DBT
How to not be a prisoner of your own mind
How to free yourself from being a prisoner of your own mind In our DBT skills group in San Francisco, we teach group members many different distress tolerance skills to ride out an emotional storm or crisis. A crisis in DBT is a moment where you are in danger of doing something you’ll later regret.…
Read MoreHow Distraction is Good for You: Using DBT’s crisis survival skill
In our San Francisco Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) groups, we teach people how distraction can actually be good for you. What? Isn’t distraction bad for you? You’ve probably heard a lot about how distraction is bad for you. About how having your attention pulled in a million different directions leaves you feeling scattered, unfocused and…
Read MoreHow to begin dreaming: Building a life worth living in DBT (Part 3)
Part 1 of this series of building a life worth living focused why it’s so important to get in touch with your dreams. Part 2 focused on why it’s sometimes hard to dream. In this post, you’ll learn how to begin dreaming if you’ve lost touch with that part of yourself. How to begin dreaming…
Read MoreWhy it’s hard to dream: Building a life worth living in DBT (Part 2)
In our last post, we talked about why it’s so important to begin Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) by figuring out what your life worth living looks like. Not what other people think your life should look like. What you want. And to do this, you have to be able to dream. Let’s look at why…
Read MoreWhy you need to dream: Building a Life Worth Living in DBT (Part 1)
What makes your life worth living? This is the first post in a series of three, about Building a Life Worth Living in DBT Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has a catchphrase: “Building Lives Worth Living.” This phrase is used because some people come to DBT at the end of their rope, struggling with thoughts of…
Read MoreDo you find practicing mindfulness hard?
Do you find practicing mindfulness challenging? You’re not alone. Mindfulness is the foundational skill of DBT. Mindfulness helps reduce emotional suffering and reactivity. Mindfulness helps you feel more in control of particular thoughts and emotions that may make you feel like you’re out of control. Mindfulness is counter-culture. It requires you to slow down and…
Read MoreAre you losing control during relationship conflicts?
Losing control during your relationship conflicts? Couples Therapy can help you. As San Francisco DBT therapists with expertise in couples therapy, we work with many couples who struggle with losing control during conflict. If you lose control when you and your partner experience conflict or have a disagreement, it’s not because you’re a bad person…
Read MoreDBT’s Mindfulness Skill: HOW Part 2
In Part 1 of DBT’s mindfulness skills, we looked at the first of the HOW skills of mindfulness – nonjudgmentally. Mindfulness in DBT is broken up into WHAT and HOW skills The WHAT skills are what you do to be mindful. You: • Observe • Describe • Participate The HOW skills of mindfulness are how…
Read MoreDBT’s Mindfulness Skill: HOW Part 1
The Mindfulness skills of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teach you how to be present in each moment, with awareness and without judgment. Mindfulness skills are broken up into 2 sets: DBT WHAT skills: What you do to practice mindfulness. These skills are practiced one at a time: • Observe • Describe • Participate DBT HOW…
Read MoreWant to reduce your suffering? Be mindful.
Mindfulness is the core skill of DBT. It’s the first skill taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) group, and it is the only skill that we return to again and again, reviewing the key concepts of mindfulness between each DBT skill module. How to be Mindful Pay attention to the present moment. On purpose. Without…
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