One of the other main tenants of this therapeutic approach is that you can be accepting of and validate your current experience and feelings while also striving to make positive changes in your life, it does not have to be one or the other.

Dialectical behavioural therapy aims to help individuals develop skills in four areas: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance.

Mindfulness skills help clients become aware of their thoughts and feelings in a non-judgemental way. It also teaches clients how to focus on the present moment in a non-judgemental way. Further, mindfulness skills provide a way to ground allowing clients to remember to use healthy coping skills in the moment. For example, a body scan is a mindfulness exercises that can help you become aware of your feelings and bodily sensations in a non-judgemental way.

Distress tolerance skills help clients tolerate or cope through uncomfortable emotions and situations. They include skills such as self-soothing, distraction, and improving the moment. Part of distress tolerance is also acceptance, for example accepting that a situation is out of our control or accepting that right now I feel anxious.

Interpersonal effectiveness skills help clients maintain positive personal relationships by teaching them skills such as assertiveness, listening, and conflict resolution.

Emotional regulation skills help clients become aware of the emotions they are feeling and help them decrease or change their emotions. Part of this involves teaching clients about emotions, where those emotions show up in the body, and which action tendencies are associated with which emotions. For example, fear is often associated with the action tendency to flee.

DBT often but not always includes:
– Individual therapy sessions
– Group skills training
– Telephone coaching outside of therapy

Dialectical behavioural therapy can help individuals with a variety of concerns such as Borderline Personality Disorder, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, self-harm, and PTSD.