“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” – Jalaluddin Rumi
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) seeks to take negative thought patterns and behaviors and turn them into positive expressions of your true self. With DBT, you’ll learn how to control your emotions, manage destructive behaviors, and learn to shed unnecessary anxiety and stress.
Past trauma or painful experiences can trigger us in certain situations and environments. DBT is helpful in finding creative and highly-personal coping mechanisms to help us manage our responses to outside stimuli. DBT is also support-oriented, and in this way it seeks to help us to understand and build upon our strengths.
In DBT I teach four main skills to achieve greater self-awareness and balance in one’s life. These include mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation.
Most approaches to mental health treatment focus on changing distressing events and circumstances. While this has its place they have paid little attention to accepting, finding meaning, or tolerating. By learning these crucial skills you will not only be stronger, you will be better prepared to handle life’s many frustrations with clarity and grace.