DBT Skills Groups
The DBT Skills groups are designed to teach a variety of skills to assist the participants in increasing their abilities to live their lives in a more effective and mindful manner.
Groups are 2 hours a week and are scheduled for 26 weeks. Due to the amount of information presented in the groups, it is therapeutically recommended to take the series of groups two times.
Each group session consists of the following:
Check-In – Group members briefly tell other members which skills they used during the week and what types of mindfulness exercises they participated in.
Homework Review - Group members share their experience in completing their assignments.
Mindfulness Exercise – Each week group members participate in a different mindfulness skill activity in order to learn how to stay in the present moment and how to effectively use mindfulness.
Skills Training – The participants are introduced to a skill, given an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the skill, and then are encouraged to participate in various activities to practice the skill.
Mindfulness
The essential part of all skills taught in skills group are the core mindfulness skills.
Observe, describe, and participate are the core mindfulness what skills. They answer the question, "What do I do to practice core mindfulness skills?"
Non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively are the how skills and answer the question, "How do I practice core mindfulness skills?"
Mindfulness comes from the Buddhist tradition and can be read about in more detail in the book The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh (among others).
The purpose of practicing mindfulness is to help the participant get into a state mind referred to in DBT as wise mind. Wise mind is the middle ground in the dialectic between rational mind and emotional mind. To be too far on the side of rational mind would mean focusing only things such as facts and figures; ignoring and suppressing emotion. To be too far on the side of emotional mind would mean being so blinded by strong emotions that one would not be able to consider the facts.
Interpersonal effectiveness
Interpersonal response patterns taught in DBT skills training are very similar to those taught in many assertiveness and interpersonal problem-solving classes. They include effective strategies for asking for what one needs, saying no, and coping with interpersonal conflict.
Individuals attending DBT skills groups frequently possess good interpersonal skills in a general sense. The problems arise in the application of these skills to specific situations. An individual may be able to describe effective behavioral sequences when discussing another person encountering a problematic situation, but may be completely incapable of generating or carrying out a similar behavioral sequence when analyzing his/her own situation.
This module focuses on situations where the objective is to change something (e.g., requesting someone to do something) or to resist changes someone else is trying to make (e.g., saying no). The skills taught are intended to maximize the chances that a person’s goals in a specific situation will be met, while at the same time not damaging either the relationship or the person’s self-respect.
Emotion regulation
Individuals with symptoms of borderline personality disorder and individuals with suicidal thoughts and behaviors are frequently emotionally intense and labile. They can be angry, intensely frustrated, depressed, or anxious. This suggests that these clients might benefit from help in learning to regulate their emotions. Dialectical behavioral therapy skills for emotion regulation include:
- Identifying and labeling emotions
- Identifying obstacles to changing emotions
- Reducing vulnerability to emotion mind
- Increasing positive emotional events
- Increasing mindfulness to current emotions
- Taking opposite action
- Applying distress tolerance techniques
Distress tolerance
Most approaches to mental health treatment focus on changing distressing events and circumstances. They have paid little attention to accepting, finding meaning for, and tolerating distress. This task has generally been tackled by religious and spiritual communities and leaders. Dialectical behavioral therapy emphasizes learning to bear pain skillfully.
Distress tolerance skills constitute a natural development from mindfulness skills. They have to do with the ability to accept, in a non-evaluative and nonjudgmental fashion, both oneself and the current situation. Although the stance advocated here is a nonjudgmental one, this does not mean that it is one of approval: acceptance of reality is not approval of reality.
Distress tolerance behaviors are concerned with tolerating and surviving crises and with accepting life as it is in the moment. Four sets of crisis survival strategies are taught: distracting, self-soothing, improving the moment, and thinking of pros and cons. Acceptance skills include radical acceptance, turning the mind toward acceptance, and willingness versus willfulness.
Group Schedule:
| Week 1-2: | Mindfullness |
| Weeks 3-7: | Distress Tolerance |
| Weeks 8-9: | Mindfulness |
| Weeks 10-16: | Emotion Regulation |
| Weeks 17-18: | Mindfulness |
| Weeks 19-24: | Interpersonal Effectiveness |
Quick Links:
>> Mindfulness