Dialectical Behavior Therapy Explained

There are 4 primary components to dialectical behavior therapy: mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal and social health.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a conscious state of mind where your sense of awareness is focused on the present moment of stress. During this time of awareness, you are encouraged to acknowledge, accept and interpret your feelings, sensations, and thoughts. Through the process of mindfulness techniques, you can learn how to cope with your emotions without judging yourself or others.

The benefits of mindfulness include feeling restored, empowered, and recognizing what you can and cannot control. Mindfulness will teach you how to stay in tune with the present, allowing you to build a sense of calm within your body and nurture self-healing.

The four components of mindfulness that you will learn through the activities in our DBT Skills Workbook for Teens will help you to develop Mindful Awareness, the Mind-Body Connection, Emotional Balance and Stability and Self-Empowerment.

Emotion Regulation

Emotional regulation is the ability to assert control over your emotions, rethink how situations affect you, and find your balance. When you’re able to “Assert Control” over your emotions, natural feelings that affect mood, you will find your own internal power. Rethinking how situations affect you, will guide you toward a deeper understanding of situations and yourself. Finally, determining how to Balance your emotions will help you to regulate them and manage your incoming stressors with less discomfort. Staying calm and managing heightened emotions during intense life stressors is challenging! But the benefits of emotion regulation will help you to express your emotions effectively with calmness and allow you to interact and communicate with others with less intensity.

The DBT chapter on emotion Regulation in our DBT Skills Workbook for Teens will guide you through various activities to help you regulate your emotions through asserting control, rethinking difficult emotions, finding balance, and using effective expressions for harmonious emotional states.

Distress Tolerance

Distress tolerance typically impacts you when you’re in crisis mode. A crisis is when you experience an extremely difficult situation that causes high intensity stress with potentially negative outcomes. Many emotions can erupt during stressful, unexpected, or disappointing situations. Good news! Crisis situations are typically short-lived in nature but can feel like you’re experiencing them forever. Nonetheless, the impact can be profoundly life changing.

Distress tolerance can help you endure and accept high stress situations all while building confidence and resilience. DBT Distress Tolerance skills will help you find immediate relief rather than respond with impulsive and intense emotional reactions to high stress situations to get you through unchangeable problems and minimize suffering.

Distress tolerance skills you’ll work through in our DBT Skills Workbook for Teens are Recognition of Crisis-Based Stressors; Application of Coping Strategies; Manage Distress, and Radical Acceptance.

Interpersonal & Social Health

Interpersonal effectiveness is your ability to interact with others in a healthy and functional manner. Your “Social Health” is valuable to your well-being and plays a direct role in how you feel about yourself, how you respond to life experiences, and your overall well-being. Face it, we are social creatures and we thrive on being in social spaces with others! Building strong bonds with family, friends, partners, co-workers and role-models will help reduce any stress that may be attached to interpersonal relationships. So for your social health, managing problematic relationships – those that cause stress when you feel unsupported, demeaned, not listened to or misunderstood, need to be addressed or they can threaten your wellness.

Our DBT Teen workbook will help you build Meaningful Relationships, Develop Effective Communication, Find Trusted Support Systems, and Create Valuable Social boundaries.

To learn more about DBT and these skills, get a copy of our workbook “The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Teens: Simple Skills to Balance Emotions, Manage Stress, and Feel Better Now” today on Amazon.