It took me years to finally accept that I am bipolar. It runs in my family, and I had all the symptoms, but I did not want that diagnosis in my medical files. My regular MD finally refused to treat me anymore and told that I had to seek out a professional who dealt with those types of issues. I hesitantly agreed to seek out therapy. It has really been the best thing for me.

I am now 2 years into therapy and we are somewhat at a standstill. She wants to try DBT with me. I have been reading/researching about this, but I want to find someone who can really tell me the details of it. I need to find someone who actually did this type of treatment and had success with it. Have any of you done this?

[AniManiac]

I would like to hear about this too. I was at a NAMI support group meeting the other day and two other people with bipolar were going on about how great DBT was.

I suspect that I'm not accepting enough of the illness and limitations to make it worthwhile, just based on what I've seen online. But maybe I'm wrong on that.

[hamster-bamster]

Done this on and off with zero success.

Originally Posted by hamster-bamster

Done this on and off with zero success.

What exactly did you do? What does a session with DBT look like?

[spydermonkey]

Hi, I have had some experience with DBT in the past. I was in a group setting if that makes a difference, it was nice to have others to bounce things off of.

IME it was helpful in that it helped me separate my emotional reactions from my "self" and by doing that helped remove some of the urgency to act on emotions in a way that might be self-destructive or unhealthy. I learned some great grounding and mindfulness techniques that shield me from the most intense of emotional swings---when I can call on what I learned while IN those swings, which to me is the hard part.

I did find it kind of basic and some parts of it didn't click with me, the interpersonal effectiveness stuff mostly.

Overall though I liked DBT and still use some of the techniques.

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Squiggle328

What exactly did you do? What does a session with DBT look like?

First it was an experimental group setting. It started with a mindfulness exercise. The exercise was led by a young female intern with this incredibly high pitched voice. She read from a sheet of paper. It was awful. I am not against mindfulness, I love my yoga teacher's voice, it is just that not everyone can pick it out of the Eastern tradition and pull it off. Also, for guided imagery, the vocal quality - male or female - is key. So that was the beginning. Then there was some circle time. There was a middle aged guy and the rest of us were women (not representative of the population of BP sufferers, interestingly - probably representative of people who seek help). People shared stories and some were compelling. I still remember a young woman's story - her mom was urging to drive her to a far away store down the coast to return all athletic clothing and outer gear - I think it was Patagonia - that she had bought when manic. The store had a great return policy but the gal could not collect the courage to bring all that STUFF to the counter. I am now in exactly the same situation with a different store.

So that was nice, but you get it here on this forum (provided online is OK with you).

Then the experiment lead would ask us questions about how we think mood charting can be helpful. I remember answering that it might have a predictive power. It is a good answer, but it did not help me stick to mood charting. Now 5 years later I do mood charting on this site. One reason: the mood chart here is easier to follow and more user friendly than the Excel sheet they gave us. For me such things make a huge difference.

Then came skills training and exercises with situations. For instance, we were writing a "Dear Man" letter - mine was to my psychiatrist asking him to give me regular appointments.

I was constantly identifying with the leaders of the group, thinking about how I would make this presentation or that - very unhealthy; I was not accepting the illness, but there was no one there to see it and work with it.

And we had homework.

Later on, in a county mental health setting, I had irregular one-on-one sessions with a DBT-trained therapist. Each time, she would print out hand-outs for me as if I were yearning for stuff to read. The lists were endless. The idea is good - out of 25 grounding ways you will find 3 that work. But reading through the whole 25 is not only boring, it is depressing TO ME. The woman herself was seriously obese and very slow in her movements and on several occasions almost fell asleep. She was not animated at all. So it was such a fringe case, I probably should not even bring it up as an example.

[kaliope]

I found DBT to have been very helpful to me. I attended a short intro version 8 week beginners group, three times. The first time I felt gave me an overview of the process. The second time I could actually start using the skills. The third time, I felt I gained a full understanding of how it worked.

I really did not like the Phd running the group. We were given a booklet of handouts that took us thru the process that we worked thru each week. We werent given the opportunity to ask questions. She just stuck to the DBT formula and we were not allowed to deviate from it.

But DBT is about learning a series of techniques to learn emotional regulation. Learning how to dial down that emotional reactivity. How to take that emotion and instead of reacting to it, look instead at facts, why are we feeling this way (and the book had lists of possible reasons why we felt the way we did, everything was spelled out), what can we do instead (again, list in the book), what other ways can we respond, what is actually going on vs what we think is going on, i cant remember it all now. there are lots of things to learn. i remember creating a whole excel spreadsheet to work thru issues with all the step learned in DBT, but once you get it, it becomes second nature and it doesnt take but a split second. there are things that didnt work for me of course as well. mindfulness i am not big on. meditation has never been for me. i couldnt do it in group and would have panic attacks and she said this was because of my ptsd. But overall, I credit DBT with having as much positive change for me as medication did. Huge diffference. I highly recommend it.

[Nixi]

I personally have found DBT to be invaluable!! But I also do have Borderline Personalty Disorder. I was lucky enough to have 1 yr therapy of 1:1 personal therapy plus group skills once a wk and telephone contact! I attend a monthly advanced group to keep my skills in check! I use my DBT skills daily and in every aspect of life! I personally cannot sing it's praises enough!!!

[Resident Bipolar]

I've started DBT and I found it really, really good and had a very positive outlook on the therapy...and was excited to start because it seemed more helpful than DBT, and I liked the sound of incorporation of mindfulness into the therapy.

Before I got put into the group, I had about 12 one-to-one sessions with a community mental health nurse. It was going really, really well. But I sort of lost interest, and skipped my first group session last Thursday (I'm hoping to go to the next one).

It's actually quite a good therapy, especially compared to CBT. I definitely recommend giving it a try. It has very high success rates, and yes there are some cases of it not working - as with any medication; therapy or treatment out there. But it's 100% worth a shot.

RB ♥

[BuggsBunny]

What does DBT stand for, please?

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

From here on PC:
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/an-...therapy/all/1/

and from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect...havior_therapy

(I've not done it personally.)

[BuggsBunny]

Thank you very much!

[hamster-bamster]

Originally Posted by Resident Bipolar

It has very high success rates

RB ♥

What are the data for it? I have read that it reduces suicidality in borderline patients (for which the therapy was initially conceived) 1 year post beginning of the treatment but I have not read anything about confirmed success in bipolar. Maybe the studies you referred to were done in UK?

[Resident Bipolar]

Originally Posted by hamster-bamster

What are the data for it? I have read that it reduces suicidality in borderline patients (for which the therapy was initially conceived) 1 year post beginning of the treatment but I have not read anything about confirmed success in bipolar. Maybe the studies you referred to were done in UK?

I live in the UK, so most likely yes...but nationality has next to nothing to do with it.

However, the DailyStrenth forums ran a poll on the effectiveness of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy for its' forum members. The results of which I've put an image below.



Depending on commitment and willingness to use the therapy...it can be a very good treatment for bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, and is regarded by the mental health services over in the UK as one of the most intense treatments outside of inpatient admission.

RB ♥