How is your eating? Do you eat too little? Too much? What kinds of food do you eat? The amount and types of food you eat can affect how you feel emotionally. Have you ever been “hangry”? Hunger can make you behave unlike yourself, so make sure to feed your body despite what diet culture says.

It’s important to know that this skill is not about trying to suppress your emotions. You are using that angry feeling to take a different action. The result of this will be a gradual change in your emotions. Build Mastery is about doing something every day that makes you feel competent, confident, that you are good at something, or are making progress. It can be anything from practicing guitar to doing laundry. Build Mastery is supposed to give you that good feeling you get when you cross something off your to-do list. It’s why cleaning your room makes you feel so much better. I believe that some resources used in Mental Health treatment are unnecessarily cold, clinical, or technical. These hard-to-relate-to resources may risk pushing people away instead of inviting them to engage in both a healing relationship with their therapist and with information that could help their recovery. My work seeks to offer resources like worksheets, visuals, and handouts that bridge this gap. TIPP: The TIPP acronym is a distress tolerance skill meant to be used when emotions are overwhelming. The aspects of the DBT TIPP skill can help alleviate acute distress, like a surge of anxiety or uncontrollable tears. TIPP stands for:

Practice

During the analysis stage of the treatment, it is important to understand the maladaptive modes experienced by the client. Once the client is comfortable with the concepts behind the therapy, the Schema Triggering and Mode Analysis Logbook can be used to capture and analyze schema triggers and identify the existing active schemas (schema modes). Schema healing, while essential to ST, is not easy, yet several tools and techniques can help the process (Young et al., 2007; Jacob & Arntz, 2013). 1. Explore maladaptive modes

Awareness, Acceptance, Action: This is an acronym that describes the process of mindful change – becoming aware of your situation/thoughts/feelings (without judgment), accepting the nature of the situation/your thoughts/feelings, and finding a way to create change (take action) where it is needed.

Ask your client to imagine a situation that they typically struggle with or one that is approaching. Work through it in as much detail as possible, and ultimately have the client picture themselves overcoming their negative coping strategies. Eating – Eat diverse, nourishing foods, and mindfully reject diet culture messaging to avoid associating food and shame. There are three maladaptive coping styles that we typically engage in (sometimes more than one at a time), often unconsciously (Young et al., 2007): Temperature: This skill involves “tipping” the body’s temperature in the other direction, typically with cold water splashed on a face. By recognizing our coping responses, we can replace them, move forward, and live more fulfilling lives (Young et al., 2007).

During chair dialogues, chairs represent multiple aspects of the patient. Clients are helped to engage with anger or other feelings by attributing each chair to a different schema mode, such as an enraged child or punitive parent (Young et al., 2007). 4. Guided imagery Try completing the Schema Therapy Flash Card with your client to identify and implement more functional coping and behavior. Schema Therapy Training Australia hosts a series of podcast episodes to discuss Schema Therapy with accredited therapists and Jeffrey Young (the creator of ST) himself. It is essential to help the client understand the process behind ST and, in particular, the terms and definitions. This is vital before attempting to embark on therapy and assigning worksheets to the client.

Avoid Mood-Altering Drugs

Early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) are “pervasive life patterns which influence cognitions, emotions, memories, social perceptions, and interaction and behavior patterns” (Arntz & Jacob, 2013). The therapist has the delicate and difficult task of challenging the client regarding their maladaptive behaviors and cognitions and clearly conveying their self-defeating nature. 7. Limited reparenting