Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Do you feel your mind is being pulled in a hundred different directions at once? Do you have a hard time handling some of your emotions, and does this cause any problems in your relationships?
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers you comprehensive skills to regulate your emotions and decrease conflicts in their relationships. This modality focuses on 4 specific areas of therapeutic skills. These are:
- Mindfulness – Helps you to be present in the current moment rather than multitasking. You will also learn how to get into a state of mind that helps you to meet your long term and short term goals.
- Distress tolerance – Helps to get through a crisis without making things worse.
- Emotion regulation – Offers strategies to help to regulate your emotions so that you suffer less and make choices that are in line with your values and priorities.
- Interpersonal effectiveness – These techniques allow up to to communicate effectively with others in a confident, assertive way that maintains self-respect and keeps relationships steady.
How Does it Work Exactly?
DBT skills help you to build a life worth living, the life you want.
DBT essentially works with individuals to help them find ways to manage their emotions so they can feel balanced, in control, and able to interact respectfully and successfully. The message at the heart of DBT is both 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.
If you or someone you know may benefit from dialectic behavioral therapy, please get in touch with me. we would be happy to discuss how we may be able to help.