Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is a structured and evidence-based intervention to help you improve emotional regulation, awareness in the moment, and interpersonal relationships, while also helping to manage distress. While the origins of DBT are a group-based intervention, the skills can be used in individual therapy. In DBT, you are taught key skills in four areas, including Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Skills. For adolescents and young adults living at home, there is an additional skill about Walking the Middle Path, which can involve work with the family if needed. The overarching goal of DBT is to help you increase adaptive behaviours and reduce maladaptive behaviours so that you can have a life worth living.
Mindfulness
With Mindfulness skills, you will learn about what mindfulness is, practice skills in session and outside (not all involve meditation!), and learn how to shift your attention successfully and flexibly as needed.
Distress Tolerance
If you struggle with managing distress when experiencing intense emotions, you will learn skills to help you tolerate these in the short term, reducing their intensity so you can then engage in more adaptive behaviours.
Emotion Regulation
If you are struggling with naming your emotions and find that your emotions just seem to take over everything, emotion regulation skills will help you learn about the different common emotions, how they present and are experienced, and then with mindfulness, you start to become more aware of them for yourself. You also learn how to respond differently and more effectively when these emotions show up.
Interpersonal Skills
If you are having difficulty with interpersonal relationships, you can learn to notice the maladaptive patterns within your relationships and develop skills to help you change them. You also learn about dialectical thinking and approaching the world in a less black-and-white manner and helping you make room for opinions and thoughts that might seemingly be opposed to your own.
While DBT skills are structured, I will endeavour to use an overarching process-based framework and work with you around the specific areas you might be struggling with.