Telling the truth and keeping the peace, they're not the same thing. By Nedra Glover Tawwab. Being assertive doesn't mean being an asshole. It just means not abandoning yourself. By Brené Brown. And you can be skillful and still not get what you want. The goal is effectiveness, not control. By DBT's own Marsha Linehan. Welcome to The Meaningful Shit Show with your host Vincent. In a world full of selfishness, blaming and scapegoating, Vincent aims to inspire inner work with deep topics and insights on emotion regulation, personal development, psychology, philosophy, and the trauma growth healing process.

Welcome to another episode of The Meaningful Shit Show with your host Vincent. And today we are going to talk about interpersonal effectiveness. Do you ever have one of those conversations that just won't leave you alone? You lie awake, replaying every line like a courtroom drama in your head. You wonder, did I say too much, not enough? Was I too aggressive, too soft? Should I have said it differently?

Or maybe the conversation hasn't even happened yet. You're anxious rehearsing every version in your mind, trying to say it just right, trying to walk on eggshells. You want to be honest, but you want to be also, you want to be kind. You want it to work. You want to respect the other people. You want to respect yourself. This is exactly what this episode is about. Because it's not just about speaking your truth or being authentic.

It's about doing it in a way that doesn't blow up your self-respect or your relationship. It's about being kind. Without being a doormat. And it's about learning how to be effective. Even when things get very hard. This is where two new dbt skills come in. DEAR MAN and GIVE. They're not hacks. They're not tricks. They're frameworks. And they're a bit of work. I will have to tell you.

They help you walk into or end out of hard conversations with your integrity intact. Let's dive in. DEAR MAN GIVE. This is the framework. It's another wonderful dbt acronym that may or may not make a lot of sense, but still will make sense. So DEAR MAN GIVE is a set of core skills in dbt's interpersonal effectiveness module, the one I haven't spoken about yet. It's designed to help you ask what you want, say no to what you don't want, and do both in a way that maintains self respect and preserves the relationships.

It's especially useful when emotions are high or stakes are personal. In a way, it's a skill you never want to use, because it's hard, it's vulnerable. But that doesn't mean preparing is a bad idea, although you probably don't feel like it. Every time that I have to use it, want to use it, I don't feel like it. I don't feel like having the conversation. It's hard. So what's the goal of DEAR MAN before we explain what it even is?

To communicate effectively in a way that maximizes, but not guarantees, the chance of getting your objective met. It reduces interpersonal conflict. It maintains self-respect and relationships. Remember, effectiveness, more about that later. Let's go into the acronym. DEAR MAN. Each letter stands for a skillful move in a conversation. Whenever you're having a conversation, you're probably already using one of these Lego pieces, but it's the key to use them together, and it's also nice to recognize when you're using them.

Let's start with the D, it's for describe. State the facts of the situation clearly and objectively. Avoid judgment or interpretation. So an example here is you'd say, you said you'd be here at 7 and now it's 7.45. Let's pause there. Do you see that there is no judgment embedded there? You're not implying directly in words and body language as well, more about that later, that there is a transgression or something like you're simply stating, hey, this is what we said, and this is the situation that we're in right now.

It's immediately followed by an express. So, not pausing here, letting the other person speak, because it's a half-formed thought in a way. So the express is share how you feel, what you believe using I statements. Using your own experience without blaming. An example is I feel hurt and worried when you're late, and you don't let me know anything. Note that you're not saying you hurt me or you do this or like whatever.

No, you're expressing how you feel. Pretty standard I statements. I must have heard that at times. So far so good. But with only these two ingredients, there is a so what question after it. And this is where the A comes in, and this is where you actually assert. The thing that you actually want. So the describe and the express were preparations for you to get to the actual point.

So you, you paved the way as you often do. If you're giving like a message or feedback or something like that, you're paving the way you're allowing the person to catch up to the fact that something is about to be requested. So let's go to the assert. Ask for what you want or to say no clearly. Don't expect the other person to be able to read your mind or just get it.

An example here is, I'd like you to call me if you're going to be late. Simple request. It's not vague. It's not wishy-washy. It's not something like, I want you to make me feel something, something. The person doesn't control that. They'd have to do mind reading, like whatever. No, it's your job to be, to help them, to give concrete steps on how to accomplish some of that.

The next step R is reinforce. So again, it's akin to, maybe you've followed feedback trainings, or you've ever heard of like the motivational sandwich. It reminds me of that in a certain way, because the reinforce is again, more gentle. You've made a direct request, and you wouldn't be using the DEAR MAN if you're assert. It wasn't like it had a potential to create some trouble. So this reinforce allows your speaking partner, the person that you're expressing this to, to absorb what you've asked, and you add in a more gentle end, or let's explore.

So the reinforce is explaining why your request is beneficial for the relationship, or just simply to express appreciation. It's a great, it's a great technique. So it helps the person to feel good about cooperating. An example here would be, it helps me feel more secure in a relationship when you do. It's a very important one to keep in the back of your head. It really helps the medicine go down so much smoother.

As I'm like speaking about this, I'm thinking of a bunch of different examples that happened in personal life, even when I was on like the receiving end of something, right? So the interesting thing here is, the DEAR is very useful even if you don't have a particular relationship with someone, and you just want to express your point. So if you're just using DEAR, D-E-A-R, you already have a pretty decent chance of your request being met.

So especially if you're in a situation where you don't really have a relationship with the person, this is where you can kind of cut it off. Think of the situations when there's some kind of like boundary that you want to maintain in the situation, like with someone on the street, someone in your office or something, something like that, that you for the rest don't have a relationship with.

The more that you have an existing relationship and a pattern with a person, it is important to use the MAN which comes afterwards. I'm about to explain that to you, to stay on target. So the M is for mindful. So staying focused on your goals. Often in these kind of situations, if you have an interpersonal problem with someone, it is common to get distracted by attacks, diversions or guilt trips.

Employ the broken record technique. Keep restating your point calmly. Let go of other issues for now. The example that I could use here, let's say if the person after I told them, well, just what I expressed about being too late, after the DEAR, there's a pause in the sense of like, now it is time for the person to react, right? And that's why we're trying to stay mindful.

So what if they say back to me, they tell me, hey, it is your fault that I was late. I was late because you never fill up the gas tank. And last time it was because, et cetera, et cetera. Or flips it on you and says, you're late all the time. Like, this is hypocritical. This is the pot calling the kettle black. So those are distractions. That's not what we're talking about right now.

It's not about who is late when, it's not what the reason is or something like that. No, you want to get back to the point, hey, my request is if you're late to let me know. The A in DEAR MAN is for appear confident. So even if you're not feeling confident, use tone, body language, and eye contact that conveys self-assurance. Even if you're scared, fake it till you make it.

The N finally is for negotiate. So this is not a firm ultimatum or a demand, right? Be willing to give a little to get what matters. This is of course about getting your objective met, but also allowing wiggle room, allowing the relationship to dictate how some of these things are solved. So offer compromises or even more powerful, ask the other person what they're willing to do. An answer for that could be is like, the request was like, I want you to call me when you're going to be late.

And maybe the compromise is, oh, you know, I can text you when I'm going to be late. Because if I'm already late, I'm like rushing, I don't want to get on the phone, but like I can't send a text message. That will be a compromise that probably addresses the same concern here. So, don't get too stuck on the specific outcome. Be prepared, but flexible. So, DEAR MAN is best used when you are very clear about your objective.

If your objective is not clear, it's going to be really, really hard to assert, because what exactly are you asking for? What's also important is being emotionally regulated, or at least trying to be. What we're going to explore later in the episode as well is that at one point, that if you're emotionally dysregulated, employing the DEAR MAN comes down to stating, hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed, I need a break.

Because being mindful would allow you to see that you're not in a state to have this conversation about this thing, because you're upset. That's not going to go well. You want to be both effective and kind. So what gets in the way? This is from Linehan, Factors in the Way of Interpersonal Effectiveness. Myths. So DBT, the DBT workbook goes through myths that prevent you from really advocating for yourself.

So myth is like, if I ask, I'm selfish, or if I say no, they'll hate me, might be the reason that you're not speaking up for yourself. Emotional flooding or shame, poor boundaries, see my episode about boundaries, and of course, a history of invalidation. A lot of the things within DEAR MAN are not just for one-off situations with people that you don't really know, the barista at Starbucks.

It's a very helpful tool to change a pattern. If you have a pattern with a person, the conversations always go in a certain way. This is a tool, this is a framework to not get sucked into that red hole. So how do you employ it in practice? It is really beneficial to write it out beforehand, to practice it out loud. And in these days of chatbots, practice it with a chatbot, tell the chatbot what's up, and help let the chatbot go through a couple of scenarios with you.

You know, these chatbots, you can put them on like, you can have an actual conversation with them. The important thing is to not plan things, but to prepare. If you're planning, it looks like, okay, I'm going to say this, the other person is going to say that, but haha, I already know that they're going to say that. And then, that doesn't work, because you never know what the other person is going to say.

It doesn't work. But what you can be very clear about is like, what do I want out of this interaction? What's my objective? What do I want to do with the relationship? How do I feel about these different things? That's your job. It's not to plan out every specific move. That's, you know, that's not how you play chess. You never know what the opponent is going to do.

It's important to be ready for discomfort. You are getting out of your comfort zone. But don't prepare for failure. You will be victorious in some way. And when I say in some way, when done well, DEAR MAN doesn't guarantee success. Of course it doesn't. But it does guarantee clarity and self-respect. So your lowest bar, your lowest bar is you walk away from that interaction, respecting the fuck out of yourself for having done the work, having to put in the preparation to give this the best chance of succeeding.

If it didn't succeed, it's sure shit not on you. You did the work. More about that later. So there's another part to it. We talked about DEAR MAN GIVE. GIVE stands for keeping the, is focused on keeping the relationship intact. DEAR MAN helps you ask for what you want and to stay on your request. GIVE helps you preserve the relationship while you do it. So this is much more important when you're interacting, not with the Starbucks barista basically, but someone that you have and want to maintain a relationship with.

It's especially powerful when the goal isn't just to get something done or say no to something, but that the goal is to stay close, stay kind, stay connected. What you really want is the connection, which often the case in these squabbles that couples have, it's really about connection. All right, let's dive into the acronym. The G is for gentle. No attacks, no threats, no judging. Be kind, even when firm.

That is possible. The I is for interested, and interestingly enough, in the workbook, there is an appear in parentheses before that. So even if you're not interested, appear interested, I personally find this a little, it opens the door a little bit too far, as far as I'm concerned. It is, it's good to have as the lowest bar for yourself. But I think appearing interested, just performing it, people will figure out that you're not.

So it's more about trying to be, trying to be actually interested. Maybe it should have been act interested, but like really the goal is be interested. So you want to show that you're listening. You want to use like your active conversation skills, such as nodding, making eye contact, asking questions, checking your understanding, which segues into V for validate, acknowledge the other person's feelings, even if you disagree.

Very important. I'll have great examples of that in a little bit as we go through a couple of practical examples. The E is for easy manner. Use humor, warmth, a relaxed posture, let it breathe. This is partially personal, right? But I hope that the energy behind that, or what the principle behind that is, comes across. Although this is a generally used in situations where the stakes are high, by giving a little like using an easy manner, it's already hard enough.

So giving it grace in that way will again help the medicine go down. So GIVE reminds us that we're not just what we say, it's how we show up. Relationship don't survive of facts alone. They're fed by tone, timing and trust. This is where GIVE comes in. I want to touch again on effectiveness. I've talked about it before, and I find it really important to underline that effectiveness is a framework, it's not a trick.

DEAR MAN GIVE is not about manipulation, about getting your way, it's about effectiveness. You're trying to communicate in a way that gives your needs a real chance of being met in an honest way. This is a framework with a good success rate, there's studies, et cetera, et cetera, but it's not a guarantee, it's a reliable path, it's a way that you give your request to your know a good chance of being heard.

Sometimes people I talk to is whenever they're in a situation where DEAR MAN might be required, they reject because they feel it's too much work, it doesn't feel natural, it doesn't feel authentic. But often that resistance is a defense mechanism. So if you notice that in yourself, might be a defense mechanism. It's a way to stay in patterns that feel familiar, even if they don't work. Think about this, it's interesting.

Because even if you're in a pattern where you end up endlessly bickering and God knows that I have been, there is something easy about that, because you know what's about to happen. They say that, I say this, then I'm going to feel this, and then I'm going to be out of control. It's familiar, right? Effectiveness is about being willing to try something different, even if it feels awkward at first.

Awkward or maybe that you don't deserve it. Maybe you feel, maybe the reason that you're sabotaging is that you feel like you deserve this pattern for some reason, or because you're not good at it, whatever, right? You're taking abuse because of some mistaken belief at one point. Even though you know that you're being handed a tool that works, you still don't want to use it. What's the reason for that?

That might be the reason. The alternative is often just a return to the status quo, and that's rarely where growth lived. That's your comfort zone. How uncomfortable your comfort zone even might be sometimes, interestingly enough. What is genuinely hard about this skill is that you're the one doing the work. The other person might not. It's designed in such a way that if you're showing that you're doing the work, the other person has a high chance of responding to that, responding in a mature way, wanting to resolve this.

But it's not a guarantee. Remember what I said before. The worst-case scenario, the lowest bar is you walk away with your self-respect intact, knowing that you did the thing. You did the preparation. You put in the work. Let's talk about the effectiveness triangle again. I've talked about this in previous episodes as well. There's a balance between your objective, the relationship, and your self-respect. Those are the three components here.

The objective, the relationship, and your self-respect. What I mean exactly by that objective is the thing that you're trying to get to accomplish, your assert, saying no or requesting something from someone. The relationship is that you have a relationship with a person that you're presenting a request to or saying no to, and generally, that's the relationship you want to preserve and not hurt. And your self-respect is ultimately one of the most important things.

This is why my episode one was about values, because you need to know what your self-respect is, when you are violating some of those boundaries. I go into detail there. So DEAR MAN can help you get what you want, but you're only truly effective if it aligns with your values, and preserves the connection when it matters. When one of these three corners is over prioritized or neglected, the whole thing tends to collapse.

Sometimes your objective is very clear, but the relationship gets sacrificed. Other times you're so focused on being nice or keeping the peace, that you abandon your own needs completely. And then there are moments that you walk away feeling like you betrayed yourself, because your voice never made it into the room. DEAR MAN and GIVE help you hold all three, or at least become conscious of which you're letting go of, and why.

All right, let's dive into a fun part. And I'd like to illustrate this with some movie scenes to illustrate DEAR MAN. So first, we're going to take a look at a scene from The Break-Up. And this was used in my DBT group. The second movie scene that we're going to look at is the cafe scene from Beautiful Boy. It's a powerful scene I did in my acting class in an intensive a few months back.

So yeah, let's take a look at The Break-Up from 2006. And this scene is often referred to as the dishes fight. All right, let's take a look. I'm going to go do the dishes. Cool. Be nice if you help me. No problem. We'll get them a little bit later. I'm just going to hit the streets here for a little bit. Gary, come on. I don't want to do them later.

Let's just do them now. Take 15 minutes. Oh, honey, I am so exhausted. I just honestly want to relax for a little bit. If I could just sit here, let my food digest, and just try to enjoy the quiet for a little bit. Get some. Get some. Get some. That's what happens. And we will, you know, we can clean the dishes tomorrow. Gary, you know, I don't like waking up to a dirty kitchen.

Who cares? I care, all right? I care. I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal, and I worked today. It would be nice if you said thank you and helped me with the dishes. Fine. I'll help you do the damn dishes. Oh, come on. You know what? No, that's not what I want. You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes.

I want you to want to do the dishes. Why would I want to do dishes? Why? See, that's my whole point. Awesome. Again, this is used in DBT circles a lot. And to a certain extent, it's a pretty easy example. Again, like this is from The Break-Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. I recommend that you watch the entire movie to appreciate it in context. The scene doesn't end here.

But otherwise, it would have taken up too much time. Well, I'll talk through it. So let's go through it and take a look at what the objectives are here. So if we look at Brooke, played by Jennifer Aniston, so her objective is that she wants Gary to help with the dishes. But it's of course not really about the dishes. It's about wanting to be seen, appreciated and supported.

On the relationship front, in theory, her relationship with Gary matters, but in this moment, it's sacrificed in service of her emotional protest. And her self-respect, she wants to honor her effort and her needs, but abandons her value of staying calm and connected in the process. Now, of course, this is how I filled it in. There's not one correct way of seeing it. How do I know that Brooke has a value of staying calm and connected?

I don't. That's what my fantasy came to. For the sake of argument and I'm looking at this from a certain perspective, these are some of the choices that I made. Take a look at Gary. Gary wants to relax and avoid being pulled into conflict or work. That's his objective, ultimately. He just wants to be left alone. Regarding the relationship, he doesn't prioritize it at all. The interaction becomes about preserving his autonomy.

So it's like a mansplaining feel to it. Self-respect. He avoids confrontation, but at the expense of empathy and partnership, it undermines his identity as a supportive partner, I would say. But again, this is an interesting thing because the moment that we're talking about self-respect, we're talking about values and in this case, it's values of like a person that's not me. So I have to use my imagination for that.

Right. Cool. See as well as that there is not a clear winner or loser, especially if you watch the entire movie, you can feel that both of them have perspectives that are valid. Both of them are making communication mistakes, DEAR MAN mistakes. So let's go through it, through it and I'm going to pause and I'm going to talk about, I'm going to talk about a couple of things, how we can look at it from a DEAR MAN perspective.

I'm going to go do the dishes. Cool. It would be nice if you help me. What's happening here? Is that a DEAR MAN? Is it a describe? Well, to a certain extent it is. She says, I'm going to go do the dishes. That's sort of an objective description of what's going on. It's very brief. More context would help here. If not just to get his attention because he's playing his game, obviously.

So she technically names the situation without judgment, but she's already sub-communicating. It's clear that she wants him to jump up, but if we're going to look at the assert, there never comes an assert. Regarding Express the E, it'd be nice if you help me. This is a classic one, isn't it? It'd be nice. It's not that she says, I think it would be nice. So that makes it a judgment.

A decent human being would, etc. That's like sort of the sub-communication. It's passive-aggressive. And at the very least, if it's not meant passive-aggressively, it's how she feels, but not formulated as an I-statement. So it's her opinion. So I would say that's not a pass on like actually expressing in, like sort of with words, body language, maybe. What's missing here? We're missing a clear assert. She doesn't directly say, Hey, Gary, can you help me do the dishes right now?

It's not there. There's no reinforce, there's no explanation of why helping matters, how it supports their relationship or well-being. Although you could argue as the conversation continues, some of that is being expressed. You know, I don't like waking up to a dirty kitchen. But again, that's also formulated in a passive-aggressive way. Remember, this is, of course, written by writers and they knew what they were doing. So, how could a DEAR MAN have sounded like and made this seem very uninteresting because then there's no drama?

And who would want to watch that? For example, Gary, can you pause the game for a second? Allow, you know, to get someone's attention. Hey, the dishes haven't been done and I see you're already relaxing. I've been on my feet all day and I want to relax soon too. Could you help me do the dishes now so we can both be done and unwind? It helps me so much when we knock these things out together.

You feel how different that is? To me, that's just completely different. Note that we're mainly talking about DEAR MAN, mostly DEAR in these situations because they're individual lines. The MAN and the GIVE, they're more like superimposed over the entire interaction, so I'll touch more upon them towards the end. All right, let's keep going. No problem. We'll get them a little bit later. I'm just going to hit the streets here for a little bit.

Gary, come on. Let's start in the beginning. When Gary says, no problem, I'm just going to hit the streets here for a little bit. This is already a miss on the DEAR MAN front. Remember that the DEAR MAN can also be used to say no. All that Gary does here is like a soft, assert, vague thing. He doesn't say no. He says, yeah, sure, I'll do them in a little bit.

You could see it as some kind of half-ass negotiate, but not really. If Gary would be more mindful on this, or use the DEAR MAN to respond, would say, we do still have a bunch of dirty dishes to do. I hear you. I'm feeling totally wiped too. I want to decompress for a little bit. Would it work if I helped in 30 minutes or if we divide the task?

Completely different. Note that we don't exactly know what Gary's emotional state is, and his feelings, just like her feelings, are valid. And it helps get more to GIVE later to validate these things. Well, then, the interaction continues. And to a certain extent, is what Brooke then does when she says, Gary, come on, I don't want to do them later, let's just do them now. It will take 15 minutes.

It's kind of like a longer repeat of what she said in the first place. This is what you often see. Because partially in these kind of interactions, the ideal situation is, in a romantic partnership, is that I just look in a certain way, my partner knows, oh, I know exactly what you want. You want to say as little as possible so that you don't have to do the work, the other person has to do the work.

And as they're not picking on the cues, it becomes more bigger and bigger and bigger over time, what's being communicated. How Gary responds, honey, I'm so exhausted, I just honestly want to relax for a little bit, etc. And we can clean the dishes tomorrow. It's also very much like sort of a repeat with a little bit more detail than before. So let's talk about what Brooke does.

Brooke adds the assert, but not as a question, but more as like a request, I would say. So right, it's a suggestion more. Let's do the dishes, you know? Not like, hey, I would like you to do the dishes. So it's, you know, it's not very super strong. Gary, at this point, in his response, adds express. He talks about how he feels, but for the rest communicates exactly the same.

The wishy-washy half-commitments. So this is not a true assert. So the previous rewrite, when I did, it's like this is how it would be able to look in a DEAR MAN scenario. The previous rewrite 100% applies, because they're still talking about the same thing. All right, let's keep going. Try to enjoy the quiet. He's here for a little bit. Gary, come on, I don't want to do them later.

Let's just do them now. Take 15 minutes. Oh, honey, I am so exhausted. I just honestly want to relax for a little bit. If I could just sit here, let my food digest, and just try to enjoy the quiet for a little bit. Get some, get some, get some. That's what happens. And we will, you know, we can clean the dishes tomorrow. Gary, you know, I don't like waking up to a dirty kitchen.

Who cares? I care, all right? I care. I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal, and I worked today. It would be nice if you said thank you and helped me with the dishes. Fine. I'll help you do the damn dishes. Oh, come on. You know what? No. See, that's not what I want. You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes.

I want you to want to do the dishes. Why would I want to do dishes? Why? See, that's my whole point. Isn't this fun? All right. So we go through a couple of things more. So it's a repeat. So we do see some describe happening, this describing like sort of objective situations about the fact that there are dishes that need to be cleaned. And there's a lot of indirect expresses.

So they're not I statements being used. There's more like statements as in it would be nice if, etc, etc. So they're passive, not quite asserts. And as we're looking at GIVE later, of course, the entire body language at this point is off. Gary is being aggressive. Brook is not in a cooperation mode. She's clearly over it. So we could go on, but it's clear at this point we're writing a vicious circle.

And this is exactly the point here. What we're seeing as this escalates, and if you would keep watching the entire scene, if you get the movie, you see that it even goes even further all over the map. So we're not mindfully staying, if we're talking about the men, on this subject, the subject that the dishes need to be done, because of course it's not about the dishes, actually.

It goes all over the place. From the dishes, it goes to that Gary didn't pick up the lemons, and then it goes on to like that they're not going to the ballet, or that she's not getting flowers, like whatever. It goes all over the place, which is very, I mean, I love what the writers did there, because it's relatable. You're just like starting to like both get these random things out of the closet, and like throwing mud at each other.

So it's not mindful what's happening here. I would say that neither of them, in this interaction we're talking about, appear particularly confident, like their body language is off. And certainly there is no negotiation, which in this situation could have saved this, right? Because both what Brooke wants and what Gary wants, they're both valid perspectives, and if they were able to negotiate on that, that would be great, right?

So what's the lesson here? I mean, there's multiple things going on. Partially, DEAR MAN, like looking at that from that perspective is wonderful. But it's also like a little bit of a lesson in a scene like this is that even in normal couple fights, emotional bids often come disguised as choices, right? It is not about the dishes, right? And that is an insight that Gary could have had, but it's also that Brooke could have had herself by, like this is always the interesting question is, whose job was it here to employ a DEAR MAN, or like, you know, to put in that extra effort?

Who's to say? When you don't use DEAR MAN to clarify the ask, and the reason behind it, you leave space for misunderstanding and escalation. That's exactly what we see happening, of course. Also, logic doesn't mean shit here. You know, how Gary says, like, why would I want to do dishes? Like, don't be mansplaining that, that doesn't help. Like, pointing out that someone logically doesn't make sense, that doesn't help.

That's some kind of, like, power play in a way. It's like trapping someone. It doesn't help. It's not in the... If we're talking about the GIVE skill, it's not in that alignment at all. But we'll talk about that in a little bit more, because otherwise it's so much to talk about. But let's go to our second scene. So I really... I think this is a very beautiful scene, how it's played.

The cafe confrontation, directed by Felix van Groeningen. So based on the memoirs, Beautiful Boy by David Schaaf and Tweak by Nick Schaaf. So this is actually father-son. This more or less happened. Steve Carell plays David, Timothy Chalamet plays Nick. Like I think, especially how Timothy Chalamet does it. That's excellent. Excellent. I really enjoy that. So this is a heartbreaking reunion where a father wants to support his son's recovery.

He's addicted to meth, but doesn't know how and approaches it in a way that that's, that's, you will, we'll see how effective this is. Again, the scene is longer than what I'm about to show you. But just for time's sake, I again, this is material that I borrowed. I do very much recommend you to watch the entire movie and support the actors and directors and writers. Right, let's take a look.

So how are you doing? I'm doing great, you know, I'm just doing what needs to be done and... What does that mean? Just being responsible for myself and... I don't know, I've quit on my own, you know, so... I've got five days now. I feel like I'm doing well, but I just need um... I just need a few hundred bucks, so... Nick, I can't give you any money.

Yeah. Okay. It's just a few hundred bucks, I just need um... I just need to get some shit to get on, I want to go to New York. New York? Yeah. I need to get out of San Francisco, there's too many... I'm always feeling bad vibes here all the time. Yeah, I just need a few hundred bucks. Why don't we just have lunch and talk? We can do that, right?

How's Karen and the kids? Okay. They ask about you. Is there a step up next week? I know they'd love you. You're guilt tripping me, all right? No, I'm just saying... I feel horrible about myself. I know they wanted you to be there, that's all. I'm sorry, dad. I just need some fucking money, all right? So please just give me some fucking money. Where does this end?

This is... I gotta see this one through. This is kind of working out for me right now. I got five days sober. It doesn't look like it's working out, Nick. Oh, it doesn't look like it's working out? So what, the therapy, huh? You can come home. No, that wouldn't... We'll make it work. Please, Nick. Please. All right, powerful stuff. What are the objectives here? David to dad.

And of course, these are my interpretations. I think his objective is that he wants to fix Nick. He sees as Nick how he is versus how he should be. And if you watch the entire scene, there's more references to that. It escalates further. So he wants to keep him alive and sober, but also prove that his way is right and to keep control. Note that this has been going on for a while now.

So for David, like he is... If we're talking about relationships, he tries to protect it, but he uses control and logic instead of vulnerability, because this might be the last time that he sees his son. He doesn't know, right? This has been going out of hand for a while now. And the fact that he can't give him money now, like you can imagine, this is not the first time that this has happened, right?

And the principle of not giving someone who's struggling with addiction resources to fuel their addiction is right. So there's elements of his behavior that are correct. Again, this is the interesting thing of these kinds of skills that we're looking at. Sometimes we feel like we've done the right thing and we've even set the right words, but it still doesn't work. So, but yeah. What about David's self-respect?

He wants to act with integrity and caution, but slips into judgment and emotional distance, violating his deeper value of compassionate presence, of course. I'm making this up, right? I don't know what the writers exactly had in mind, but that's what I'm picking up from the character, right? I would imagine that he walks away from this interaction with his self-respect, not being completely intact. His objective is not intact either.

Some of his principles might be such as the not giving money. Let's focus on Nick. What is Nick's objective here? Well, it's pretty straightforward. He wants money. He says that multiple times. But under that, you do see that there is a desperate bid for control, there's independence, and there are proof that he's doing okay. Right? He wants this to be different, that he can get the money and that because he's five days sober, right?

Relationship. The relationship with his dad doesn't really seem to be a priority, right? The ask is transactional. It's getting increasingly aggressive. And his self-respect, he's trying to affirm his capability, but he ends up begging, justifying, guilt-ripping, violating probably his deeper value of dignity. Of course, he is struggling with withdrawal. So in this situation, this is one of the examples where for Nick, it's probably very hard to do something like DEAR MAN.

That's one of the starting principles that we spoke about. That if you're emotionally regulated, this is the time for that. So to a certain extent, applying a DEAR MAN to Nick is not completely fair to someone in this position, but we'll still do it to see what we can come up with. So let's break it into a couple of parts again. So let's start from the beginning here.

So how are you doing? I'm doing great, you know. I'm just doing what needs to be done. What does that mean? Just being responsible for myself. And I've quit on my own, you know. So I've got five days now. I feel like I'm doing well, but I just need a few hundred bucks, though. Just needs a few hundred bucks, yeah. So I would say that for someone who's going through withdrawal, Nick actually makes a pretty decent DEAR attempt here, because he does describe, he states what's objectively happening of quit five days now.

So that's what's going on. And then follows up with that he feels like he's doing well. So again, for the position that he's in, kudos. The assert, though, becomes both vague and too specific, because what he's asking for, like sort of in an abstract way, is support. But then in a concrete way, he's asking for a few hundred bucks. And why a few hundred bucks? Like that's then, for something specifically, is getting money.

It's like vague again. Which is weird for someone who is struggling with addiction, because, you know, what's the exact amount? What are you exactly going to? So it's a half-assed plan, is what it comes down to. And of course, David picks up on that, right? There's no reinforce happening. Again, the ask is not grounded in a clear plan, making it vulnerable to collapse when challenged, which let's see that happening.

So actually, Nick, I can't give you any money. David is in a different state than Nick, so he could have employed DEAR MAN well. The only thing that he's doing well is asserting a boundary, and this boundary, he knew beforehand that he had this boundary, right? Because we can safely assume this is not the first time that this happened. So, great.

David asserts a boundary. Like, he did the right thing. He did what people tell him to do in these situations, what his research tells him. But is there a describe? Is there an express? Is there a reinforce? Does he validate that Nick is five days sober? No. So, this is a hard rejection. Lens is cold, dismissive, missing a chance to validate Nick's effort. Right. So, he's not compromised.

So, if we would apply a DEAR MAN here, it would look something like, I hear that you want some money. I want to help you, but I'm scared that giving you cash could put you at risk again. So, I'm not going to give you money, but I would love to sit with you here more, find another way to support you. Would that be okay? Isn't that a world of difference?

Would it be effective? Who knows? This is a person who's struggling with addiction. Who knows? But do you feel the difference? I do. I think the writers did a bang-up job here. And of course, it's based on a true situation. Let's keep going. Yeah. Okay. It's just $200 bucks. I just need to get some shit together. I want to go to New York. Yeah. So Nick doubles down here.

There's no new emotional expression, no reinforcement of trust, safety, just a repeated vague plan. So signals more desperation than stability. So it's not what he was going for. And think back of what we looked at at The Break-Up. Similar situation. So he took one swing. Well, let's swing again, but nothing new gets added, right? Sometimes your first swing is without DEAR MAN. Then you're noticing, hey, it doesn't work.

And then your second swing, you can take pause and use some of these principles there. Like if something happens without you expecting it. But in this case, both of them knew that they were going into this encounter, especially David, not being compromised by withdrawal symptoms, you know, could have prepared better. Cool. Let's keep going. Yeah. I need to get out of San Francisco. There's too many. Always feeling bad vibes here all the time.

Yeah, I need a few hundred bucks. Why don't we just have lunch and talk? We can do that, right? All right. So within a DEAR MAN, you can say no, and David tries to de-escalate, but does this in an avoidant way. So he sidesteps the request entirely, no validation, you know, nothing. And this reads as paternalistic or dismissive. This is the exact pattern that Nick wants to get away from.

He's controlling this. The DEAR MAN version looks very similar again, because we're doing a repeat to a certain extent. So that could be like, Nick, I hear that you need help, and I know it's taking a lot for you to ask. I'm not comfortable giving you money. I'm afraid it could do more harm than good right now, but I want to be here with you. Really like to sit down, have lunch, talk about where you're at.

Would that be okay? Note that some of the elements were present, right? Like how he ends up, like, can't we just sit and have lunch? Some of the elements are present, but it's missing the beginning. And then, guess what, doesn't land. How's Karen and the kids? Okay. They ask about you. Is there a step up next week? I know they'd love you so. You're guilt tripping me, right?

No, I'm just saying... I feel horrible about myself. I know they wanted you to be there, that's all. So we see what's happening here. Although we haven't spoken that much about the man aspect yet, the mindful, appear confident and negotiate. Nick's not mindful here and we can forgive him for this, of course, being in the state that he is. He doesn't stay on topic, right? Gets very easily distracted by something else that triggers him.

So asking about how are Karen and the kids, to a certain extent, already starts that, because that hurts his confidence in this situation, because if he was confident about his ask, he would stay on, stay on the topic. And now he's, you know, going about it in a roundabout way. That doesn't help confidence. The reason for that is probably he's feeling overwhelmed. And this is the normal next step in the pattern with his dad, where they're like, they're playing normal.

They're just going to like a safe subject. Again, I don't know this. It's just what I intuit from this. So, from a David's perspective, this is actually an interesting one. I think unintentionally guilt trips him here. So that's a misstep. We can make missteps. And instead of clearly stating his emotional truth, such as like, I miss you, I want you here, I worry about you, he uses the kids as leverage.

There's no describe, there's no assert, there's indirect pressure. But when Nick responds in the way that he does, there is a repair attempt. David stays calm and reflects. And this is actually one of the few mindful and emotionally regulated moves that he makes in this scene, which is interesting. I'm sorry, dad. I just need some fucking money. All right. So please just give me some fucking money. Where does this end?

This is, I got to see this one through. This is kind of working out for me right now. I got five days sober. It doesn't look like it's working out. Oh, it doesn't look like it's working out. So what, then therapy? You can come home. No, that wouldn't make it work. Please, Nick, please. So David is clearly overwhelmed and it shows. Like his question isn't really a question.

It's a judgment. It cuts off connection, expresses fear as control. So his core is fear and he's masking with control, which is based on, watch the rest of the movie and whatever. That's what he does. That's what Nick acts out against. When Nick tells that he's five days sober, he says that again, trying to get recognition, validation, tries to defend himself with logic. But Nick's no longer making a request at this point.

He's just trying to justify his instability here. When David says it doesn't look like it's working, well, in this scene, this is the emotional breaking point, right? Like now they're at it. Now, like sort of the gloves are off or on or whatever. It's a brutal judgment. It's not a DEAR MAN's skill, it's despair, disguised as logic. And of course, Nick responds, oh, it doesn't look like it's working out.

So what then? Therapy? So he hears the rejection and he turns sarcastic. This is the collapse of the interaction. Both parties are now in fight or flight, emotionally engaged. Although David then makes an attempt with, you can come home, et cetera, et cetera. It sounds like a generous offer, but it's not ground. There's no plan. There's no boundary. There's just desperation and a bit for control. It's not DEAR MAN.

It's a last ditch emotional Hail Mary driven by fear. So at this point, the entire conversation is all off the road. So, like I said, stop here. There's more to the scene. But one of the lessons here is that sometimes the only DEAR MAN you can do because things are already hot is describing how the conversation is going, expressing overwhelm with where you are emotionally, asserting the need for a break, and reinforcing the positive outcome of that for both parties.

This is a lesson that definitely really, really applies for me as well, because I definitely in relationships in the past, and let's hope that it stays in the past, have been vulnerable to that. I'm being really, really hard to assert that, to assert that you deserve to take that break, that we don't have to get into it right away, and then negotiate on when are we going to talk about that.

So overall, if we take a look at this entire interaction, and by the way, this, I do, it takes me back a lot. Like I said, I did this scene in acting class, in an intensive, so I remember all of my co-students going, and like I read for people, and I've been both David and Nick in this situation, so it feels very powerful for me. Strong, strong memories.

So thanks for going through that with me, or experiencing that. So if we take a look at the man aspect, the mindful, appear confident, and negotiate, we see that mindful is violated for Nick. He's there to ask for support. He's not getting it. And you could argue there is an implicit negotiate. So from David, because he wants money, but David wants to support him in a different way.

So that could, you could see that as somewhat of a negotiate. But Nick is not having that. What then, that? Therapy. Or you can come home, Nick. No, no. I think both do a decent job of appearing confident at the beginning, but it clearly breaks down, right? They did fake it in the beginning. It's understandable for the impaired Nick. Not as excusable for David, although we can have understanding for him as well, because he's not sure if this is the...

This might be the last time that he sees his son alive. This is how it is when you have a child that is addicted to substances. So it's stuff. So my heart goes out to both of them. Remember, it's a real situation that happened. And again, if this is interesting to you, both of the books, I'll leave like something in the show notes, I guess, but it's Beautiful Boy.

You can find it. Cool. Now let's do a personal example. So my personal example where the first time that I learned about the skill and really, really applied it is a while back, an organized Saturday running group that I went to. Every week we would go running and then have brunch somewhere. And one of my friends there and one of the regulars got basically aggressive. They tried to pull someone of an electric bike on a path where my friend was of the opinion that those vehicles were not allowed.

And he was zooming super close past the group and granted that person was being an asshole in my estimation as well. But the fact that my friend was yelling and started pulling them off his vehicle that crossed the boundary for me. So it shocked me. At the moment, I didn't really address it, as I tend to not want to ruffle any feathers, but I did not feel good about that afterwards.

So after the fact, I went down and created a DEAR MAN. And what my message was is just wanted to touch base on you pushing that guy on the motorized bike last week during run group. Although I felt annoyed by him being rude and breaking rules as well, I felt a lot more uncomfortable when the altercation happened and has been on my mind in the past few days.

If something similar happens in the future, I would really like it if you could choose chill over conflict when you're around me. If you could respect that, I would be relieved and looking forward to seeing you next run group. Thanks. I mean, when I reflect on that, I could have gone better. It's kind of like lengthy. It kind of like has like an, there's an implied ultimatum there.

If you could do that, I would be relieved and looking forward to see. There's what I'm always implying there. If you don't do that, I'm not going to come or something like that. So as it is with these things, there's always improvements to be made, but still I'm proud for speaking up. And in this situation, it went very well. So actually, my friend reacted to that. Very understanding and not an issue never happened again.

I have another example, which happened actually is very interesting. It happened to me two days ago at my co-working space, where I work out of, which was especially interesting because I'm part of a dbt group, as I've mentioned for a while, but I haven't, I've taken a break because there are other things going on in my life. So as I came back to the group, guess what skill they talked about last week?

DEAR MAN. So, and then the day before that, what happened to me in my co-working space, so I work out of a very nice co-working space, I like it a lot, and there's various different areas. Some of the areas there are silent areas, so you're not supposed to have conversations out loud. And some of them are, they tend to be on the quiet side, but you are allowed to have phone calls there.

And I tend to have to be on phone calls a lot. I have the membership specifically, so I can take my phone calls there. This was like a relatively chill half-hour call, first call of the day. Afterwards, another member comes up to me and asks me, not in a perfect DEAR MAN way, but in a decent way. It's like, hey, if you're taking a call, would you mind going to the call booth, there's a call booth over there.

I was taken aback because I know about the call booths, but what I said at that moment is like, no, well, actually, you're allowed to have calls here. There's like this spot over there where you can go if you want like a silent situation. But I got some pushback on that and said, well, we can go to the front desk, we can ask them about that. I'm like, that's not a problem, because partially in these situations, you don't have to come to me.

You can go to the authority, if you think that something is not allowed. But what became clear is that he did know that it was allowed. Then the next thing he said is, oh, but that guy over there just took a call, but then he went outside and was considerate for the rest of the people in the group. There's already like something passive aggressive in there, because what's implied there is that I was the one who isn't considerate.

I gave pushback to that in the sense of like, I'm here to take calls here, so I'm not going to go like someplace else. That's that these are the rules. I am following the rules. And he said something in the lines of the fact that something is allowed doesn't mean you have to go and be an asshole. I was like, OK, OK, guy, like that's an ad hominem that goes too far.

You don't have to imply that I'm an asshole. And then I still said, well, something along the lines of I understand you're frustrated because that's generally where I go to if I don't really have anything else to say. I validate something. That was just validation. Like yes, like the fact that he's frustrated is valid. That's absolutely valid. It doesn't mean I agree with him. It doesn't mean that he's right.

It doesn't have to do anything. So this was a situation where it did stick with me after the fact, because at first, my go to in these situations generally is to doubt myself in a sense of like, am I doing anything wrong? Because generally, I don't want to be a nuisance to other people, and I am actually myself quite sensitive to noise as well. And even if I'm in that specific area, sometimes I am annoyed at other people having calls.

But what I do then is I just put on music because it's allowed, right? You're allowed to have calls there or conversations. So and what I did after the fact is analyzed and looked at it from a DEAR MAN perspective. What didn't I say? What could I have said? So I went through a bit of an exercise of analyzing it through that lens and conclude that actually that I did a pretty darn good job at it.

Afterwards, I did, by the way, inform the leadership of that space, what had happened and they agreed with them. And they also found that the person was out of line by implying that I was an asshole. So that gave me a little bit of a validation or I felt validated by that as well and taking care of. So like that ended relatively good for me, I would say.

But even going through that situation in retrospect, helped me to look at my own actions through the lens of a framework and to be like, no, no, I, I am good. I wasn't perfect, of course, in like doing The DEAR MAN in that situation, because I was like taking, taking it back. But I didn't do too bad, honestly. I didn't go into the situation of getting passive aggressive or something like that.

I just more get, get sort of like a flabbergasted about that. So anyways, I find that helpful. I find it helpful to in these situations, after the fact, still go through it with, through the lens of that framework. And because the more you go through these types of exercises of like verifying, am I full of shit or what? That allows you to do it better in the moment, next time, obviously.

Let's dive into the fifth part. I have slightly ignored GIVE. And I want to touch on GIVE in these various, the character breakdowns of the movie scenes, as well as in the personal examples. So GIVE, to repeat, the G is for gentle, the I is for interested, the V is for validate, and E is for easy manner, which, you know, G and E are very similar, but I guess G-I-V is a harder acronym versus if you throw the E at the end of it.

But anyways, it don't matter as long as we remember it. Let's go back to Brooke. Remember Brooke had, so her self-respect, I think. And again, this is something that I am overlaying on the situation, seeing what the intention of the writers were. I think our self-respect was around valuing fairness, partnership, and being seen and appreciated. The result here, from an effectiveness perspective, so remember the effectiveness on the objective, on the relationship, and on the self-respect.

I would say that they all three fail. She tries to stand up for herself, but she ends up abandoning her values, a connection in calm, in the process. If we look at GIVE, is there a gentleness? No. She opens with sarcasm and frustration. Her tone triggers defense, not empathy. Does she act interested in Gary? No. No, does not give a fuck. Validate, no emotional reflection or acknowledgement of Gary's exhaustion.

Easy manner, no, there's tension throughout. So no ease, no warmth or humor. So I think that this is one of the even more strong reasons that this interaction went the way that it went. GIVE could have helped her to stay connected while still expressing her needs. Let's take a look at Gary. So his self-respect values are around autonomy, being easygoing and not being controlled, I think. The result, he actually wins, he wins the objective because he doesn't have to do the dishes.

But the cost, connection and quite possibly his self-image. Was he gentle? Kind of. He's casual, not aggressive in the beginning, but he becomes aggressive and it feels dismissive. Is he interested? No, he is not interested in Brooks emotional world at all. Does he validate? No, there is no recognition of Brooks effort or stress, none of that. Does he have an easy manner? This may be slightly easy, but that's also too aloof.

It reads as I don't care. So no, that's not a pass. His lack of GIVE makes his no feeling validating rather than collaborative. How about for Nick? His self-respect is around wanting to be seen as capable, independent, trustworthy. The result is for him all three fail. He wants dignity and trust, but the way he asks backfires emotionally and relationally, so he doesn't get his objective met. He doesn't get anything.

The relationship suffers, and his self-respect very probably suffers as well. Is he gentle at times, at times when you're asking about Karen and the kids? But he gets more frantic and aggressive as the scene goes on. Does he act interested? No, he asks nothing about David. It's about him. Does he validate? No, he's not validating anything that David is doing. Does he have an easy manner? No, there's a high emotional volatility, no lightness or patience.

Again, we have understanding for Nick because he's trying to kick an addiction. So he wants connection or really wants money, but his communication pushes David away. How about David? He values being a responsible father, holding boundaries and protecting his son from harm, I think. The result is that his self-respect may be partially preserved because he didn't give him money, but both the relationship and the objective suffer, I would say.

Is he gentle? Eh, somewhat in the beginning, but no, I wouldn't say that his demeanor is gentle. Is he interested? No, I don't think so. It doesn't ask anything about, in detail, about New York, about like whatever. There might be great reasons for that, because he knows that he's not going to get a straight answer. That's all good, but that's what's up. That sets us up for failure.

Validate. Misses an opportunity to acknowledge Nick's five days sober. Like that's a big one, I think. Even if this happened many times and he doesn't trust that anymore, it's still, this in isolation is, ugh, it's cold, man. Easy manner? Not at all. Tense, formal, guarded. So, no. Not a surprise that it went the way that it did. David's attempt at boundary setting just lacks the warmth or presence needed to keep the relationship open.

Let's start rounding up. What does all of this teach us? I think there is a high cost of not using the DEAR MAN early or stopping one of these interactions. What we've seen in a couple of these examples is that when you start an interaction, not using the DEAR principle, you tend to repeat it a couple of times and you're just spinning your wheels. I think we also learned how to recognize when it's no longer useful, because remember there are boundary conditions when you use a DEAR MAN.

Do you use a DEAR MAN when you're like having a panic attack? No, no, that's not the right timing for it. So as you dive into getting into a situation that it becomes emotionally intense, that tool doesn't really work anymore. So it's important in your head to create like sort of a marker, a line in the sand where you still can say, hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed right now.

I'm noticing that I'm feeling overwhelmed. I... Whatever the describe is in this situation, I want to break, can we talk about this later? Because once you cross that boundary, it's just going to be like a mud-slinging contest, right? What are some of the alternatives here? So, when DEAR MAN, you're beyond the point of no return, there's still the stop scale, right? You might be skipping over from emotional regulation into distress tolerance.

So, remind yourself that there's the stop scale. All you really have to do is not make it worse the moment that you're getting into a crisis. So, stop scale, timeouts, naming the rapture, they're all very useful. Don't use the DEAR MAN as a weapon, hiding behind it without meaning it. That's sort of the worst. I learned a new tool and I'm using it, but you're not using it now.

Just to be a better person than the other person, it doesn't work. Don't do that. Cool. All right. So, DEAR MAN is not about getting your way. It's about making sure you show up with clarity, with self-respect, and with an actual chance to connect. When it works, it's because it's grounded. When it fails, it often tells you something deeper, that the relationship, the timing, or the emotional state might need something else first.

Sometimes the most effective thing you can say is, I'm overwhelmed. I need to take a break. That's the lesson that I really want to sink in. I think I mentioned it three times now. And sometimes we don't get to tie it up neatly. That doesn't mean the skill failed. It means you chose to communicate with integrity. And that is ultimately what matters. Thanks for tuning in. If this resonated, feel free to share it with someone else who's ever said, I said the right thing.

Why didn't it work or something along those lines? I hope that the format of taking a look at a couple of examples from movies helped for you. It was very, very effective for me because of course, these pieces of dialogues are written by writers and they spend a lot of time on that for specific reasons. So thanks for tuning in, catch you next time.