Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, is a form of therapy that was originally developed by Marsha Lineham for the treatment of borderline personality disorder or BPD. Since then, however, DBT has been used to effectively treat a number of other mental health conditions, including substance abuse disorder.
DBT is a type of cognitive psychotherapy that focuses on helping people recovering from addiction and other mental disorders develop the skills they need to form and maintain respectful relationships and maintain healthy boundaries. Recovering addicts can also learn how to regulate their own emotions and tolerate distress through the therapy’s mindfulness component. Because it is so valuable as a form of addiction treatment, DBT has found a place in many drug and alcohol rehab programs.
DBT Enhances Problem-Solving Skills
In both individual and group sessions, DBT helps recovering addicts work on problem-solving skills for any issues that have recently arisen in the individual’s life. Most DBT practitioners prioritize addressing self-harming, self-destructive and suicidal thoughts and behaviors first. Then, the therapist and client will move forward with therapeutic interventions intended to improve overall quality of life.
The focus of sessions in drug and alcohol rehab programsis to teach recovering addicts how to cope with stress, emotional distress and difficult interpersonal situations. In group therapy, recovering addicts work on interpersonal skills as well as mindfulness, distress tolerance and emotional regulation. In an inpatient rehab setting, recovering addicts may meet with their DBT therapists daily, or multiple times a week. It’s not uncommon for people going through DBT on an outpatient basis to communicate with their therapists over the phone in between sessions.
DBT Teaches Basic Mindfulness Skills
Mindfulness skills are what help recovering addicts learn to tolerate emotional distress and difficult situations without attempting to escape reality through substance abuse. DBT will teach you how to observe and participate in a situation, while tolerating any distress that might arise.
Where many forms of mental health treatment emphasize changing difficult circumstances and minimizing distress, DBT focuses on teaching the skills necessary to tolerate distress in a healthy way. Emotional pain and distress are normal parts of life, and while there are many steps you can take to minimize them, you will never be able to avoid them altogether. Therefore, it’s vital that you learn how to accept, in a nonjudgmental way, both yourself and the situation you currently find yourself in. That doesn’t mean you have to always approve of your situation, but learning to accept the reality of a situation is key to tolerating it, surviving it and moving on. Distress-tolerance skills you can learn in DBT including self-soothing, self-distraction, improving the moment and listing pros and cons.
DBT Helps You Control Your Emotions
Emotional regulation, defined as the ability to identify and control your emotions and avoid emotional instability, is fundamental to recovering from addiction. Most recovering addicts have no idea what to do with or about their emotions, and it’s that lack of emotional skill that first drove them to abuse drugs and alcohol. Through DBT, you can learn to identify your feelings and the obstacles that keep you from controlling your feelings. You can learn to be more emotionally stable and less vulnerable to the sway of powerful emotions when they do arise. You can even learn to experience more positive emotions and fewer painful ones.
DBT Builds Interpersonal Skills
Addiction makes a person selfish; all the addict cares about is his or her next fix. As a result, many addicts forget, or never learn, how to treat others with respect and build healthy relationships. A great number of addicts have never learnedthe skills they need to set healthy boundaries or treat others with respect.
It’s also possible to understand interpersonal and relationship skills in a general sense, without really understanding how those skills apply to your specific situation. In addition to learning how and why to show respect for others, DBT can also teach you how to ask others to change their behavior or how to make other requests, and how to successfully, and respectfully, resist pressure from others and maintain your boundaries.
If you are struggling with a substance abuse disorder, dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, can help you learn the coping skills you need to overcome addiction in the long-term.This form of effective cognitive psychotherapy can teach you mindfulness and interpersonal skills and help you get a handle on your emotions. Since its introduction in the late 1980s, DBT has helped countless people recover from substance abuse and other mental disorders.
