Dialectical Behavior Therapy
DBT Informed Treatment offers individuals coping skills to manage difficult memories and emotions and decrease conflicts in their relationships. This modality focuses on 4 specific areas of therapeutic skills. These are:
- Mindfulness – Helps individuals be present in the current moment.
- Distress tolerance – Many people try and 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 strong emotions that can arise 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 Does it Work Exactly?
Many of us live our daily lives with a stream of negative emotions right under our awareness. These emotions affect how we feel about ourselves and how we interact with other people, including friends, romantic partners, and family members.
DBT Informed Treatment essentially works with individuals to help them find ways to manage their negative emotions so they can feel balanced, in control, and able to interact respectfully and effectively. The focus at the heart of DBT Informed Treatment is developing the use of Wise Mind to enable more balanced responses to seemingly opposite factors in difficult situations more effectively.
When is DBT Used and What Can You Expect?
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy was initially developed to treat those with borderline personality disorder. DBT Comprehensive Treatment was developed to treat individuals with this disorder and consists of a combination of DBT skills groups and individual therapy sessions and wrap-around coaching. There are excellent DBT Comprehensive Treatment programs available and I am happy to refer to these resources as appropriate.
However, research has since shown that DBT Informed treatment can successfully treat people with depression, anxiety and a variety of other mental health disorders in an individual therapeutic setting.
I have over 10 years experience treating patients struggling with depression, anxiety and other disorders using DBT skills. Supporting these patients in a hospital based program I have found that these practical skills with focus on acceptance and change can be highly beneficial to individuals struggling with a variety of issues.
If you or someone you know may benefit from DBT Informed Treatment please get in touch with me. I would be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.