Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Do you feel your mind is being pulled in a hundred different directions at once? Do you have difficulty handling some of your emotions, and does this cause any problems in your relationships?
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers individuals comprehensive skills to manage painful memories and emotions and decrease conflicts in their relationships. This modality focuses on four specific areas of therapeutic skills. These are:
- Mindfulness – Helps individuals be present in the current moment.
- Distress tolerance – Most people try to keep themselves safe from all negative emotions. Distress tolerance is geared toward increasing a person’s tolerance of negative emotions.
- Emotion regulation – Offers strategies to manage intense emotions that cause problems in a person’s life.
- Interpersonal effectiveness – These techniques allow an individual to communicate with others in a confident, assertive way that maintains self-respect and strengthens relationships.
How exactly does DBT work?
Many of us live our daily lives with a constant stream of uncontrollable negative emotions right under our awareness. These emotions affect how we feel about ourselves and interact with others, including friends, romantic partners, and family members.
DBT works with individuals to help them find ways to manage their negative emotions so they can feel balanced, in control, and interact respectfully and successfully. The message at the heart of DBT is acceptance and change.
When is DBT Used and What Can You Expect?
While dialectical behavioral therapy was initially developed to treat those with borderline personality disorder, research has since shown that DBT can successfully treat people with depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, eating disorders, and substance abuse.
DBT treatment usually consists of a combination of DBT skills groups and individual therapy sessions. The individual therapy sessions allow you to have one-on-one contact with a trained therapist who will help you apply DBT skills to your daily life, address any obstacle that may arise, and keep you motivated! The DBT skills group interactions will help you practice skills with others and offer mutual support.
Please get in touch with me if you or someone you know may benefit from dialectic behavioral therapy. I would be happy to discuss how I can help.