Building Awareness
For Jackie to build the skillfulness to reach her second goal of self-care and stress management, all interpersonal effectiveness skills were employed, and a lot of time spent becoming aware of how draining caring for and being around her mother was. Spending four or five nights a week there left Jackie physically exhausted and it was emotionally and mentally grueling, partly due to hypervigilance around scorching remarks and judgments.
Jackie concluded that she would benefit from distancing from her mother while developing other, more rejuvenating relationships. To reach this objective, the DEAR MAN, GIVE, and FAST skills were used in a balanced way.