- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Dbt Techniques
- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Certification
- Your Emotional Anatomydialectical Behavioral Training Programs
Marsha Linehan, the founder of DBT, developed a 6-step technique that will help you look more closely at the way your emotions spiral out of control. When you familiarize yourself with this technique, you will be able to apply it next time you feel like you are burdened by an avalanche of overwhelming emotions that are piling up.
Sometimes we are not even aware of everything that we felt in the situation, or how we were actually thinking about the situation. Becoming mindful about these six phases, as opposed to being on autopilot can make a world of difference between a healthy and a harmful way of coping with a emotional whirlwind.
There are actually three levels of dog training to consider when choosing a dog for a person with ASD (or any other medical, emotional, or physical need): A service dog, a therapy dog, or a companion dog. A companion and emotional support dog receives the kind of training that basically makes them a very well-trained pet. In DBT, primary emotions are the immediate emotional reactions to the things that are happening around us - they do not require thinking and they happen very fast. Your friend makes a joke about your outfit, and you immediately feel irritated. Secondary emotions are emotions you feel as a response to your primary emotions.
Step One: Describe the Situation
Think of a situation from the past where you felt overwhelmed with a lot of emotions. It can be about any aspect of your life. Describe the situation - what happened, where it happened, who was involved.
Step Two: What Caused the Situation
Write down your thoughts on what you think caused the situation. The way you explain the situation to yourself will shape your emotions about the situation. Try to remember the situation you picked and be honest about what your thinking process was like during the event. What do you think caused the main aspects of the situation?
Step Three: Primary and Secondary Emotions
Now that you described the situation and what you think caused it, it's time to describe how you felt as a result. Try to remember what your emotions were. What did you first feel? Were there other emotions that you felt as a response to the first one? For example, maybe first you felt disappointed at somebody, and very shortly afterwards you felt anger and self-hatred, and eventually that led to you feeling depressed. When you feel overwhelming emotions, you probably have physical sensations in your body because of the emotions. Do you remember how your body felt during the situation? Were you tense, fast heart-beat, sweating? Perhaps you felt like crying and your body started trembling.
Step Four: Identify Your Urges
What did you want to do as a result of your emotions? What was your first urge? What action did you want to take? This is not necessarily what you eventually did, it can be just a thought that you briefly had. This is a very important step as you become more used to this technique. Next time you find yourself in a situation where you experience overwhelming emotions, recognizing your urges can help you to not automatically act on them.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Dbt Techniques
Step Five: What Did You Do?
In this step, think about what you actually did. What action did you take as a result of your emotions? Take your time and try to remember. Did you have an argument with somebody because you felt really hurt and angry? Try to remember what you said to the other person if there are other people involved in the situation.
Step Six: Outcomes
How did this situation, your emotions and your resulting actions affected you later? Was the outcome of this situation good for you or not really? This step focuses on the consequences that you may experienced in the longer term. Being observant and honest with ourselves about whether the outcome of our emotionally-induced actions is good or bad for us can be very important for making a change.
Example
| Phase | Experience |
|---|---|
| Describe the situation | I had a usual day at work, I came home where I live alone, and had an evening by myself. There was nothing extraordinary about the day. |
| What caused the situation? | I live a boring life, I avoid everything that is out of my comfort-zone. So just like every other day, nothing exciting happened. |
| Primary and secondary emotions | At first I felt really bored, but this grew into a feeling of sadness and disappointment about the lack of interesting things going on in my life. By the end of the day I just felt really empty. |
| Identify your urges | I didn't feel like doing anything useful, I just wanted to sit in front of the TV and drink wine. |
| What did you do? | That is exactly what I did. |
| Outcome | I drank more than I wanted to, I woke up the next morning, hung-over with a terrible migraine. I had to call in sick and I missed work. |
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Certification
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Continued Education:
I created the Video On Demand ‘Reactivity: A Program for Rehabilitation‘ in 2013 that goes over how to train the behaviors needed for Emotional and Behavioral Modification. I have tweaked a few things since then, and spent 5 years simplifying the method to this protocol you see above. But the information is the same. CLICK HERE to find out more.
Your Emotional Anatomydialectical Behavioral Training Programs
My latest creation, the Self-Study Course ‘Leash Walking CONNECTED’ does not cover fear and reactivity, but it covers all the behaviors needed before beginning working with fear or reactivity (the ones listed above): correct arousal for reinforcement, default leave it from treats, standing and walking on a loose leash with distractions, lets go cue, the leash pressure cue and more. These behaviors are in the Reactivity VOD but this course goes into much more detail and puts the exercises into a 6 week program showing you how much to work on each exercise each week and how to progress. It also has a PDF to print out with all the steps in writing and and the plans for each of the six weeks. CLICK HERE to find out more.