DBT Approaches


Photo by STIL on Unsplash

Mindfulness 

  • Building awareness of the present moment. 
  • Focusing attention on emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations. 
  • Focus on the five senses - sight, smell, hearing, skin sensations, and taste 
  • Paying attention to what's going on without judgment. 
Interpersonal Effectiveness
  • In each interaction with people, we juggle various priorities. 
  • Those priorities vary from person to person and context to context - sometimes we prioritize our relationship with a person, other times we prioritize goals or achievements 
  • DBT can help figure out those priorities and provide road maps to achieving them. 
Emotional Regulation 
  • There may be situations where your emotions become uncontrollable - anxiety, anger or sadness. 
  • This is especially the case when you feel vulnerable - when you're hungry, tired, sick, or exposed to unpleasantness, for instance. 
  • Sleep, exercise, good nutrition and cutting back on mood altering substances can all establish a basic foundation for mood management. 
  • Active coping and problem solving techniques can be helpful 
  • As can practicing acceptance of emotions 
Distress Tolerance 
  • Management of very intense emotions 
  • Distraction 
  • Diffusion of emotions - e.g. by comparing yourself to others who have less
  • Soothing techniques 
    • Imagery 
    • Prayer 
    • Relaxation
    • Breathing 
  • Acceptance - distraction and diffusion may not work if the emotion you are trying to distract from is more powerful.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reactions to Traumatic Events, and Recovery

Crosspost: Shifters #6 - Alpha