Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
What is it?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a comprehensive treatment approach that was developed by Marsha Linehan, who has demonstrated its efficacy in clinical trials. DBT was originally designed to ameliorate the disruptive behaviors experienced by individuals with suicidal behavior and Borderline Personality Disorder and is now being used to work with a range of disruptive experiences. DBT focuses on ending self injurious or impulsive behavior, difficulty managing extreme emotions or mood swings, cognitive disruptions including dissociative or paranoid thinking, identity disturbance including a sense of emptiness and chaotic interpersonal relationships.
DBT focuses on the learning and practicing of skills that an individual can add to his or her already existing coping strategies in order to more effectively handle disruptive behaviors. Specific targets of treatment can be identified and addressed through strategies that emphasize both acceptance and change. DBT offers a compassionate approach, recognizing disruptive behaviors like eating disorders as understandable on one hand, as they were probably once effective in some way, while also recognizing the need for change.
What are DBT Skills?
The DBT skills are divided into four primary modules:
* Emotion Modulation is designed to help members increase their awareness of their own emotional experiences and learn how to be active in changing the intensity, duration, and quality of their emotions when possible.
* Interpersonal Effectiveness is designed to help members identify their beliefs about interpersonal interactions, assess their current interpersonal skills and learn alternative interpersonal strategies.
*Mindfulness incorporates Eastern philosophy and meditation practices to help clients increase their attention and awareness, improve their concentration and help regulate their emotions through learning to take a non-judgmental approach to their experience.
*Distress Tolerance focuses on strategies clients can use in moments of distress, including self soothing techniques.
Therapeutic results of DBT can include improvements in the ability to cope with difficult emotions (e.g. anger, rejection, emptiness, guilt, and shame), decreases in self-injurious and disruptive behavior, decreases in suicidality, decreases in hospitalizations, improvements in interpersonal relationships, decreases in all-or-nothing thinking and improvements in self-esteem and self-respect.