DBT

Has anyone done DBT? Did you find it helpful? I was thinking of asking my Psychiatrist to refer me when I next see him.

i did an intro to dbt course 3x over. it was a simple 8 week class. i took it three times so it could really sink in. there is just a lot of info. the first time was like reading a book. you just get the info. the second time, i was able to start practicing the skills and really think about using them. the third time just cemented it for me. i just really knew it, what to do when to do it. really understood the process. not that i can explain it now. lol. mindfulness is still challenging for me. like i said, it was just a beginners course so we learned about staying in the now and different techniques to manage our thoughts when it came to managing our emotions. i used to say i went from 0-60 emotionally due to my ptsd. i would just react. but our thoughts are directly connected to our feelings. so it is about learning whether we are even responsible or not. is the crisis even ours? just because your yard is on fire doesnt make it my emergency. but it was about learning all about the responses and being in the now and do you even need to respond and what level of response is necessary. the mindfulness doesnt stick with me but the other stuff really worked and i dont go from 0-60 anymore. a lot of the dissociation stopped after that for me as well as i didnt get overwhelmed by my feelings and have to escape. it isnt just a bpd treatment in my opinion. just learning how to regulate the emotions for anybody is a great thing. i would definitely ask about getting into a group.

Thank you Kali. I will ask my Pdoc about it when I see him next month.

I'm a big fan of DBT myself. I was in a good program that met once a week for a year - so I'd have group once a week and I'd meet with my T for individual once a week as well. Group isn't really "group therapy" so to speak. It's mostly for skills learning and therapy is primarily done in one on one.

I found it useful for my depression and anxiety because it taught me healthy coping skills and how to interact with my emotions in a way that is healthy. I didn't get very good emotional training growing up in addition to some trauma and natural depression. So I just didn't know how to cope at all. I functioned but even now, years after first having taken DBT, I'll realize that an emotion I'm feeling is really a secondary and that my primary is something else.

Anyway, it's also helped me in my parenting and teaching my children emotion regulation. Even my husband has found it useful for himself and in interacting with people and he doesn't have a mental illness. I always thought of it as explaining the "how" to the things people would tell me "Don't fret so much!" (unhelpful) - now I know why I'm fretting and how to deal with the physical responses as well as the psychological ones.