting demoralized and waiting to see what would happen in the next class, I decided to live and breathe the new technique for the Easter long weekend. I got a video of it, practiced it diligently many times per day, and went several steps ahead of what we’d learned in class. When I arrived the next week, I was ready to go. My intense practicing hadn’t made me perfect, but I was a lot better and more confident than I had been the previous week.
This approach to practicing involves throwing yourself into the skill or strategy you’re learning and basically practicing it to death for the first couple of weeks. After that, occasional practice can help maintain the skill. That’s not to say that everything is easy to learn if you practice intensely. There are skills that I’ve practiced for years, and I still wish I was more proficient than I am now with those skills. Many people can relate to this experience in relation to the work they’ve put into therapy. Even so, important to remember that the practice itself is still valuable. The forces of change can be a lot like water flowing over rocks. The rocks erode so slowly that you don’t even notice the changes, but eventually, smooth pebbles carpet the bottom of the creek. At other times, change is like a stick of dynamite going off. Sometimes, you don’t know which it will be.
Nevertheless, I’ve found that this approach involving beginning with intense practice seems to help with DBT skills. I first learned DBT skills as a graduate student when I needed to teach them to one of my very first clients. I had to learn them fast! I spent many hours with the DBT book, taking notes and learning the ins and outs of the skills, trying them out myself, and so on. After that, it didn’t take much regular practice to maintain the skills (but I’m still learning new ways to think about and use them). Similarly, if you’re trying to learn new coping strategies or are in a DBT or CBT group, it can be effective to try to live and breathe whatever skill you’re learning each week. That first week after you are introduced to a new skill is a critical time to practice. Think about the skill many times every day. Practice in your imagination. Practice in a variety of different situations. Write it down. Memorize it. Dream about it. Make it part of your life. Then, do the same with the next skill, and so on. After that, you might just need to engage in some “refresher” practice periodically, and that will be enough to keep the skill strong. – Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.