Stephanie Vaughn – Dialectical Behavior Therapy: For Clients

Outline

Overview of DBT

• Why Dialectics and what does that mean anyway?
• Common “Dialectical Dilemmas” of clients with Borderline Personality Disorder
• Borderline Personality Disorder Defined and Re-Defined
• Biosocial Theory of Borderline Personality Disorder… Etiology and why we need to know it
• Engendering compassion and empathy for this “difficult-to-treat” population
• Current research on DBT and why it is important to know it

Modes and Functions of DBT

• Individual Therapy — enhancing motivation
• Telephone Consultation — enhancing generalization
• DBT Consultation Group — enhancing motivation & skill of the therapist
• Skills Training — enhancing capabilities
• Ancillary Treatments — structuring the environment

Stages and Targets of DBT — Structuring the Treatment

• Pre-Treatment Stage: Orienting the client to treatment and getting commitment
• Stage 1 Target Behaviors: Decrease life-threatening, therapy interfering and quality of life interfering behaviors and increase DBT skills
• Stage 2 Target Behavior: Decrease posttraumatic stress responses
• Stage 3 Target Behavior: Increase self-respect and achieve individual goals
• Stage 4 Target Behavior: Increase joy, freedom and spiritual fulfillment
• Targeting Strategies…What to treat and when

The Diary Card

• How to teach a client to fill out a diary card
• Review a diary card in an individual therapy session
• Where to look and what to treat on a diary card

DBT Skills Training

• Demographics and structure of the DBT Skills Training Group
• Rules of DBT Skills Training Group
• Targets of DBT Skills Training Group
• Roles of facilitators

Core Mindfulness Skills

• The “Core” Skills in DBT Skills Training
• Become more mindful of thoughts, feelings and urges and acting with intuition
• Decrease the amount of judgments clients make about themselves and others
• Participating and “throwing yourself in” (with a Wise Mind of course)

• Tolerate and survive a crisis (without making it worse)
• “Distract” themselves in their attempts to regulate their emotions
• Self-Soothing the five senses in times of a crisis
• “Radically Accepting” the crisis as it is and letting go of the struggle

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

• Skills to help clients make requests and say NO (and have it stick)
• Teaching clients how to improve and attend to relationships
• Self-Respect in the client and the respect others have for them

Emotion Regulation Skills

• Regulate or even change intense emotions
• Decrease emotional vulnerability in your client
• Decrease negative emotions and increase the positive (and staying mindful of them)
• “Building a Life Worth Living”

Please Note: PESI is not affiliated or associated with Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, ABPP, or her organizations.