3 DBT Skills We Can All Benefit From
While Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has been around for the last three decades, it has really been exploding over the last few years! The recent increase in those seeking DBT makes a lot of sense because the approach has been proven to be highly effective in treating a range of mental health issues.
In recovery from an eating disorder? DBT is for you.
Struggling with attention or have ADHD? DBT is a great choice!
Feeling anxious, depressed, or have low-self-esteem? DBT can help.
Have troubled relationships? Yup, you guessed it DBT skills are for you.
Feel overwhelmed by your emotions or even out of control? DBT can teach you effective skills to manage your emotions.
While DBT has been proven to be highly effective in treating a range of mental health conditions, you don’t have to have a mental illness to benefit from these skills. In fact, learning these skills and incorporating them into your life can help all of us! Here are 3 DBT skills to help you get started.
Mindfulness—The foundation of DBT, mindfulness means living life in the present moment. We live in a fast paced world and with distractions such as work, family, social media, and more it is really challenging to be in the present and live in the moment! Mindfulness is a skill that encourages you to become more aware of the experiences you find yourself in, right then and there. It’s the idea of hitting pause, checking-in with yourself, and making a conscious, self-led decision. Rather than making decisions that are led by your emotions or worries, which is what often happens. In theory, mindfulness sounds easy, right? You might be thinking to yourself, I can certainly listen to a meditation and just sit with myself or I can pause. While that sounds nice and easy, mindfulness is really hard (especially at first try)! There are so many distractions that can cause our mind to wonder when we practice mindfulness, which can create a lot of judgment toward yourself. So, start out slow. Try something like mindful walking or something even simpler like taking a shower. Observe, describe, and experience what it is like to take a shower. Notice how your hands move, how the water feels on your skin, how the soap feels between your hands or in your hair. Notice the surroundings of the shower. And if your mind wonders, that is okay. Just do your best to redirect yourself to the present moment by choosing something to refocus on. The key is simply observing what you are experiencing at that moment.
Nonjudgmental Stance—Judgments are everywhere. We are constantly judging ourselves, others, and situations, as good or bad every single day. While growing up we were taught to evaluate so many things as right or wrong; good or bad. So, it feels natural to judge in a lot of ways. While judgments are sometimes important to make (i.e. knowing not to jump into a swimming pool without water because you’ll get hurt), judgments often interfere with our emotions and decisions. When we are experiencing an emotion, such as anger, sadness, frustration, or irritation, we often tend to not only feel intense emotional pain but also make negative judgments about ourselves or the situation. Taking a nonjudgmental stance means that you have the ability to look at a situation, people, behaviors, or experiences as neither good nor bad. You look at the simple facts of the situation. You learn to let go of the good v. bad, the should v. shouldn’t, and replace those judgments with descriptions of your feelings or desires.
Radical Acceptance—We all experience painful events throughout our lives and it is something that we unfortunately cannot avoid. It can be really challenging to have acceptance when it comes to painful life events. We often want to avoid them, act like they didn’t happen, or push them under the rug. Sometimes we might even respond by engaging in destructive or impulsive behaviors. While this may feel helpful to us in the short-term, it is not helping us in the long-term, it actually only increases our suffering. Radical acceptance focuses on accepting experiences that have happened, no matter how painful it is. When you begin to accept the pain of the moment that you may find yourself in, you will still experience pain (sometimes extremely intense pain) and you have the possibility of moving forward. By embracing the present or the pain in that moment rather than ignoring or rejecting it, it gives you the power to break the cycle of suffering and help you feel unstuck.
Whether you struggle with a mental health condition or not, DBT skills can be beneficial for anyone! We can all benefit from becoming more self-aware of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, learning to drop the judgment, and accepting of what is happening in our present moment to live a happier, more self-led life.
