A low-risk technique for gaining intimacy with people

hi guys welcome or welcome back I'm Anna a Clinical Psychology doctoral intern and today we're going to be talking about a low-risk way to get more intimate with people [Music] today's technique is from radically open DBT if you're familiar with DBT dialectical behavioral therapy radically open DBT or rodbt is a slight variation on the original DBT so today's technique is called match plus one I'm going to explain the technique to you going to run through a quick example for how to use it and then also just give you a few additional tips for how to

use this worksheet or handout in order to assess your relationships so match plus one is a technique where you want to get closer to someone so you start with less personal disclosures and then you assess to see if it's being reciprocated and then if it is you elevated plus one degree so if it's matched then you can add a level of vulnerability to what you are disclosing about yourself and if it's not understandably you can stay in the same area or actually match down it's kind of a combination between matching people's energy and assessing for

reciprocation it's like it's kind of like a feedback loop figuring out how much you want to be vulnerable depending on how much other people are responding to your vulnerability because of course as you can imagine if you're constantly trying to get intimate with someone trying to be emotionally open and vulnerable with them and they're not responding that's pretty high risk you know puts you at risk of being rejected or feeling abandoned or feeling like you're investing more in a relationship than they are returning so this is a technique for starting slow so that you have

gains over time when that trust starts to build you're becoming more intimate with other people but at the same time you're not taking huge risks so you know it's not like you're being extremely vulnerable and someone is rejecting you for it it's low risk because it allows you to gauge early on if someone is going to reject you before you've revealed extremely personal or vulnerable information about yourself where the stakes would be higher so let's run through an example you know let's say that you are talking to a classmate next to you so levels one

or two of intimacy would be talking about everyday non-emotional events things like the weather traffic the taste of a meal or stating opinions about non-emotional topics such as the service at a restaurant or the color of a room so you're sitting next to your classmate and you're wanting to be in that level one to two intimacy you might say something like oh the readings took me a really long time to complete this week and then you assess are they reciprocating are they saying oh yeah it took me a really long time as well or actually

I didn't do the reading or are they just kind of blowing you off and saying oh yeah yeah I get it if they match your level of disclosure you can bump it up to like a level three or four where you're making non-emotional disclosures about personal goals or values things like politics parenting philosophy or you're making emotional or passionate disclosures about non-personal topics such as world peace or you're revealing socially acceptable personal preferences such as I love to go mountain biking so let's say the next class comes along you're sitting next to this person you

know that they responded to a level one or two disclosure a level three or four might be something like like telling the other person about your plans for the weekend you you know maybe you have a trip a weekend trip planned somewhere or maybe talking about something from the class that came up you know like a political topic and giving your opinion on what you think about it okay next class comes along you decide this person reciprocated a level three or four let me bump it up to a level five or six at a level

five or six you're revealing private feelings or emotional judgments about personal events about your true feelings about the boss or the co-worker or possibly revealing socially unacceptable opinions judgments or preferences such as I detest disorganized people okay so here maybe you get to chatting with your classmate again maybe this time you talk about something you think about the professor like hey I know this professor is really popular has really great reviews on me Rate My Professor but actually don't like him because of X Y and Z see how the other person responds do they respond

by just kind of saying oh okay yeah whatever or do they respond by giving their own genuine opinion about the professor let's say that they do reciprocate then next time you might go up to a level seven or eight revealing personal opinions or thoughts about the relationships such as I really like you and or revealing private feelings or judgments about highly emotional personal events such as giving details about your unhappy marriage and or engaging in open Expressions such as tears uninhibited laughter more eye contact so here maybe you're sitting next to this classmate once more

maybe you decide hey I want to ask this person if they want to study with me so maybe you say hey I think we Vibe or I like you as a person or I think you're really sweet would you like to study for this together or maybe they ask you hey how's your weekend and you say actually it was pretty terrible I broke up with my boyfriend I think a level seven or eight was where a lot of relationships tend to fall off the reciprocation game where a lot of people are starting to disclose personal

things about their lives and realizing that it's not being reciprocated by the other person so oftentimes they might go back down to level five or six with something like an acquaintance I would say level seven or eight is where you're starting to really ingrain that intimacy if you get to a level nine you might reveal feelings of affection or desire for more intimacy such as I want to spend more time with you and or sharing stories of shameful or embarrassing experiences that could be damaging if known publicly and or being willing to be highly vulnerable

such as sharing extreme self-doubt or weakness so let's say you've started hanging out with this person socially a few times you get the sense that they can be trusted that you have a good back and forth with them so you might start to talk to them about maybe what happened in your relationship that caused the breakup for instance or you might say hey I think you're a really cool person I really like spending time with you how would you feel about going to this event with me and then a level 10 is where you're actually

expressing love and intense feelings of caring and desire for committed long-term relationship and being willing to reveal deep-seated vulnerable emotions that you may have never expressed before and to make serious personal sacrifices is for the relationship so for instance here you might ask someone to be your partner or you might tell a friend I love you when you hang up on the phone with them things along those lines so I have an exercise using this intervention and then I have sort of a homework assignment based on that that you can practice take a look at

this worksheet I'll put a link to it in the description box if you want to click on it what patterns do you notice in terms of where your friends lie on that Spectrum so map it out where do your family members where do your friends lie where does your partner lie if you have one and just zoom out and take a look at it what patterns do you notice maybe it's difficult for you to get past a certain level of closeness you know like maybe for you it feels really really vulnerable to tell someone that

you value them so that's not a step that you often take with people or maybe the opposite maybe you tend to over share with people and you find that a lot of your friends and acquaintances kind of cluster in the level 10 area are there certain gaps in your spectrum why might that be like for me I noticed that there was a Gap around level like six to nine ish the reason that happened was because I either fully trust a person or I don't I have a little bit of this black and white thinking and

so that's why it's difficult for me to feel like I can fully trust people that aren't a level 10. do certain types of relationships cluster together you know like maybe all of your family are in the level 10 because maybe you're one of those people that think family are the only people you can actually ever fully trust and friends or not to maybe the opposite maybe you're not super close with your family but you do have intimate relationships with your chosen family what do you make of the way that these cluster how do you think

other people would rate you so after you have yours mapped out how do you think those people would view you on the Spectrum and if there are discrepancies why do you think that is so now after you've done that I want you to challenge yourself based on this exercise give yourself a little homework assignment where you challenge yourself to do something a little bit outside your comfort zone so maybe if for you all of your co-workers are on the very low end of the spectrum because you have trouble figuring out how to show affection to

people in the professional sphere maybe what you do is give them a holiday card or something of the sort or maybe if you struggle to get to a really high level of intimacy with friends maybe you tell a friend I care about you or I love you or I feel positive feelings towards you so just challenge yourself in whatever way you feel you need let me know what you thought about this you know I'm curious to hear what sort of patterns you had in your spectrum when you mapped out who are the people in your

life and how intimate you are with them is this a technique you would ever try or is this a technique that you already do try maybe hope you have a great week bye