James Donaldson on Mental Health - DBT: What Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy?

Why does DBT include phone coaching?

One of the most unusual elements of DBT programs, phone coaching, is designed to support patients’ efforts to apply DBT skills in their lives outside the therapy session, something therapists call “skills generalization.” As Dr.

Allerhand puts it, “How do we actually help people to do the things that we talked about in session when they are in the moments of crisis?” Ideally, the patient calls the therapist when they are tempted to do something self-destructive, to get support in using their DBT skills instead.

Emotion dysregulation also leads to ineffective problem solving, and phone coaching can help kids and parents utilize more constructive problem solving skills rather than falling into old, unhelpful patterns.

Structured therapy sessions Therapy sessions in comprehensive DBT don’t hew to a step-by-step manual, but they do follow structured principles, Dr.

Each individual therapy session is structured around a diary card that the patient brings to the session, which is like a weekly tracker of their emotions and their urges to engage in whatever their problematic behaviors are.

There is a hierarchy of behaviors: Target 1 are life-threatening behaviors.

Target 2, therapy-interfering behaviors.

And Target 3, quality-of-life-interfering behaviors.

The therapist makes it a priority to focus on Target 1 behaviors, giving them the most time in a session.