Q and A with Gillian Galen and Blaise Aguirre Why is the focus on balancing acceptance with change so important in DBT? This is fundamental to the essence of DBT. An effective balance in therapy moves a person closer to their goals in a way that is as efficient and enduring as possible. The work done in DBT can be categorized as being on the acceptance side or on the change side, and the clinician and patient work with these processes to move the patient closer to the life they want to live. Specifically, skills such as validation, mindfulness, and distress tolerance, which are all acceptance skills, are interwoven with strategies for change such as interpersonal effectiveness and emotional regulation in a way that recognizes that the patient is accepted for who they are in the present moment while also doing the hard work of changing the behaviors that have been obstacles in their life. If the clinician focuses only on the change side, the patient can feel as if they are being asked to do more than they are capable of doing and become hopeless. If the clinician focuses only on the acceptance side, the patient might feel understood but then feel as if they are stuck in understanding without knowing what they should do to change. I have heard that DBT is a treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Can people without the diagnosis benefit from the treatment? Although it’s true that DBT was developed to treat people who had BPD, DBT has been used successfully to treat people experiencing depression, bulimia, binge-eating disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance issues. DBT has also been used as part of a social-emotional learning curriculum in schools. Experts believe DBT skills are most helpful for people who struggle with regulating their emotions, regardless of the underlying conditions, and the skills can be useful for almost anyone. If I can’t find a DBT expert, can simply learning and applying the DBT skills be useful? DBT skills training as a stand-alone treatment has been researched, and evidence suggests that skills training alone can be very effective in many situations. However, there are some limits as to the benefit of skills training alone. We recommend that if someone has significant difficulty in controlling their emotions, and this leads to destructive behaviors, it’s better to do the treatment under the care of a trained clinician. For many other problems; however, learning and applying the skills through participation in a skills group can be beneficial. Why does DBT focus so much on the present moment? Don’t past events cause a lot of the problems that bring a person into therapy? As a behavior therapy, DBT is largely present-focused. While we know that behavior patterns often do have their origins in the interaction of the biology that a person is born with and the learning history and past experiences that a person lived through, resolving problematic behaviors and dealing with upsetting thoughts and emotions are something that can be done only in the present moment. Why something happened matters, but for a DBT expert, the “what are we going to do about it now” is more the focus of treatment. Because of this, DBT skills acquisition and practice in the present moment are a big part of how patients begin to change. Why do you focus so much on mindfulness? Mindfulness, or nonjudgmental present-moment-focused awareness, is the first skill taught in DBT. This is because without paying careful attention to long-standing behavior, thinking, and emotional patterns, it is difficult to change patterns of feeling, thinking, and acting. Put another way, mindfulness is the technique of focusing on and then recognizing when the mind is caught up in thoughts, urges, or emotions, and then observing these as phenomena of the mind rather than automatically acting on them.
✔ Author(s): Gillian Galen,Blaise Aguirre
✔ Title: DBT For Dummies
✔ Rating : 4.5 out of 5 base on (939 reviews)
✔ ISBN-10: 1119730120
✔ Language: English
✔ Format ebook: PDF, EPUB, Kindle, Audio, HTML and MOBI
✔ Device compatibles: Android, iOS, PC and Amazon Kindle
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