Dialectical Behavioral Informed-Therapy

Has a school counselor or your pediatrician suggested DBT for your son or daughter?

Read on to learn more about how this extensively researched and clinically effective intervention could help with your family’s concerns.

Dialectical Behavior Informed Therapy, or DBT, includes structured therapy techniques developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan to combat emotional difficulties that include but are not limited to severe anxiety, self-harm, and the emotional volatility common in many personality disorders. This type of therapy is done in both individual and group settings. DBT helps people identify the strengths, thoughts, beliefs, and the habitual assumptions that they have which are making their lives harder. The focus of DBT therapy is the development of specific mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills.

A DBT informed therapists teaches their clients how to be more mindful and how to focus their mind and attention in order to yield effective results. It also focuses on distress tolerance and accepting current situations, while finding new ways to survive and tolerate them without engaging in problematic behavior. Learning to identify current emotions, the obstacles to changing those emotions, and reducing emotional reactivity make up the skills obtained via healthy emotional regulation. The skills obtained in interpersonal effectiveness will better equip the client with strategies such as asking for help, learning how to say no, and coping with interpersonal conflict. A new skill can be introduced each week in therapy to build upon each other. Practice work can be done between sessions to reinforce the new skills.

  Video Credit:UCSF

Call us at 240-252-3349  to learn more details about this type of therapy.