Adulting is often hard. Emotions can be intense and impulsive choices that make your life feel miserable and wreck days, weeks, or months of planning and effort. Work, school, children, marriages, and events out of our control can feel impossible to get through. This can cause despair, depression, anxiety, drama, and pain in relationships.
Have you ever had any of these things in your life?
– Chaotic relationships
– Feel out of control of your emotions
– Have a history of quitting things
– Have suicidal feelings or self-harm
– Use alcohol, drugs, or sex to feel better when you have problems
– Delay solving your problems until they just get bigger
– Have intense periods of feeling depression, anxiety, sadness, grief, or other negative
emotions
– Have a history of quitting jobs, school, or relationships
– Poor impulse control, act impulsively and find yourself in crisis
If you have struggled with any of these symptoms, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT for
short) may be helpful to you. DBT has been researched for over 30 years. It is different than many other therapies. In DBT, I teach you skills to manage emotions, thoughts, behavior, and relationships. At the same time, I help you feel valid and understood. In DBT, I am actively helping you change and at the same time understanding where you are emotionally. I teach you skills and work with you to help you practice and learn the skills. This is close and intense work that uses a weekly individual therapy session, a weekly skills class, and skills coaching. I want to help you move what you are learning from the therapy room to your daily life.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) explained by New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
For a look at how DBT treatment works, watch this documentary “Back From the Edge” by New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Northeast Georgia Provider(s): R. Manon Kraus
DBT Skills Class
DBT Skills class is an interactive class. It is not group therapy. The following is taught:
- Mindfulness: The ability to be more present in your life, to be able to focus your
attention and to feel connected to the world around you. - Distress Tolerance: The ability to get through a crisis without making it worse. How to
function when under stress. - Interpersonal Effectiveness: How to have healthier relationships including how to say
no when you want to and how to ask for help without burning out friends and family. - Emotional Regulation: How to identify and understand your emotions. Ways to increase
the probability of positive emotions and decrease the probability of negative or difficult
emotions. - Middle Path: How to stop living in extremes. Ways to reduce black and white or all or
nothing thinking and to be able to view life from more than one perspective. This skill
helps with family, friends and couple relationships.
Learning these skills takes time and commitment but has shown to be effective in many
areas. DBT Skills are an important part of reducing suicidal ideation, reducing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and reducing high levels of emotional dysregulation. You can take DBT Skills class as part of comprehensive DBT program. Or you can take DBT Skills class and stay with your current therapist. If your therapist works for you and you want to add the skills, set up an appointment to find out how you can do this. Here is a link to a collection of research about the effectiveness of DBT therapy.
Do you have a loved one struggling? For more on how we can help parents, spouses, and families of those who suffer with Borderline Personality Disorder, visit our familt support page here.