The FAST skill is about being truthful about the situation, maintaining your self-respect, and not sacrificing your values in the process. FAST stands for:

• (be) Fair
• (don’t over) Apologize
• Stick to your values
• (be) Truthful

Fair

The feelings and wishes of BOTH people in a conversation is important. Remember, dialectical means seeing two different views of the same situation and it’s important to recognise and validate the feelings of both people, being fair to both of you.

(Don’t over) Apologise

Over-apologising is common in people living with BPD, as we often seek to please the people around us even if it harms us in the end. Even without BPD, it’s something we do all the time.

• You ring a customer service line and say ‘I’m sorry to bother you, could you answer a question for me?’
• getting through the checkout at the supermarket takes a while and you apologise for taking so long
• you are in conversation and say ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that, could you say it again?’
• you apologise on someone else’s behalf when they say something inappropriate

It’s normal for us to want to be consider nice, polite and good people, but when we can’t regulate our emotions you can become overly concerned with the opinions of others. This leads you to try and plase people even more, and can lower your sense of self-worth or self-esteem.

Over-apologizing can become a habit when we’ve been doing it a long time, it’s an automatic reaction that you may not even realise you are doing.

There are always going to be times when we have done something wrong, and apologising is necessary. But it’s important to learn things you don’t need to apologise for:

• things other people did or didn’t do
• your feelings – they are valid
• asking questions
• things that are out of your control
• your needs and wants

Stick to your values

A good phrase to use here is ‘stick to your guns’. If something is important to you, like having your needs met, you don’t need to compromise your values or principles in order to achieve the goal. You may need to use mindfulness to slow things down a moment and identify what is important to you, to avoid compromising your values.

(Be) Truthful

Remember that we are using these skills to help regulate our emotions, and so it’s important to use mindfulness to stick to the facts of the situation and how we feel. We can’t over-exaggerate how we are feeling, or undersell how we feel or what we need. Be truthful and clear on how you feel and what you need.