The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Card Deck: 52 Practices to Balance Your Emotions Every Day

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Learning and Skills building– facilitated through diary cards, worksheets, and/or written homework. Cope ahead – have a plan in place for how you’ll cope successfully when faced with a challenge (refer to my Crisis Plan printable for putting a plan in place). The therapist provides limited parenting (within professional guidelines) to recognize, articulate, validate, and help fulfill the client’s needs. Cognitive interventions are used to test the validity of schemas and modes and typically involve discussions of the pros and cons of client behavior, including coping mechanisms such as overcompensating, avoidance, and surrender (Arntz & Jacob, 2013). Emotion-focused interventions are particularly effective at helping clients express their rage and sadness and focus on their needs and goals (Arntz & Jacob, 2013).

DBT can be considered a resource-heavy therapy model. Many approaches to psychotherapy (like psychodynamic therapy) emphasize the healing capacity of therapeutic relationships and emotional presence in the here-and-now. Other models, like CBT, can incorporate- or even heavily rely on- worksheets and homework. that are included. Therapist Aid has the exclusive right to reproduce their original works, prepare Completing such a workbook and working through the answers in an ST therapy session can increase the client’s psychological awareness of their triggers, schemas, and alternative responses. 3. Behavioral pattern breakingMindfulness How Skills: The mindfulness “how” skills describe how one should be mindful: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively. Master(y): When we do things we are good at- or practice until we improve at something hard- it feels good! Getting better, stronger, faster, more skilled, etc. at something we care about creates positive changes in the brain that can help in other areas of our lives, too. Doing activities or tasks that make us feel competent and in control can be a practice that helps other aspects of DBT be more effective.

The therapist assigns clients homework to write letters to their parents and other significant people who hurt them in their childhood.

Accumulate Positive Emotions

During imagery, schemas and modes are activated through deeply engaging with existing emotions and the biographical memories upon which they are based. Trauma is rescripted and reimagined, meeting the needs of the badly treated child. 5. Behavioral intervention techniques

Imagery can be a powerful technique for helping clients “push through their coping styles of avoidance and overcompensation to discover alternative ways of relating” (Young et al., 2007).

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Change skills are tools that can be learned. These skills could be strategies for handling conflict and specific behaviors to use as an alternative to self-harm or other problematic responses to emotional pain. Behavioral therapy techniques are used to break behavioral patterns and transform outcomes (Arntz & Jacob, 2013). Dear Man: Learning and using the Dear Man skills can help us grow our ability to communicate and function in healthy relationships. Dear Man is an acronym that stands for:

The kinds of situations in which it is appropriate to use this technique are ones in which the emotions might not be realistic to the situation you are in, maybe out of proportion, or escalating, or be emotions that you want to challenge or change. Exercise – Move your body. If a full workout feels overwhelming, try just going outdoors for a bit ( research indicates it can help). I believe that some resources used in Mental Health treatment are unnecessarily cold, clinical, or technical. These hard-to-relate-to resources may risk pushing people away instead of inviting them to engage in both a healing relationship with their therapist and with information that could help their recovery. My work seeks to offer resources like worksheets, visuals, and handouts that bridge this gap.

Cope Ahead

Intense exercise: Getting a heart rate up for a few minutes (ideally, about 20 minutes, but any amount can help). Temperature: This skill involves “tipping” the body’s temperature in the other direction, typically with cold water splashed on a face.