ive found your replies to be useful and informative, tay. i think that some people here who are getting defensive about their way of doing therapy and starting to name call do not understand how different therapy styles come about, get tested, validated and finally given the seal of approval. DBT is still a very new therapy (compared to something like CBT, for example, or even interpersonal therapy) so therapists are more likely to "stick to the manual" on it. standard IPT for example is meant to be "over" in 12 weeks also, which is curious to a deli who is (largely) a social recluse and goes into panic thinking she might be a social bee in 3 months.

i think the other thing to say however is that a therapist needs to use their clinical judgement, and it would have been very difficult to hear (for me, anyway) that therapy was so prescribed (under DBT, CBT or any other paradigm) and that "this is the way things are done", like i had to live up to some standard. i think zooey's T could have kept that particular piece of DBT protocol to herself (or made it very clear that it was dbt protocol, not a generalisation like it came across). maybe if zoo went twice a week her trauma work would be over in 6 weeks? or maybe it wouldn't, and what would it matter, other than to a therapist trying to do therapy by the book.

i like that you explain DBT, tay. i find the philosophy/assumptions behind it rather triggering and so i steer clear of it, but if i ignored the marsha linehan brigade and just looked to the techniques i think it would be marvellous.