Check the Facts

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by your emotions, wondering if your reactions fit the situation? Enter "Check the Facts," a powerful tool from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) that can help you navigate your emotional landscape.

The beauty of Check the Facts is its personal approach. It begins with a simple yet profound question: "What emotion do I want to change?" By starting here, we put ourselves first in our emotional journey. This approach empowers us to seek change for ourselves, not to please others or meet external expectations. Others don’t have to know that we’re checking the facts! It's for us, not them.

In DBT, we embrace a fundamental assumption: all emotions are valid. Yes, you read that right - ALL emotions. Why? Because every emotion has a cause. That frustration you felt when someone cut in line? Valid. The sadness that washed over you thinking your friends forgot your birthday? Also valid. This perspective helps us understand that our feelings make sense given our experiences and perceptions. It's a compassionate way to approach our emotional lives. However, just because an emotion is valid doesn't mean it's always justified in its intensity or duration. This is where Check the Facts really shines. It helps us examine whether our emotional response fits the actual situation. (And when they don't fit the facts we bring in some opposite action into play. But let’s stick with one skill at a time.)

Remember, Check the Facts isn't about invalidating your emotions. It's about understanding them better and ensuring your reactions are in proportion to the situations you face.

How do we do it?

You ask 6 questions:

1.  What emotion do I want to change?

2.  What’s prompting this emotion?

3.  What are my interpretations and assumptions about this event?

1. What are other possible interpretations?

4.  Am I assuming a threat?

1. What was the outcome previous times you had similar thoughts?

5. What’s the worst case outcome?

6. Does my emotion and/or its intensity fit the actual facts of the situation?

Here’s an example:

1. Emotion: sadness, intensity: 6.5/10, duration-2 hours

2. Prompting event: It’s 10 am, I looked at my phone and saw that I have no messages from my friends, just family, wishing me a happy birthday.

3. I have the thought, ‘why haven’t they texted me yet? Do they not care about me enough to remember? I must not be important’

1. They might not be awake; last year they threw me a surprise birthday party so they care;  just because I feel unimportant doesn't mean it's true; maybe there’s other reasons for this situation

4. I’m worried that my friendships are shallow.

5. Worst case scenario: My friendship ends

6. My sadness is justified;  when ‘things are not the way [I] wanted, expected, or hoped them to be’ it causes sadness, yet the duration and intensity does not fit the facts. It’s not effective. 

How do we remember all these steps?

You don’t have to! When you can’t consult your trusty DBT workbook, you can ask yourself one guiding question: what else could be true? This single inquiry can open up new perspectives and possibilities.

Remember, ‘check the facts’ is the tool in DBT’s emotion regulation module. One of the goals of this module is to change unwanted emotion! We can do this by getting curious about what thoughts are fueling X emotion. Emotional regulation is a process—we build our skills to practice and improve over time.

Reference:

Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT® skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.