Learning is better together 🙂
WHAT IS DBT?
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based programme designed to treat individuals who have difficulty in regulating their emotions and behaviours. Developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, DBT was originally created to work with chronically suicidal, self-injuring adult women who showed symptomology aligned with a diagnosis related to Borderline Personality Disorder. It has since been adapted for all adults, as well as for teens and families. It is posited that working through supportive and validation therapeutic environment and learning behavioural skills that help to develop improved impulse control, emotional regulation, and overall functioning, can replace unhelpful and harmful ways of thinking and behaviour with healthier and more life-affirming ones. The main goals of this approach are to:
- decrease behaviours that interfere with treatment
- decrease suicidal, non-suicidal self-injurious behaviours, and other problematic behaviours such as binging/purging, substance use, truancy, and similar
- increase the ability to self-regulate emotions and behaviours
- teach the ability to see both (or more) sides of an issue and see the “middle path”
- to build a life worth living
WHAT HAPPENS IN DBT Skills Workshops for Adolescents?
DBT skills groups are run year-round and are an integral part of a normal course of DBT therapy. Our skills training groups are the ideal way to engage with the full therapeutic process, refresh skills for someone who has already learned these skills, or just learn some incredibly useful life skills. In the usual course of DBT therapy, skills groups would be attended weekly for 24 weeks concurrently with one-to-one-therapy and phone coaching. The group meets weekly for 75 minutes in the afternoons to impart, practice, and reflect on core skills.
Anyone who…
- has frequent and intense shifts in mood
- has frequent problems managing anger
- has frequent and intense conflicts with peers, adults and/or family members
- experiences dissociation or fears that people are purposely out to do harm to you
- has intense feelings of emptiness
- is not clear on who they are and/or where they are headed in life
- frequently think you’d be better off dead
- engages in frequent impulsive and self-destructing behaviours (cutting, substance abuse, truancy, binge/purge cycles, etc)
- has made suicide attempts
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
DBT skills are designed to help individuals with frequent and intense shifts in mood, who may have difficulty in managing anger, as well as frequent and intense conflicts with family, friends, peers, and others. These skills help to work with dissociation, feelings of emptiness, frequent impulsive and self-harming behaviours.
Families interested in learning how to have more emotional regulation in their home, more interpersonal effectiveness, and better abilities to tolerate distress when it arises (which it inevitably will).
Parents/caregivers and students who are keen to learn how to practice and maintain skills weekly.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- Mindfulness – noticing emotions and how to manage them
- Distress Tolerance – short-term strategies to help you cope better during overwhelming moments
- Emotion Regulation – increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative ones
- Interpersonal Effectiveness – communication and assertiveness skills to improve relationships
- Walking the Middle Path – avoiding extremes and seeing the truth in both sides of the story
DATES & TIMES
Term-Time 3 Unit Course
13 September 2023 to 20 March 2024
Wednesday’s 6-7pm
“All people, at any moment, are doing the best they can.”
-Marsha Linehan, Founder DBT
