{"id":866,"date":"2018-03-29T10:36:41","date_gmt":"2018-03-29T09:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radicallyopen.test\/?p=866"},"modified":"2018-03-29T10:36:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T09:36:41","slug":"tips-on-how-to-do-self-enquiry-with-another-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/tips-on-how-to-do-self-enquiry-with-another-person\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips on How to do Self-Enquiry with Another Person"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-enquiry<\/a> is a core skill from RO DBT that that focuses on asking yourself good question in order to find your \u201cedge.\u201d Your edge is your personal unknown and the place where we have something new to learn. Self-enquiry presumes that \u201cwe don\u2019t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.\u201d In other words, we bring perceptual and processing biases into all the situations of our lives and therefore we all have more to learn about ourselves and our ways of being with others. Self-enquiry aims to facilitate this learning.<\/p>\n

In addition to asking yourself good questions, self-enquiry involves \u201couting yourself\u201d about what you discover. Sharing what we are learning with others helps us strengthen our relationships by allowing others to get to know us at a deeper level and by showing humility and openness. Sharing the results of our self-enquiry also helps us to fill in our blind spots through providing an opportunity for others to give us feedback.<\/p>\n

Self-enquiry can be done either on your own<\/a> or with others. On your own, the practice involves trying to find good questions and then noticing your reactions to them and what these say about what you might have to learn. Usually this is most helpful if done in a journal.<\/p>\n

Self-enquiry can also be done with a partner, as we outline below. If you are unfamiliar with self-enquiry, we\u2019d recommend you get the RO-DBT skills manual<\/a> or at least read this post that provides an overview of the method<\/a> before trying it out. Self-enquiry can be confusing and counterintuitive and cannot be grasped solely by intellectual means. It takes repeated practice to learn.<\/p>\n

The outline below will give you a general guideline on how to do the practice. As you practice, keep in mind the main job of the listener is to help the person who is \u201couting themselves\u201d to stay close to their edge and find good questions. As the listener, you may need to set aside some normal ways of responding \u2013 such as problem solving, validating, encouraging, or advice giving. Feel free to be flexible about the practice (trying to do self-enquiry \u201cright\u201d might be something to do self-enquiry about ?) but also keep the general outline in mind, as well as the time constraints. Most of the time it\u2019s helpful to keep practices short, just 5 minutes or so per person.<\/p>\n

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  1. The person \u2018outing-themselves\u2019 attempts to locate their \u2018edge\u2019 by briefly telling their partner about an emotional event that they want to practice self-enquiry around, <\/strong>without justifying, defending, or rationalizing what happened (1-2 minutes)<\/li>\n
  2. The listener listens <\/strong>without soothing, validating, cheerleading, or problem solving<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n