Chain analysis will help you to analyze a situation where you engaged in a problematic behavior, including determining the contributing factors and creating a plan for preventing the behavior in the future.
Resources
from “DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets” by Marsha M. Linehan
- Chain Analysis (p. 20)
- Chain Analysis, Step by Step (p. 21-22)
- Example: Chain Analysis of Problem Behavior (p. 35)
Video Transcript
(transcript edited for brevity and clarity)
I wanted to go over a behavior analysis process that has helped me a lot as I’ve gone through treatment. As a disclaimer, I’m not a mental health professional. I’m just a girl who’s been through a lot of therapy and wants to share what I’ve learned.
So today I want to discuss something called a chain analysis. This is something that is described in DBT. and I will be working from this workbook (“DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets” by Marsha M. Linehan). So the point of a chain analysis is that you’re gonna spend a little bit of time reflecting on a situation in which you engaged in some sort of problematic behavior or problematic coping strategy.
Chain analysis is really helpful when you’re reflecting on patterns in your life, especially patterns of when you engage in negative coping strategies or negative behaviors that you want to engage in less. Chain analysis can be really helpful for laying out all of the factors that went into that particular interaction. It can help you really analyze and figure out:
- What went wrong?
- What can I try differently next time?
- Where might I need to put in some extra coping skills?
Chain analysis gets used all the time in DBT. It’s been a huge help for me in eradicating some of my specific target behaviors that were really persistent over time. When you do a chain analysis, you can look at this flowchart to kind of understand which factors we want to pull out:
The first one is your vulnerability factors. So those will be things that contributed to your mood before you even had any trigger or engaged in the situation. This might be that I would be particularly irritable on a day when I forgot to eat breakfast, or if I had too much coffee and so I’m anxious. So keeping track of vulnerability factors is just a really good way to understand that maybe you were more sensitive on this day, and it helps you understand the complexities of the situation a little better.
So after acknowledging your vulnerability factors, you want to describe the process of events in the way you best process information, whether you make notes on it or talk out loud about it. You want to describe the prompting event and everything that happens leading up to engaging in your target behavior, whatever that behavior is. So I’d make notes about things like:
- What exactly someone said
- What exactly someone did
- How I reacted
- What I did
- How the other person responded
You also want to note any coping strategies that you tried. This can be really useful data if you notice that you tried a specific strategy and it wasn’t effective. That can be a good hint to you that maybe you should try a different coping strategy.
Finally, it can be really helpful to make note of the consequences that came out of this target behavior. Maybe it had an impact on your relationship, maybe it had an impact on your self-esteem, maybe it’s getting in the way of your long-term goals. I think it’s really helpful to bring those things to our awareness because then it really reinforces why you’re working on this target behavior. When you really drill your values and your goals into your mind, it’s easier to recall those, even when you’re in crisis mode or really emotional.
I think that the more time that you spend on this (actually sitting and reflecting on the discomfort, reflecting on the emotions that came up), it becomes easier to go through the process of actually problem solving. In my experience, this was challenging to do, and it was guided largely by my therapist. If you have access to a therapist, I encourage you to go to them, talk through it with them, and get some practice with them.
But as time has gone on and as I’ve done it more and experimented more with it, I have gotten a lot better at doing it on my own. With a lot of trial and error, you start to figure out what is really working for you and what’s not working for you. You can kind of pick out which coping mechanisms are helping you a lot or making the situation even worse. Over time, as you reflect on it and notice those patterns, it builds up your toolbox of healthy coping mechanisms.
For me, this isn’t necessarily going to be a scenario where I do a chain analysis and then this problem is fixed forever. For some big problems, I will do chain analysis on them regularly. Whenever the issue comes up, I have to keep practicing, and I keep doing behavior analysis and refining and fine-tuning my responses. But once you have this data, you can start to really develop those plans.
In Marsha Linehan’s DBT workbook, she recommends developing skillful behaviors to replace any problem behaviors that come up. It can help to ask yourself how you can respond differently in the future. What is a more effective skill or coping mechanism that you could pull in instead?
She also recommends developing prevention plans to reduce your vulnerability to stressful events. As we touched on earlier, your vulnerability factors can make it so that you’re more sensitive and more likely to respond with higher emotions to a situation. It can be harder to get into your wise mind and make decisions that kind of align with your values.
I try to do a lot of regular self-care to reduce my vulnerability factors. That includes things like making sure that I do what I need to to make sure I’m eating enough and drinking enough. I make sure that on nights when I’m really stressed out, that I’m taking time for self-care and trying not to push myself too far. If you’re able to put in that effort to build a more positive mood, you’ll be less susceptible to falling into strong emotions.
Finally, Marsha recommends making sure that you repair any consequences or negative outcomes of engaging in your target behavior, or any negative consequences from the sequence of events that you reflected on. That might include things like repairing relationships, apologizing, and just looking after the consequences of your actions.
Chain analysis is something that I’ve used to frame how I figure out which skills I need in a certain situation. A lot of my recovery and therapy has been like, okay, I’m gonna reflect on this really bad situation that happened. I’m gonna reflect on what I did, how I reacted, and then I’m gonna think about where I could maybe plug in some DBT skills.
I also find that if you are seeking out peer support in DBT communities online, having some sort of chain analysis and providing that insight with people can be really helpful so they can give you recommendations of specific coping skills. Laying out a situation this way provides people with a lot of information where they can give you some really good, tailored advice.
Chain Analysis Worksheet
Chain Analysis of Problem Behavior (p. 31-34); OR complete the free chain analysis worksheet below
Cassia 