Dialectical Behavior Therapy Langley (DBT) helps stabilize and balance strong emotions.
DBT is useful to anyone who is struggling with behaviours that interfere with their quality of life.
DBT is structured to help clients gain insight and skills to manage their thoughts, emotions and behaviours will help to build skills in:
- Mindfulness by teaching meditation skills
- Emotion regulation through educating clients on emotions and teaching skills about how to manage them
- Interpersonal effectiveness by teaching skills to help clients communicate effectively and manage healthy relationships
- Learning distress tolerance to help clients deal with emotional crises
- Learning and using behavioural interventions to reinforce the use of new skills and positive coping, while working not to reinforce old, maladaptive ways of coping
DBT has proven to be effective for treating a range of problem areas such as:
| Emotional dysregulation ~ high emotional reactivity |
| Interpersonal relationships |
| Impulse control |
| Depression and anxiety issues |
| Drug and alcohol issues |
| Self-harm, such as cutting |
| Suicidal ideation urges, and attempts |
| Issues related to trauma |
| Self-esteem issues |
| Disordered eating |
| Other high-risk behaviours |
DBT Therapy Langley is a particularly effective application for counselling adolescents
DBT is effective for adolescents because many teenagers struggle with symptoms that mirror those found with complicated personality issues and traits which include often intense, high emotional reactivity and difficulty dealing with their emotions, labile moods, and unstable interpersonal relationships.
Parent involvement, when a therapist is working with adolescents, is very important. Parents can learn the skills their children are learning and can use these skills at home and model these skills to facilitate their own coping. Family involvement can be an important aspect of treatment compliance and, at the very least, support from family members is crucial to DBT’s effectiveness with adolescents.
