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What is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and How it Helps Mental Health Issues?
Painful emotions and inner conflicts are not easy for everyone to cope with, especially if we continuously struggle with negative thought patterns that lead us to engage in self-injurious behaviors.
When emotions are too heightened, you may be unable to properly deal with the situation at hand, making you feel insecure and out of control.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is a form of Cognitive behavioral therapy that helps you identify and change problematic thought patterns to lead to more positive behavior and, therefore, a more enjoyable life.
DBT therapy treats mental health conditions that lead to self-destructive behavior, teaching patients skills to cope with intense emotions and change their hurtful habits.
What Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy?
Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy that helps people effectively manage emotional distress and pain.
It teaches patients strategies to create a more manageable life experience. Some of the skills you learn in DBT are Mindfulness, distress tolerance, and how to navigate your relationships more healthfully.
During DBT sessions, the therapist teaches you to embrace your emotions without trying to run away from them or modify them.
They also teach emotional regulation to help you ride the wave of emotions without suffering so much along the way.
Intense emotions can be overwhelming if you fight them. Learning to deal with them involves sitting and simply feeling until they pass, for if there is one thing that is certain about emotions, it is that they all reach a peak and then leave in their own time.
Lastly, DBT therapy teaches interpersonal skills to better communicate with others. These emotional skills help us respect others, gain assertiveness, draw boundaries, and maintain stable and fulfilling relationships.
The Core Beliefs Of DBT
Dialectical Thinking
Dialectical thinking allows us to understand that there are two types of emotions: primary and secondary.
When we react to an event for the first time, primary emotions come to the surface. After that first response, the secondary emotions appear to process what happened.
Primary emotions are reactive, and we cannot control them. However, we can work with secondary ones.
In the face of a crisis, feeling sad, anxious, or scared is inevitable. However, you can choose how to respond to these feelings.
You can accept and ride the wave of your primary emotions, as they are instinctive and cannot control them, and then work on how to express the secondary ones.
Effective vs. Ineffective Behavior
DBT therapy helps you differentiate between those behaviors that hurt you and those that help you get what you want.
For example, if every time you want to ask someone for a favor, you make them feel guilty, you will feel bad and make the other person feel ashamed. This is ineffective behavior.
Being more direct in your communication can transform that behavior into an effective one.
Non-Judgmental Approach
DBT therapy takes a non-judgmental approach on the part of the therapist and the client. You simply notice your emotions, feel them, and let them go without judging how you process them.
For example, you may realize that your partner didn’t call you today, which makes you feel sad. But instead of criticizing your response to this event and judging guilty, you allow yourself to feel everything.
The Importance of the Therapeutical Relationship
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a unique type of treatment where you learn skills to manage your emotions until you can do it on your own.
Your therapist is also a teacher who trains you to regulate your emotions, accept them, and maintain positive relationships during the sessions.
That is why building a rapport with your therapist is vital to the success of this treatment.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Techniques
DBT therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapy approach used to treat many mental health conditions.
This form of therapy can be used in the following settings:
- Group DBT Therapy: This option teaches clients behavioral skills in a group setting.
- Individual therapy: A trained professional teaches behavioral skills adapted to the client’s unique life challenges. This can be performed in person or as online counseling.
- Phone coaching: Clients can call their therapist between sessions to obtain advice on coping with a difficult situation they are currently involved in.
Some Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills include mindfulness techniques, distress tolerance skills, interpersonal effectiveness, and emotional regulation.
DBT skills aim to accept our most intense emotions and change our response to them to experience a most effective interaction with those around us.
What Mental Health Conditions Does DBT Therapy Treat?
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is aimed at patients with severe mental health conditions that are considered at-risk and challenging to treat.
Patients who use DBT therapy usually have multiple diagnoses. This therapy was initially created to treat people with borderline personality disorder and suicidal behavior but has been adapted to effectively treat anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and other conditions that jeopardize a person’s well-being.
Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental health condition that leads to intense emotional distress. These individuals experience intense bursts of aggression and anger, extreme sensitivity to rejection, and abrupt mood swings. In other words, they have difficulty regulating their emotions and have low emotional pain tolerance.
This leads to impulsive behavior such as risky sexual relationships, excessive spending of money, among others.
Patients who undergo DBT therapy demonstrate an increased ability to manage anger, less suicidal behavior, and improved social skills.
How Does DBT Therapy Work?
Patients who use DBT therapy experience extremely negative and uncontrollable emotions that become a problem when dealing with work or interacting with others.
DBT is based on the philosophy of dialects, which focuses on balancing our behavioral opposites. The therapist helps you identify the different ways in which these opposing perspectives and ways of thinking influence you.
Balancing these two behavioral opposites and avoiding extremes generates relief. The goal of the sessions is for you to accept the changes and grow with them.
DBT therapy offers a multistage approach:
- Stage 1: Focus on treating the most self-destructive behavior (suicide attempts or self-injury, for example).
- Stage 2: Address life skills, such as distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal assertiveness.
- Stage 3: Treats relationships issues and self-esteem.
- Stage 4: Promotes positive behavior and relationship harmony.
DBT therapy requires a long-term commitment on the part of the patient. In addition to attending regular therapy meetings, they must do “homework” to practice the skills they learned in individual, group, or online sessions.
Can Online Therapy Help?
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy can be used to treat various mental conditions that threaten your psychological and emotional well-being. Everyone can benefit from the skills taught during the therapy sessions, which can be conducted online.
For some Americans, seeing a therapist is still a sensitive issue. Whether it’s because they don’t have enough time, social stigma, or worried no one would truly understand them, online therapy has become an excellent means of breaking these barriers in the comfort of your own home.
And if you are worried about its effectiveness, researchers have found that online therapy sessions had an equivalent positive effect to in-person psychological treatment.
The benefits of online therapy include:
- Accessibility: Attending several in-person sessions per month can be challenging for someone that doesn’t know how to regulate their emotions, feeling more like a burden than a solution.
- Besides, finding the right face-to-face therapist can be a long-winded process that must be repeated if you don’t feel satisfied with the one you get to see.
- Remote counseling services are more accessible. It takes a few minutes to contact a new therapist that suits your expectations due to the wide variety of professionals available.
- Convenience: Online therapy can also be more convenient than in-person sessions. Online counseling sessions take less time away from your workday, you can save money and time on travel, and you can also do it from the comfort of whatever environment you choose.
- Effectiveness: There is a common misconception that online therapy is not as effective as in-person therapy, which is not true. Numerous studies have proven that both types of treatment are equally effective for addressing mental health conditions.
- More privacy: Online therapy sessions can ease any privacy issues or concerns you may have. You can skip the waiting room and get help directly from the comfort of your office, home, or any place that suits you.
- Better public health: With the COVID-19 pandemic as a glaring example, remote counseling allows you to get mental health treatment at home without risking the spread of infection.
DBT Therapy in St. Petersburg, Florida
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy that helps patients with high-risk mental conditions regulate their emotions and respond more acceptingly to their changing circumstances.
DBT can be conducted as in-person or online therapy. Remote therapy is a fantastic tool if you seek to incorporate mental health counseling sessions into your life without the worries or stress of going to a physical appointment.
You can choose to start in-person counseling or incorporate online therapy in a way that fits into your busy lifestyle, taking sessions from the comfort of your bedroom, home, or office without having to set aside a large space in your schedule to keep up with therapy over time.
At McNulty Counseling and Wellness, we have a team of dedicated professionals willing to make such an important decision as starting therapy as simple and effective as possible.
We offer counseling services to everyone in the state of Florida and depending on where you live, it can be a long commute.
Please take a look at all our counseling services and start taking care of yourself today.
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