The teen and college-aged years are a time when we are given a chance to take charge of our own social lives and learn interpersonal effectiveness skills. We are given more options when choosing friends, who we date, and who we avoid, and through those relationships, we learn about ourselves, our values, and what we want out of life. We need our social connections to live a full, satisfying life, and the teen and college years are an important launching point to developing social skills that will serve us for life.
We are also thrown into social interactions with people, let’s say, we wouldn’t necessarily choose. Through school, friend networks, and work, these trickier interactions teach us a lot about how to be respectful and reach goals with people we may not even like. We learn about handling emotions like anger, boredom, disgust, and annoyance, and through trial and error, how to handle conflict and advocate for ourselves.
Teens and young adults definitely don’t get social interactions right all the time, but through success and failure, there’s a lot to be learned. That’s why tackling social anxiety is so important for teens and young adults. Missing out on learning crucial interpersonal effectiveness skills can create long-term social challenges and lead to long-term dissatisfaction with life and with yourself.
Social anxiety can lead to “failure to launch” for teens and college students
Social anxiety in teens can hold you back from learning these crucial social skills, making it hard for you to grow and build rewarding connections. Fear of social situations and being consumed with “what ifs”, rumination, and racing thoughts, keeps teens from seeking friendships. That withdrawal can turn into perfectionism and impact school and work, holding them back from pursuing anything where they might fail. Social anxiety can even make moving away from home feel impossible; the fear feels too big to handle on their own, even if independence is something they want and know they need.
Social anxiety often leads to low self-esteem and low self-confidence; when your anxiety is holding you back from meeting life milestones, it can feel shameful and like a reflection of your worth. When you can’t believe you’re worth knowing and caring about, and you don’t think you’re capable of putting yourself out there, it becomes even harder to connect socially.
DBT Interpersonal effectiveness skills can be life-changing for teens and young adults with social anxiety
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for anxiety can help teens and young adults alike to escape the paralysis of social anxiety and launch into a life full of social skills that lead to rewarding interactions. One of the four pillars of DBT is interpersonal effectiveness, and the skills learned in a comprehensive DBT program for adolescents or young adults can help teens interact effectively, especially if they’ve struggled before to create strong, healthy connections due to social anxiety.
DBT for anxiety and DBT for panic attacks is a therapy of doing, more than a therapy of thinking and talking. For overthinkers like socially anxious teens, these interpersonal effectiveness skills can be the change they need to get out of their heads and back into engaging with the people in their lives!
DBT interpersonal effectiveness skills equip college students to face interactions with confidence
DEAR MAN combines multiple communication skills to get your needs met
DEAR MAN is a great DBT interpersonal effectiveness skill for sharing your needs in a situation where you have to make decisions and work together with one or more people. From simple and neutral situations like picking where you’ll go for dinner with friends to difficult situations like trying to work with a colleague who is difficult and disagreeable, DEAR MAN can get you through the conversation effectively, without ignoring your own needs, while also keeping the interaction respectful toward everyone involved.
For DEAR MAN, try these steps:
- Describe the facts of the current situation.
- Express, honestly, how you feel (use “I” statements)
- Assert yourself by stating your needs and desired outcome. Don’t assume they should be obvious to the other person.
- Reinforce your point by sharing the downsides of your needs not being met and the positive outcomes of getting your needs met.
- Stay mindful of your purpose, and stay on topic. Repeat yourself if the other person tries to change the subject or tries to verbally attack you.
- Appear confident, with strong body language and using language that is certain, not “maybe”.
- Negotiate. If the other person makes some fair points, consider them. Think about a solution that meets both your needs, if possible.
Boundaries help college students find balance through interpersonal effectiveness
College students are offered a world of new opportunities, and so they need to learn when it’s best to say “no” just as much as they need the confidence to say “yes”. For people-pleasing college students with social anxiety, it isn’t hard to say “yes”; it’s hard to stop when the “yes” is burning them out.
To better balance school workloads and social commitments, college students can use the DBT interpersonal effectiveness skill of boundary building.
- Think about the boundary you want to set; use your personal values and needs as your guideline.
- Decide whether the boundary is firm or flexible. Choose the consequence if the boundary isn’t respected (remember, consequences can only be actions YOU take; you are only in control of your own actions).
- State your boundary clearly and calmly. Explain what will happen if they ignore your boundary.
- When the boundary is crossed, point it out. If amends can be made, great, but if not, make changes so you uphold your boundary.
DBT for anxiety helps teens make communication choices that build their self-respect
GIVE is a guideline for respectful communication
GIVE is a guideline for how to effectively make it through a difficult interaction without exploding or withdrawing when social anxiety adds pressure to the conversation. It encourages acceptance of others’ points of view (even if you don’t agree, they have their reasons for their conclusions, and it’s important to acknowledge there’s probably some truth to them). It can be hard to be relaxed and gentle when you’re stressed, but in situations like serious friend disagreements or work conflicts, taking this approach can defuse an otherwise intense situation. It can make things easier for everyone, without eroding your self-respect or denying that your needs and values are important.
- Gentle: Speak gently and calmly, in a normal tone of voice.
- Interested: Listen, and show with your body language that you are listening.
- Validate: Respond to the other person in a way that shows you understand that they feel the way they do, and they have valid reasons. You don’t have to agree, but it’s worth weighing everyone’s point of view (including your own!).
- Easy manner: sit or stand calmly and keep your body language relaxed. Use humor, try to smile, and try to have a good attitude if you can.
FAST helps you maintain self-respect in interpersonal interactions
In tense social situations, social anxiety can push teens and young adults into emotional overload. That overwhelm can lead to lashing out, exaggerating, and all-or-nothing thinking. This is disrespectful, and ineffective communication can further erode the self-confidence and self-respect of a teen, reinforcing social anxiety.
FAST is a useful skill in DBT for panic attacks and social anxiety, providing an alternative to emotional overwhelm. Clear, honest, factual communication is the goal. If you have social anxiety, try this out the next time you’re disagreeing with a romantic partner, or struggling to get a classmate to see eye to eye, and see if it makes a difference.
- Be fair – stick to the facts, don’t assume, don’t judge, and weigh both people’s needs as valuable.
- No apologies – don’t say you’re sorry for asserting yourself.
- Stick to your values – you know what makes sense, and trusting yourself is fair, even if you get pushback. Assert yourself, and don’t compromise just to make the interaction easier.
- Be truthful – don’t exaggerate, or fall into all-or-nothing thinking. Don’t state judgments as facts; stick to what you know to be true. Don’t downplay your value or worth.
Suffolk DBT can help teens and young adults build interpersonal effectiveness skills that can overcome social anxiety
Social anxiety doesn’t have to hold you back from learning crucial social skills that will serve you throughout your life. Suffolk DBT provides therapy where teens and young adults can learn interpersonal effectiveness DBT skills, alongside all other dialectical behavior therapy skills at their offices in Manhattan and Long Island, New York and online. Their experienced therapists specialize in serving teens and college students struggling with social anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and self-harm. Schedule a free screening call so you can get started right away on building a life worth living!