Create your life worth living
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive behavioural therapy that aims to assist people to live in the moment, regulate emotions, cope with stress and have healthier relationships with others.
DBT skills are taught across three separate modules:
- Emotion Regulation
- Distress Tolerance
- Interpersonal Effectiveness
Each of the above modules incorporates mindfulness exercises within the content.
Modules
The following modules are delivered in a support oriented and collaborative setting that will assist in identifying thoughts, beliefs and assumptions that make life more challenging.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness skills are considered a foundation of DBT learning and we cover this knowledge in every group workshop module. The mindfulness portion of the course is aimed at increasing our awareness, focus and acceptance of the present moment. We practice learning how to attend to the range of details (e.g. our sensations, thoughts, emotions, urges) across a range of situations and therefore to make wise choices, rather than ones that are either driven by, or deny, emotions.
Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation is about learning how to identify emotions, in particular being able to observe emotions before they escalate so that we can respond effectively. These skills help us to increase our understanding of the function of emotions and the factors that increase vulnerability to emotions, build our capacity to tolerate unpleasant emotions, and guide us to identify ways to generate pleasant emotions. Overall, this module increases awareness of our emotions and how to respond to them effectively to reduce our suffering and increase our wellbeing.
Distress Tolerance
This module focuses on developing skills to cope in a crisis, to tolerate painful, unpleasant and uncomfortable emotions, and manage urges to engage in harmful behaviours. This module teaches the skills for increasing our options to effectively manage and/or accept the difficult situations which life presents to us.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Being effective in relationships means being able to maximise your chances of getting your needs met in a way that maintains relationships and self-respect. An important step in this is learning to identify priorities in interpersonal interactions and to identify and manage the barriers to interpersonal effectiveness. This module provides participants with skills to help develop and maintain relationships, balance priorities with demands, balance wants (things that we want to do) with shoulds (things that we think we should do) in life, and build a sense of mastery and self-respect in interpersonal interactions.