Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Do you feel like you are being pulled in a thousand different directions?

DBT Can help!

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At Inward Healing Therapy in California, we use dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to educate you on how to live now, create healthy coping mechanisms for stress, manage your emotions, and strengthen your interpersonal connections.

a young man holding his head in a therapy session

What Can DBT Be Used to Treat

DBT can help with a variety of issues. This form of therapy has been demonstrated in trials to be successful in treating people with bulimia, depression, binge eating disorder, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Four Focus Areas of DBT

  1. Mindfulness: Mindfulness focuses on enhancing a person’s capacity to accept and be present in the current moment.

  2. Distress Tolerance: Rather than attempting to escape from bad feelings, distress tolerance increases a person’s tolerance of it.

  3. Emotion Regulation: Emotion regulation provides tactics for dealing with and changing the powerful emotions that produce issues in a person’s life.

  4. Interpersonal Effectiveness: Interpersonal effectiveness provides skills that enable a person to communicate with others in a confident, self-respecting, and relationship-building manner.

What to Expect From DBT

Individual therapy sessions and DBT skills groups are common components of DBT treatment. Individual therapy sessions include one-on-one interaction with a competent therapist to ensure that all therapeutic requirements are met. In addition, the individual therapist will assist the patient in remaining motivated, using DBT skills in daily life, and addressing any hurdles that may occur throughout therapy.

Participants in DBT skills groups learn and practice skills with others. One qualified therapist leads the groups, teaching skills, and guiding activities. The group members are then given homework, such as mindfulness exercises to practice. DBT can be presented in a variety of methods by therapists. Some persons, for example, complete the one-on-one treatment sessions but do not attend the weekly skills group. Others may prefer the group over regular one-on-one sessions. Inward Healing Therapy does not currently offer DBT groups however, if you are interested in groups we can connect you with a great DBT group with another provider.

How DBT Works

Dialectics means balancing opposites. In your DBT online sessions, I’ll work with you to develop methods to hold two seemingly opposing ideas simultaneously, fostering balance and avoiding black and white, all-or-nothing thinking patterns. To achieve this balance, DBT advocates a both/and rather than an either/or mindset. Acceptance and transformation are the points at the heart of DBT.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy’s Advantages

To make positive changes we’ll work together to reconcile the seeming contradiction between self-acceptance and change. This process entails providing validation, which makes individuals more inclined to collaborate and less likely to be distressed by the prospect of change. In practice, the therapist affirms that a person’s behaviors make sense in the context of their own experiences without necessarily agreeing that the activities are the best way to solve an issue.

Acceptance & Change:

You’ll discover techniques for accepting and tolerating your life circumstances, emotions, and self. You will also learn techniques that will allow you to make positive changes in your conduct and interactions with others.

Behavioral

You’ll learn how to examine issues or damaging behavior patterns and replace them with healthier and more productive ones.

Cognitive

You’ll concentrate on modifying ideas and beliefs that are no longer productive or beneficial.

Support

You will be encouraged to identify and enhance your positive strengths and traits.

How to Get Started

Many people battle with continuing emotional instability, moodiness, and chronic dissatisfaction. Is this your situation? Contact Inward Healing Therapy when you’re ready to take control of your emotions. Emotions may both heal and damage — and in our online dialectical behavioral therapy, we will demonstrate the distinction.

Let's connect online & get started!