I do not believe that DBT can possibly work through a workbook or through our own means. After 1 1/2 years & having gone through everything 2 times except for the interpersonal effectiveness, I am still working with the leader of figuring out how what I'm doing is a DBT concept or what DBT term applies to what I did or how I could have better handled a situation with DBT skills. It's a continual learning process that takes practice, practice, practice to make the changes in our neuropathways that we managed to develop with non-functioning skills when they were being developed.

To be quite honest, DBT is nothing different than the therapy that one has to go through after a Tramatic Brain Injury, or a stroke except that the neuropathways in those cases have usually been destroyed. Changing something that is still intact is always much harder than not having it there & having to create it feeling like from scratch.

I know when I taught myself how to play racquettball, the skills I developed were not the best for being an advanced player. When I took a few lessons from a more advanced player, I learned better skills, but I had to break the muscle knowledge that I had already developed....that's why it's easier to learn from an instrustor in the beginning & learn the right way to do something rather than have to unlearn.......DBT is the same thing.

We only need therapy because there is something we are doing that keeps us from functioning well in our life & it usually a skill that we have developed out of NEED, not because our parents have taught us, or we have learned a good skill from someone who really cares about us....it's usually because no one in our life either knew the skill themselves or they had no idea how to convey it to us, so we developed whatever we could to get through whatever we had to get through & then because it sort of worked, we continued to use that skill over & over until it became our way of doing it.....programmed into our brains neuropathways.

Unfortunately, many of those skills are really not helping us function as adults.......& those neuropathways need to be reprogrammed with better functioning skill/reactions to difficult situations.

It's always painful when we have to start to really THINK about what we are doing & be truly AWARE of what is going on around us so that we can learn what we are doing that isn't working (which we have to do in the first place).....& that always hurts because we usually feel so stupid & non-functional.....because we are finally AWARE of it & not just blowing it off & ignoring it anymore.......then learning & APPLYING & even thinking about a situation in a functional way is even more difficult & usually painful.

The problem is that you can't fix what's broke without figuring out what's broken & even setting a broken bone is painful......so why would we think that fixing a broken way of dealing with things in our life would be any less painful....just because it's the pathways in our brain rather than bones in our body.

The leader we have handles our DBT almost like a college class which may be why I can deal with it so well. Understanding how our brain is working & understanding how applying skills/actions can change the existing neuropathways that exist.....which is proven scientifically, has brought DBT into a whole different level of understanding for me.

For the emotional regulation......our emotional actions come from our internal brain....the lymbic system (the emotional mind, the action urge part of our mind). In order to function rationally, we need to bring our rational mind (the Pre-Frontal Lobe) into being part of the function. In order for that to happen, we have to calm down the body action/urge of the lymbic system (emotional part of our brain) with skills necessary to break the thought processes of the Lymbic system which drives the action/urge part of our mind so that we can hear what our pre-frontal lobe (the logical part of our mind) has to say.

Until I honestly was able to understand the connection between the physiology of the brain's functioning with the concepts of the DBT skills, it was truthfully more meaningless than it has become.

I know that having been a firmware engineer for 15 years & thinking on a much higher intellectual level, I needed therapy that would fit where my brain's thinking level is at. I was lucky to be in a group of people who were in the same place as I was intellectually, so we all blended well & we have a wonderful group leader who teaches at the local private college.

I truly believe that the way DBT is presented makes all the difference in the world how we perceive it.....but that's true of all the therapy types.

DBT however is the one therapy that I have experienced that requires awareness of our thoughts, our emotions, & the situations & conditions surrounding us & provides the learning of skills (that we should have learned correctly growing up) that give us a functional way of handling difficult situations we find ourselves in. The problem is that the non-functional skills have to be broken & the new put in place with practice, practice, practice.....& that is as painful for ourselves as learning how to play an instrument, or learning how to participate in a sport especially if we've learned poor skills in the first place & have to break the old while learning & practicing the new.

Sometimes if we really want to make the changes necessary to function well in those difficult circumstances we aren't functioning well in now, we have to endure the pain for the future success.