The wave of DBT has arrived, but what even is it? Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has found its way into most schools, counseling centers and clinics as it is an effective evidence-based clinical intervention focused on providing useful tools that can be used every day to support emotional healing and growth.

DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT is a form of therapy that trains each client with the learned skills to manage strong emotions. DBT is often geared toward adolescents with the goal to improve their self-awareness, navigation of unwanted emotions, readiness and acceptance of crisis situations and their maintenance of social and personal relationships.

DBT is as complex or as simple as we make it… We decided to make it simple!

DBT is broken down into 4 main parts and each part has specific skills attached to it.

1. Mindfulness

-Learning how to be present in the moment even when our worlds or schedules are filled and overflowing.

2. Distress Tolerance

-Learning that things happen in our lives, and crisis situations will come up and how one can accept that and all it entails without making it worse. Distress Tolerance is all about being realistic of where you are at, how it happened and accepting that it happened.

3. Emotion Regulation

-This is the learning to build and protect our emotions and minimize the presence of unwanted emotions in our lives.

4. Interpersonal Effectiveness

-Learning how to maintain and sustain relationships and increasing our self respect in our relationships. Here we focus on boundaries and flexibility.

Some of the best therapists in Connecticut (Hint hint… Integrative Therapy and Coaching!) We see the value in DBT when providing services such as family counseling in CT and Psychotherapy in CT. If you would like to learn more about DBT in CT and the resources and network we share, contact us today at: 203-587-7956 or email us at admin@integrativetherapyandcoaching.com. We look forward to connecting with you!