Individual Therapy
Individual therapy takes place once a week and is focused on identifying behaviors the client wants to increase and decrease. DBT therapists are trained in behavioral analysis to help the client understand behavioral patterns which diminish the client’s capacity to obtain goals. Once understanding has been achieved, the DBT therapist and the client work to develop solutions to break these patterns by incorporating interventions and skills to help make lasting behavioral changes.
Skills Group
Skills Group takes place in a class setting which meets weekly for one hour. Clients learn the four DBT modules: Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance, and Interpersonal skills. Homework practices are assigned weekly to help the client integrate skills into their daily lives. Groups are lively, engaging and presented in a psycho-educational format with no group processing. Adolescents in DBT attend group with their parents. Parent attendance is mandatory. This serves to enhance parents’ understanding, communication styles, limit setting, and ability to tolerate distress often caused by caring for a struggling teen. Children learn the skills in a private session one on one with their parents and therapist.
Coaching Calls
Coaching Calls are an important way for clients to more quickly generalize new behavioral skills in their daily lives. Clients are encouraged and able to contact their primary therapist for in the moment skills coaching to reduce impulsive problematic behaviors.
Consultation Team
Consultation Team meetings are required for therapists doing DBT. DBT is a team approach therefore the therapist has the support of a consultation team when treating individuals with complex and difficult to treat disorders. Team helps increase the competence of the therapist as well as ensure the therapist is staying within the DBT framework. This helps the patient get the most effective treatment possible. I meet weekly with my team at Dallas DBT.
DBT for Children
DBT for Children is an empirically supported adaptation of DBT for children and preadolescents ages 6 to 12 years old developed by Francheska Perepletchikova, Ph.D. DBT-C begins with an extensive parent-training component, followed by weekly or twice-weekly family therapy sessions with a focus on building, practicing and reinforcing new coping skills to achieve emotional and behavioral regulation. Families receive individualized attention as they work together to improve upon and practice their skills together with the support of an experienced clinician.Though the treatment is billed at DBT for children this is primarily a parent-training program aimed at helping parents help their children. Parents become the primary tool for change for their child and in their environment. Parent Training
helps parents get needed support to maintain progress
and helps parents manage their own emotions.
DBT-C helps children be better able to recognize and understand emotions
, better control thoughts and behaviors
, learn ways to effectively cope with problems and learn how to problem-solve difficulties.