Posts by Marielle Berg

In today’s episode, Marielle and Ed explore skills to help you cope with your emotions as we collectively face a pandemic. Many of you may be feeling intense distress on a regular basis during these uncertain times. DBT offers lots of skills to help manage strong, painful emotions like fear and panic. Different ways of…

Today’s show covers the DBT skill called Pros and Cons. While most of us have already done informal pro and con lists in our heads when facing a tough decision, the DBT take on Pros and Cons is a little different.  Pros and Cons is great to use in anticipation of problem behaviors like avoiding,…

In today’s episode, Marielle and Ed discuss the emotion regulation skills of Build Mastery and Cope Ahead. These are future-oriented skills that involve some planning to carry out. Build Mastery is a way to strengthen your sense of competence by doing small, regular things that are challenging. Over time, this skill will help you stretch…

Today I’m talking with Dr. Kelsey Harper, a clinical psychologist and DBT therapist who works with trauma, PTSD, and chronic emotion dysregulation.  With over a decade of work spanning varying settings and clientele, Kelsey has established a private practice in Santa Monica and observed time and again, that many clients reported extensive histories of trauma…

In today’s episode, we discuss your relationship with yourself, focusing on the skill of Loving-Kindness. When you are having a hard time, are you kind or harsh with yourself?  Do you berate yourself for real or perceived mistakes?   Do you try to motivate yourself with criticism?  These tactics tend to not work in the long-run…

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions this year, think about using the momentum of the new year to make changes in your life that are aligned with your values.  Often New Year’s resolutions come from a place of shame or deficiency, a place of trying to fix what’s “wrong” with you. What if you made…

The holidays are a time where there is often a lot of pressure to have a certain kind of experience – one that is about family, friends, joy, and celebration. For many folks, this is more of a fantasy than a reality.  If you are fortunate enough to enjoy time with family and friends during…

Do you have a hard time doing nice things for yourself? The DBT skill called Accumulating Positive Events in the Short-Term is all about doing small, regular self-care. Putting effort into building positive emotions on a regular basis helps build emotional resilience so you won’t get as thrown when hard things happen. Many folks believe…

Sometimes it’s better to not act on our emotions. The DBT skill Opposite Action helps you act opposite to what your emotion is telling you to do.  Use this skill when your emotion doesn’t fit the facts or when your emotion does fit the facts but acting on the emotion isn’t effective. This skill can…