DBT SKILLS FOR A LIFE WORTH LIVING

DBT Skills Training

Get anytime access to our growing collection of classes, workshops, and exclusive content. New items added every month.

Weekly “DBT Goes to the Movies” EAST and WEST Coast Skills Training Groups Starting Soon

To reserve a spot for your family please email us info@craftconnectfs.com.

How DBT Skills Help

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills, developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan, can help you lead a more a fulfilling life by gaining greater control over your emotions, improving relationships and increasing your ability to cope with challenging situations. DBT skills can be an essential component of a holistic approach to personal growth and emotional well-being. They provide you with the necessary tools to navigate life's challenges effectively and build a life worth living.

Manage impulsive reactions in different aspects of your life, like relationships, work, and other important areas.
Form and maintain relationships or communicate effectively to get what you need from people.
Control behaviors that are strongly influenced by your emotions, especially when your feelings are intense.
Learn how to regulate your emotions and return to a calm and collected state, which is unique to each person.
Deal with issues like thoughts of suicide or self-harm, problems with substance use (with 82% experiencing a reduction or abstinence in the first year), eating disorders, depression in older individuals, low self-esteem, adjusting to changes, feelings of hopelessness, relationship difficulties or violence, self-hatred, medical problems, childhood sexual abuse, intense emotions, psychiatric hospitalizations, and persistent crises

What is DBT?

Mindfulness skills help you pay attention to what's happening right now, both inside yourself and in the world around you. It helps you stay focused and centered.

Emotion Regulation skills help you manage your feelings better, even though it's okay not to have complete control over your emotions.
Interpersonal Effectiveness skills are about keeping and improving relationships, whether it's with people you're close to or those you don't know well.
Distress Tolerance skills help you handle tough situations and get through them without making things worse.

Why learn DBT Skills

Dr. Marsha M. Linehan, the person who created Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), says that the main goal of learning DBT skills is to help you create a life that is meaningful and enjoyable. According to her, the key to DBT is the determination to be effective in whatever you're doing, which is crucial for success in all areas of life.

DBT uses the Theory of Dialectics to deal with conflicting truths and experiences that naturally happen in life to find the ultimate truth. The basic idea is to balance Acceptance, where you learn to accept yourself and others as they are, along with the reality around you, and Change, which means being committed to finding new and better ways to live.

Scientific Evidence For DBT

There is a wealth of evidence supporting the effectiveness of DBT. The first randomized controlled trial (RCT) of DBT was published in 1991, in which Dr. Marsha Linehan and her colleagues found that DBT resulted in significant improvements for chronically suicidal and self-injuring women with borderline personality disorder, a clinical population that had previously been viewed as untreatable (Linehan et al., 1991). In the decades since this landmark study, DBT has been extensively researched for individuals with a wide range of mental health conditions receiving treatment in diverse practice settings around the world. RCT and Non-RCT Summaries.

Research studies

Research on DBT is rapidly expanding, and new studies are being published at increasingly accelerated rates. A PsycInfo search shows an average of 8 published and peer-reviewed DBT articles per year from 1993 to 2000, 41 publications per year from 2001 to 2010, and 78 per year since 2011. As a result, staying current on the latest findings in DBT research can be quite challenging. You can review DBT research updates on Behavioral Tech.org. This webpage is updated regularly to provide researchers, clinicians, clients, and their families with the most up-to-date evidence available on DBT.

Click below for archived, printable summaries of RCT and non-RCT studies.