one of the dialectics in DBT, as I see it from my POV as a client, is that at the beginning you are not necessarily focusing on your emotions but on behavior instead but through doing that you learn how to feel and identify your emotions. It can seem invalidating but it works.
Of course it doesn't work for everyone and IMO the key to that is the T. I also really believe that for DBT to work as it's intended you need to be in the full DBT program. You need to be going to weekly skills training group and also have weekly individual therapy with a T trained in DBT. I'm not sure how doing DBT in half measures works, although there is some literature out there supporting it.
I can just say that for me it was the entirety of the therapy that worked and I doubt "DBT-lite" would have been as effective.