DEAR Adult: One Path to Interpersonal Effectiveness (Part 9 of 10) Whereas all the other skills mentioned so far are about self-regulation, interpersonal effectiveness inherently involves both the self ...

Working the TOM: One Path to Dialectical Thinking (Part 8 of 10) Dialectical thinking is all about letting go of the extremes, learning to think more in the middle, learning to be more flexible with your ...

Sow Your SEEDS: One Path to Emotion Regulation (Part 7 of 10) Whereas distress tolerance refers to short-term coping in the moment, emotion regulation refers to a long-term lifestyle change that will ...

TIP the Balance: One Path to Distress Tolerance (Part 6 of 10) DBT distress tolerance is all about learning to cope in the moment without making it worse. It is about replacing impulsive, addictive, ...

The RAIN Dance: One Path to Mindfulness (Part 5 of 10) Mindfulness, by definition, is always a combination of both awareness and acceptance. The RAIN dance helps clients increase both awareness and acceptance ...

Restoring Balance (Part 4 of 10) Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), which was developed by Marsha Linehan, is all about reconciling “dialectical dilemmas” (binary extremes resulting in dysfunction) ...

A Breakdown in Dialectics (Part 3 of 10) This driving metaphor describes what happens to people who have experienced chronic trauma: too much accelerating, too much braking, and loss of social engagement ...

The Two Pedals (Part 2 of 10) Think of the sympathetic nervous system as the accelerator and the parasympathetic nervous system as the brakes. As we drive down the highway, we need both of these functions. ...

Trauma stabilization through polyvagal theory and DBT From article published by the American Counseling Association on September 14, 2021 By Kirby Reutter Introduction (Part 1 of 10) From my perspective, polyvagal ...

In the blog post on Restoring Balance with Relationships, do you remember how we learned the DEAR Adult tool to assert, appreciate, and apologize? In this post, you are going to learn a similar tool to ...

The Diary Card is a great tool to help you remember your skills as well as a great tracking device to help you monitor your daily ups and downs. But what happens when you’re really stuck? What do you ...

Now that we have learned all of these great skills, we need a way to make sure we are applying them on a daily basis, starting with the very first skill we learned: mindfulness. The Diary Card is a simple ...

So far you have been on quite the journey! Earlier, we learned that trauma has a way of throwing everything off balance, including our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, and our relationships. Since ...

So far, we have learned a lot of information about how to improve relationships. For example, you have learned to assert, to appreciate, and to apologize with the Adult Voice. You have also learned to ...

So far, we have learned some basic social skills to balance your relationships. For example, you have learned to be assertive, which is the middle path between passive and aggressive. You have also learned ...

Congratulations! You have just learned how to be more assertive in four simple steps: Describe, Express, Assert, and Reinforce. Of course, healthy relationships involve much more than just walking around ...