DBT Group Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidenced-based treatment for emotion dysregulation, addictive behavior, and impulsivity. DBT group therapy has been shown in numerous clinical trials to be highly effective for a number of traditionally difficult-to-treat issues, such as substance use, compulsive behavior, anxiety, and depression.

Unlike most forms of group therapy, DBT group therapy is structured less like a support group and more like a class. There is a curriculum of skills to be covered, and the skills are presented in an informal workshop format. The skills covered are based in the most current psychological science and are designed to help people regulate intense emotions and cope better with challenging situations. The focus is on learning and practicing skills for well-being.

The four sets of skills in DBT group are:

Mindfulness Skills

Most psychological problems are in some part due to getting caught up in thoughts about the past or the future, or thoughts that are overly judgmental. Mindfulness skills in DBT group therapy are about helping people connect to the present moment, fully and nonjudgmentally. In DBT group therapy, people learn to disconnect from unhelpful thinking patterns to more skillfully and fully deal with the here and now. Most cutting-edge psychological protocols now include mindfulness training due to its effectiveness in helping a wide range of issues. Mindfulness training has been shown to result in long-term changes in brain function, leading to improved concentration, emotion regulation, immune function, pain management, and age-related cognitive decline. Mindfulness practice is at the core of every skill practiced in DBT.

Distress Tolerance Skills

In DBT group therapy, distress tolerance skills focus on ways of helping people weather intense emotions without making things worse. Many distress tolerance skills are aimed at helping people to free themselves from urges, addictions, and other kinds of compulsive behavior. At its core, distress tolerance is about learning to make space for painful emotions and states of mind and act skillfully without becoming ensnared by the struggle people ordinarily engage in with these emotions and urges. Some distress tolerance skills are about immediately resetting the emotion regulation system to ‘reboot’ intense emotional episodes. Others are about learning to “urge-surf,” which means to relate to urges differently to reduce impulsivity and addictive behavior.

Emotion Regulation Skills

Emotion regulation training in DBT group therapy is aimed at teaching people ways to modulate their emotions more effectively using clinically proven strategies. One important skill in emotion regulation is identifying factors that increase physiological vulnerability to intense negative emotions and intervening to limit their impact. Another set of emotion regulation skills helps people reduce the frequency of unwanted emotions by short-circuiting cycles that maintain clinical depression and anxiety disorders. The main goal of emotion regulation training is to decrease emotional suffering and struggling with being flooded by negative emotions. Negative emotions are a part of being human, but people who are frequently overwhelmed by emotions stand to benefit from employing emotion regulation skills.

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills

Interpersonal effectiveness skills in DBT group therapy help people improve the quality of their relationships, a vital component of emotional health and well-being. By learning concrete skills and practicing them outside of group therapy, people in DBT learn to be more effective at getting what they need from others. Just as important, DBT group teaches skills to build fulfilling relationships while ending destructive ones. The main thrust of interpersonal effectiveness in DBT group is to create and maintain balance in relationships, which can serve as the foundation for an emotionally balanced life.

At Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles, we offer DBT group therapy over Zoom to supplement individual therapy. This therapy approach is known as DBT-informed therapy, and it has been shown to be helpful for people who do not suffer from the most severe psychiatric illness but need extra help managing intense emotions. Click the button below to ask a question or schedule a free phone consultation to determine if DBT group therapy is right for you.