[crazy24/7]

My sister is undergoing this and has highly recommended it. How is it different that behavioral cognitive therapy? Can I ask a psychlogist to do this...are they all trained in this sort of therapy or is it a specialty area?

Hi

I've done DBT and it definitely saved my life. DBT is aimed at reducing behaviours which are life threatening or interfere with your quality of life. 'Proper' DBT has four elements: (1) Individual therapy, where you monitor your behaviours each week and do chain analyses on the most problematic; (2) Skills training, where you are taught a specific set of skills (mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness); (3) Telephone consultation with your therapist, to support you to use the skills in your daily life; (4) The therapist being in DBT consultation with colleagues, to help them stay within the model. Finding someone who can offer full DBT is quite a specialist area, at least in the UK. Many more therapists claim to use DBT, but they may just be drawing on some of the skills rather than offering DBT. That's fine if that's what you decide on, but it's worth remembering that the evidence base is only for the 'full' DBT.

The main difference from from behavioural and cognitive therapies is that DBT tries to balance acceptance with change. Marsha Linehan, who developed DBT, found that the continuous emphasis on 'change change change' felt too invalidating for some clients. DBT therefore incorporates mindfulness and radical acceptance.

DBT would be a good choice if your main priority is to get your problem behaviours and thoughts under control. It can feel quite frustrating at times because it's relentless focus on behaviour means that you never really get to look at the problems underneath. So I'd personally say that if you don't have serious behavioural difficulties (suicide attempts, self injury, eating difficulties, chronic relationship difficulties) or serious emotion dysregulation, the DBT skills may still be helpful but I would choose a different form of individual therapy.

Hope this helps a bit

[crazy24/7]

Originally Posted by Improving

Hi

I've done DBT and it definitely saved my life. DBT is aimed at reducing behaviours which are life threatening or interfere with your quality of life. 'Proper' DBT has four elements: (1) Individual therapy, where you monitor your behaviours each week and do chain analyses on the most problematic; (2) Skills training, where you are taught a specific set of skills (mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness); (3) Telephone consultation with your therapist, to support you to use the skills in your daily life; (4) The therapist being in DBT consultation with colleagues, to help them stay within the model. Finding someone who can offer full DBT is quite a specialist area, at least in the UK. Many more therapists claim to use DBT, but they may just be drawing on some of the skills rather than offering DBT. That's fine if that's what you decide on, but it's worth remembering that the evidence base is only for the 'full' DBT.

The main difference from from behavioural and cognitive therapies is that DBT tries to balance acceptance with change. Marsha Linehan, who developed DBT, found that the continuous emphasis on 'change change change' felt too invalidating for some clients. DBT therefore incorporates mindfulness and radical acceptance.

DBT would be a good choice if your main priority is to get your problem behaviours and thoughts under control. It can feel quite frustrating at times because it's relentless focus on behaviour means that you never really get to look at the problems underneath. So I'd personally say that if you don't have serious behavioural difficulties (suicide attempts, self injury, eating difficulties, chronic relationship difficulties) or serious emotion dysregulation, the DBT skills may still be helpful but I would choose a different form of individual therapy.

Hope this helps a bit

I have overwhelming anger that makes it difficult for me to get through the day. It affects every aspect of my life. I can't seem to get past it on my own. I spend so much energy keeping my emotions under control that I have literally no ability to think about anything else. I do have some relationships, but I feel they are strained because of my need to express my anger by bad-mouthing my daughter's father all the time. I feel like I may make my friends uncomfortable with all my negativity.