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 individuals comprehensive skills to manage painful 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 – Most 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 intense emotions that are the root cause of 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 Does it Work Exactly?
When you live with a constant stream of uncontrollable negative emotions right under your awareness, these emotions affect how you feel about yourself and how you interact with other people. DBT essentially works to help you find ways to manage your negative emotions so you can feel balanced, in control, and able to interact respectfully and effectively. The message at the heart of DBT is a concept called "radical acceptance" and a willingness to 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 any other personal reasons.
You can expect to learn DBT over the course of approximately 6 months, as it takes time to learn the 4 modules and put into practice the new skills you are learning from each module.
If you know you may benefit from dialectic behavioral therapy, please get in touch with me. I would be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.