Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Do you have a hard time managing some of your emotions, and does this cause overwhelm? Do you get triggered easily, leading to challenges at home, work or in your relationships?  Are you interested in empowering yourself with evidence-based tools that can help you successfully navigate the ups and downs of your life? Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers individuals comprehensive skills to manage painful memories and emotions and decrease conflicts in their relationships. This modality focuses on 4 specific areas of therapeutic skills. These are:

• Mindfulness – Helps individuals be present in the current moment with non-judgmental awareness.
• Distress tolerance – Most people try and keep themselves safe from all unpleasant emotions, to avoid overwhelming the system. Distress tolerance is geared toward increasing a person’s tolerance to unpleasant emotion.
• Emotion regulation – Offers strategies to manage intense emotions.
• Interpersonal effectiveness – Empowers individuals with tools to communicate with others in a confident, assertive way that maintains self-respect and strengthens relationships.

How Does it Work Exactly? Many of us live our daily lives in constant battle with unpleasant emotions right under our awareness. These emotions affect how we feel about ourselves and how we interact with other people, including friends, romantic partners and family members. DBT essentially works with individuals to help them find ways to manage their unpleasant emotions so they can feel balanced, empowered and able to interact respectfully and successfully. The message at the heart of DBT is acceptance and change. When is DBT Used and What Can You Expect? While dialectical behavioral therapy was initially developed to treat those with borderline personality disorder, research has since shown that DBT can successfully treat people with emotional overwhelm, anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, and substance abuse. DBT treatment usually consists of a combination of DBT skills groups and individual therapy sessions. The individual therapy sessions allow you to have one-on-one contact with a trained therapist who will help you apply DBT skills to your daily life, address any obstacle that may arise and keep you motivated! Finding a DBT Therapist If you're interested in exploring DBT therapy, it's important to look for a therapist with specialized training and experience in DBT strategies. Lakshmi Kalluri, Andrea Throndson and Shruti Nair are clinicians on our team who have that specialized DBT training. If you or someone you know may benefits from Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, please get in touch with us. We would be happy to discuss how our DBT specialists can help you start to feel better.

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