Short Version:

• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) combines acceptance and change strategies to help people regulate emotions, manage distress, improve relationships, and respond to life’s challenges more effectively.

Longer Version:

• DBT is an empirically validated treatment primarily developed and used for treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder and its related symptoms.

• However, anyone can benefit from learning DBT’s skills and general approaches to life focused around achieving a more balanced (i.e., dialectical) view of ourselves and the world around us.

• DBT skills fall into the following 5 domains:

  • 1) Mindfulness: Helps you to step back from intense emotions and observe situations more clearly, rather than becoming overwhelmed or fused with their feelings.

  • 2) Walking the Middle Path: Encourages moving beyond black-and-white thinking, becoming more comfortable with vulnerability, and developing greater compassion and understanding for yourself and others while balancing acceptance with change.

  • 3) Interpersonal effectiveness: Can help you to communicate your needs and emotions clearly, understand relationship dynamics, and maintain healthy relationships while preserving self-respect.

  • 4) Distress Tolerance: Teaches you how to endure painful situations without acting impulsively, self-harming, self-sabotaging, or making the situation worse.

  • 5) Emotion Regulation: Improves our understanding of how emotions develop and affect our life while building healthy daily habits that reduce emotional vulnerability in sustainable ways.