Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Vancouver
Are you looking for tools to tolerate distress without turning to harmful coping strategies?
This collaborative, strength-based approach offers practical guidance on integrating mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal skills, and emotional regulation into your daily life.
What is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive-behavior therapy and a structured form of treatment that helps individuals manage intense emotions, reduce self-destructive behaviors, and improve their relationships. This approach focuses on teaching practical skills in four key areas: mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT is commonly used with individuals struggling with borderline personality disorder to support emotional regulation.
How does Dialectical Behavior Therapy Work?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy works by teaching individuals specific skills in mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness to help them manage intense emotions, reduce self-destructive behaviors, and improve relationships, while balancing acceptance and change.
DBT emphasizes various techniques for managing and regulating emotions and the ways they impact behaviours. Your counsellor can support with:
- Gaining awareness of and managing the intensity of overwhelming emotions
- Navigating experiences of impulsivity or quick reactions
- Minimizing self harming behaviors with emotional regulation techniques
- Improving challenges related to interpersonal relationships.
DBT treatment includes a very structured treatment model. Therapists will use several techniques including:
- Mindfulness is a key tool used in DBT which includes focusing on the present moment, observing, and describing experiences non-judgmentally
- Distress tolerance includes learning ways to tolerate intense emotions without acting on them impulsively through emotional arousal regulation or self soothing
- Emotional regulation practices to support identifying and labeling emotions as a process for understanding and changing responses that lead to distress
- Interpersonal effectiveness includes a set of skills aimed to improve relationships by helping individuals express their needs and set boundaries
How do I know Dialectical Behavior Therapy is for me?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is particularly effective for individuals with emotion regulation and self destructive behaviours. DBT may be for you if want to:
- Learn ways to effectively regulate emotions that feel really intense or overwhelming
- Stop struggling with harmful behaviors such as self harm or substance abuse
- Improve emotional volatility or patterns of instability experienced in relationships
- Find tools to manage Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
- Seek change within and develop healthy coping strategies to manage unhealthy behaviors
