Using DBT Skills and Principles
In Clinical Practice

This webinar presents an introduction to the basic principles of the DBT approach. It is intended to provide a practical approach for organizing clinical work with clients who present with emotion dysregulation and impulsive behaviour.

It is very frustrating for clinicians to work with clients who both desperately want their lives to change, but also seem to reject their therapist’s treatment strategies or offers to help. Instead, clients may act “self-destructively” in ways that add to the problems they face. These contradictions can feel like obstacles to providing clients with the help they need.  

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy offers an integrated understanding of what can be problematic when a person does not have an “inside” way to regulate the intensity and meaning of their feelings. Then there is an overwhelming pressure to get rid of feelings “outside the self,” by acting in intense ways that give a temporary relief, and yet make matters worse.

Principles from all 4 Core Modules of DBT will be covered

1. Understanding the problem: The Distress Cycle
2. The Core Dialectic: Acceptance and Change
3. States of Mind: Emotion Mind, Rational Mind and Wise Mind
4. Mindfulness: The What and How Skills
5. Basic Distress Tolerance Skills
6. Emotional Regulation Skills
7. Interpersonal Effective Skills