DBT Approaches

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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.

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