Dialectical Behavioral Informed Therapy

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

You can learn how this extensively researched and clinically effective intervention could help 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 occurs in both individual and group therapy formats. DBT helps people identify their strengths, thoughts, beliefs, and habitual assumptions, making their lives harder. DBT therapy focuses on developing mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills.


Mindfulness DBTHow Dialectical Behavioral Informed Therapy Works

A DBT-informed therapist teaches their clients to be more mindful and focus their minds and attention 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 present 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. Each week in therapy, the therapist introduces a new skill to build upon the last skills. Practice work occurs between sessions to reinforce the new skills.


Video Credit: UCSF

Call us at 240-252-3349 to learn how Dialectical Behavioral Informed Therapy could help you or your loved one.

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