What is DBT?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a proven therapeutic approach that combines acceptance and change strategies to help individuals manage intense emotions, improve relationships, and focus on application of practical coping skills for everyday life. Through structured skills training and personalized support, DBT empowers individuals to create a life worth living.
We offer a robust DBT program indicated to treat several diagnoses including:
- Personality disorders
- Self-harming, suicidal behavior
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Substance-use disorders
- Eating disorders
- Chronic depression and anxiety
- Those who have not seen progress in other traditional therapy or medication modalities
Four Modes of Treatment
Full DBT requires the incorporation of all four modes of treatment described in this section. DBT services that do not contain these components of care are considered “DBT informed” rather than true to fidelity DBT based on evidence-based practice and outcomes. Program eligibility is determined through clinical assessment and is based on appropriate diagnosis, client commitment and motivation, and other factors.
1. Individual Therapy
Frequency: Once a week for 29+ weeks
Clients will meet weekly with their therapist, keeping a diary card to track moods, behaviors, urges, and skills they've utilized. Clients will learn how to apply DBT to daily life.
2. Have Access To Phone Coaching
DBT phone coaching is available and is intended to assist clients with implementing DBT skills before a crisis develops.
3. Skills Group
Frequency: Twice a week for 29+ weeks
Clients will learn how to utilize skills within the four core modules instead of turning to current behaviors that may be impacting them negatively.
4. Consultation Team
DBT therapists come together to review each case, offering encouragement, validation, and problem solving. This means each client has multiple therapists working on their case.
Four Core Modules
Our program comprises four core modules, each with specific goals aimed at enhancing emotional and behavioral functioning:
Mindfulness
- Goal: Increase awareness of the present moment without judgment.
- Description: This module focuses on teaching individuals to observe, describe, and participate in their experiences without being overly reactive or judgmental. Mindfulness skills are foundational to DBT and enhance all other modules.
- Key Skills: Observing thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Describing experiences accurately without judgment. Practicing “wise mind” to balance emotional and logical decision-making.
Emotional Regulation
- Goal: Understand and manage intense emotions to reduce emotional vulnerability.
- Description: This module focuses on identifying, labeling, and regulating emotions. It teaches individuals how to decrease the intensity and duration of emotional experiences while promoting positive emotions.
- Key Skills: Identifying emotions and their triggers. Reducing vulnerability to negative emotions through lifestyle changes (e.g., sleep, diet, exercise). Increasing positive emotional experiences by engaging in pleasurable and meaningful activities.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
- Goal: Build and maintain healthy relationships while asserting personal needs.
- Description: This module focuses on improving communication, building assertiveness, and maintaining self-respect in relationships. It helps individuals balance their needs with others' demands.
- Key Skills: DEAR MAN: A structured approach for asking for what you want or saying no. GIVE: Skills for maintaining relationships and being gentle. FAST: Skills for maintaining self-respect in interactions
Distress Tolerance
- Goal: Develop skills to tolerate and survive crises without resorting to self-destructive behaviors.
- Description: This module helps individuals handle painful emotions or situations effectively without trying to change them. It focuses on increasing resilience and navigating distress in a constructive way.
- Key Skills: Using distraction, self-soothing, and relaxation techniques during intense emotions. Practicing acceptance and radical acceptance to cope with unavoidable difficulties. Learning crisis survival strategies.
Open Group Schedule
We have expanded our group sessions to better accommodate clients and their unique lifestyles. While DBT still maintains a waiting list, our program is open year round for new or returning participants.
Participants must attend skills group twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) for 29+ weeks. Location and time options are below:
Program Results
The data below represents participants from the most recent DBT Group(s) held between November 2023 and November 2024. The percentages are calculated based on the total number of participants who completed an assessment.
reduced suicide attempts and medication misuse, whether prescribed or unprescribed
reduced inpatient care stays or maintained zero visits and avoided ER evaluations
demonstrated enhanced emotional regulation
reported a significant improvement in their overall personal well-being
Client Testimonials
I am able to mostly self-regulate every day, give myself time and space to think and feel things through rather than riding the waves of emotions that can happen, and I'm able to manage my emotions instead of them controlling me. Before I had my BPD diagnosis and knew of DBT, I always thought that my emotions defined me as a person, and they tended to bounce around between extremes and different emotions altogether. At one point I was (lovingly) nicknamed "Crazy [client name]". And at the time, I thought that that identity wouldn't, couldn't change. Now, after two full rounds of DBT, I can say for certainty that is not the case anymore. And DBT has helped me through some of the toughest times in my life that have happened recently, events that if happened a few years prior, I would've been pushed to bad and harmful habits. But now, I can get through those unsavory situations. I can look ahead at tomorrow, even when I'm not sure where I want to go with my future. I can take it one day at a time, and I can live my life knowing that not everything stays as it is forever. Most importantly, I can live my life with the expectation and readiness to have that be long and fulfilling, whereas just 3 years ago I wouldn't think I'd have made it to 25.
Anonymous
I've made vast improvements in my quality of life and now believe that I am capable and deserving of a life worth living.
Anonymous
Each and every skill I've learned and have incorporated into my daily life has been a drastic change in my Mindset, my views on my life and the reality that exists I must effectively deal with. The entire learning process of DBT has completely changed my thought patterns and how I resolve my life's issues on a daily, every moment basis. DBT has truly been a Life Changing which has turned my life around in many ways and I now enjoy and am grateful for the time I have now and in my future for the rest of my mortal existence.
Anonymous
I have learned to take a step back and understand my feelings. I can actually sit with my feelings and understand how to move forward. Less self-hatred is the biggest part.
Anonymous
It has been wonderful program. I feel I have the skills to be more effective in my relationships. I feel I have more control over my emotions and triggers. It also helped foster a wonderful supportive group of friends that I will stay in contact with and cherish. It has greatly improved my life and showed me a path to a live worth living.
Anonymous
I no longer feel hopeless. I’m so shocked by just this first round of change and never felt I’d feel better. I am doing well and have more work to do but I’m happy to have been through this and going a second round.
Anonymous
DBT has given me the opportunity to learn the skills that can help me practice mindfulness and see what is needed to live a life worth living. I practice these daily and can see change, little by little, with my progress.
Anonymous
I came into DBT with absolutely no hope of a life. I believed I would always be miserable and that one day I would give up on it completely. With the skills I've learned to challenge that kind of emotional permanence and learned helplessness. I've begun to directly work on all the things that cause my triggers and can manage my life even when it does feel completely intolerable. I've learned to accept that my feelings are all valid and that sometimes I may feel like giving up but that I can work to change that and take back control over my life. I still struggle with relationships and vulnerability but I don't believe that to be any fault of my own at this point but more a credit to my ability to see what I will and will not tolerate from others and a new understanding of self worth.
Anonymous
I’m a completely different person in such a good way. I have been 9 months without suicidal ideation. I still get down but I no longer feel like it’s so bad that I don’t want to be here. That’s huge for me.
Anonymous
I used to get so angry and just snap about everything and now I can stop and think before I react. It’s helped me in every way of life even just the little things!
Anonymous
I went through some pretty big life events over the course of DBT... And they were intense....it just felt like day after day of getting beat down then coming home to being lonely.... Then there was the personal feeling of being stuck, like I wanted to change something in my life, or have something new, or do something new. I felt stagnant and gross. All of this made it hard to want to do anything outside of work, especially therapy, but with encouragement and motivation from my DBT counsellors i was able to put in that extra work, and not feel bad if that extra work was only 1% of what I could actually do. Showing up is what was important, giving even a little.... BPD has been part of my life for a long time now, but I've only known about it in the last 3 years. And in just these last 6 months of doing a DBT course, I've felt better than I have in a long, long time. I know I'm just starting... But it's already helped, even when I didn't want to do it anymore...I'm excited to keep going. I'm also excited to be done feeling like I need to go to group therapy for this, because at some point the baby bird's gotta leave the nest yeah? But I'm still growing my wings here. I'ma keep jumping and trying until I can finally soar through the sky. And for once in way too many years, DBT has given me confidence that I can truly be happy with myself and with my life.
Anonymous
DBT has affected every part of my life…making me have a life worth living!
Anonymous