If what you’re doing as an eating disorder caregiver isn’t yielding results, consider an Opposite Action…

One of the most powerful Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills is Opposite Action. However, it’s not just about attempting to do something 180 degrees opposite of what you’ve been doing (that isn’t working). Which, by the way, is no easy task because when our emotions take over in stressful situations, they often push us toward default behaviors—and those are not easy to override. Fear tells us to avoid. Anger tells us to attack. Shame tells us to hide. Anxiety tells us to seek the certainty we may never get.

Opposite Action means choosing a response that goes against our emotional urges when the emotions are not helping us reach our caregiving objectives. As caregivers, that might mean staying calm instead of arguing, leaning into a difficult conversation instead of avoiding it, or practicing patience instead of trying to control the outcome…and any movement toward the 180 degree opposite action (and away from our default) is a possibly effective shift. Is it all about long-term outcomes? Not necessarily. In the short-term, practicing Opposite Action helps us create some time and space for ourselves as we pause and steer from our default action pattern toward an alternate course of action that provides us with emotional respite and the possibility for clear decision making.

The goal isn't to ignore our emotions. It's to prevent them from making our decisions for us. When we repeatedly choose effective action over emotional impulse, our skillfulness grows.