Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in Longwood, FL
What Is DBT?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy consists of a group of skills that helps people manage their emotions, improve relationships, set boundaries and develop strong coping strategies. It’s helpful for people struggling with panic attacks, anxiety and other challenges. DBT is a slightly different approach to therapy than most talk therapy or CBT therapy. However, it has been found to be a very effective therapist and may be more effective for those that these approaches did not work for. DBT is all about finding balance and staying out of all-or-nothing mentalities. If you are interested in a consultation, please reach out.
Emotional Dysregulation
Anxiety & Overthinking
Difficult Relationships & Boundaries
People-Pleasing
Stress & Emotional Overwhelm
Coping With Difficult Situations
DBT for High-Achieving Adults
DBT and EMDR
The Core Four DBT skill areas
Emotion Regulation
The core skill that we are working towards in DBT is to learn how to detect, understand, process and move forward from our emotions. Most of us did not learn how to handle our emotions effectively in childhood but the good news is that it is not too late.
Distress Tolerance
Distress can look a lot of different ways when your emotions become overwhelming. It can look like panic attacks, angry outbursts, dissociation, and or thoughts of harming yourself. All of these are behaviors that distress tolerance can help with. It also can help with acceptance and changing deep rooted negative thought patterns.
Interpersonal Effectivness
Interpersonal Effectiveness skills all surround the basics of making and keeping others in your life. The skills include basics such as how to set boundaries and have hard conversations.
Mindfulness
You may have heard of mindfulness in the past and think of meditation. Meditation is a part of what mindfulness entails but in DBT we are more focused on helping you stay in the present moment and grounding. It is the base of DBT therapy.
Are you successful but struggling inside? Do you feel the pressure to be perfect and struggle with letting go of mistakes? DBT can help you to understand the emotions that you feel, when it shows up and why. From there, you will learn new skills to deal with stress in applicable ways such as learning to set boundaries, learning to slow down and find balance in your life.
DBT skills provide a wonderful foundation of grounding, emotion-regulation, and distress-tolerance tools that can support deeper trauma work including EMDR. Audrey’s approach is to have clients learn a few DBT skills before starting EMDR. However, some clients would benefit from more time reviewing DBT skills. Additionally, some client may not be a good fit for EMDR or may not wish to dive deeper. In this case Audrey is happy to work with you doing DBT-informed therapy.
What to Expect From DBT Therapy
Your First Session
The first session of any therapy treatment will be an intake where we review basic information for insurance and for your therapist Audrey to get a better idea of who you are. However, the first DBT sessions may feel a bit information heavy as we are trying to get you up to speed on what DBT is and how is can help you. If we are online Audrey will provide the handouts via email or if you are in-office in Longwood, FL we will use the physical DBT book. No worries if this does not all stick. The DBT skills are meant to be reviewed again and again. This can be helpful as each time that we review them they will be in a slightly different context and different point of view. Audrey also encourages you to come in with whatever is on your mind and we can find a skill that can help wether it is your first session or your 20th!
Identifying Your Goals
During your sessions it is important to make sure that we have a clear focus. It is standard practice to set goals in therapy and work towards reaching them. Typically we will talk about these goals in session. Audrey tends to quantify goals on a 0-10 scale as this helps to see that you have made tangible progress. Typical goals include: increasing emotion regulation, increasing distress tolerance, reducing the amount of time spent in distress, or decreasing mindless time. We will work together to make sure the goal is correct for you and work from there.
Learning and Practicing Skills
DBT skills are relatively easy to understand but sometimes harder to use in the day-to-day. Audrey will work with you to make sure that you are using skills effectively outside of session. In some cases skills can be used in session and we will practice them right there in session. Other skills may need to be used outside of session and we will discuss what that looks like.
Applying Skills Between Sessions
Audrey typically does not assign strict homework, but it is important for treatment to be as successful as possible that you try and implement skills outside of the therapy room. Some skills cannot be practiced in session and need to be used in your day-to-day life. However, when possible Audrey will remind you of skills that you can use and may even use a skill called a Chain Analysis to help you see which skills you could have used in a past event.
Is DBT Right for Me?
Many people can benefit from DBT-informed therapy as it is a skillset that helps with emotions and interacting with difficult people. DBT can even help with thoughts of harming yourself, which Audrey is well equipped to work with. However, Willow Therapy Framework, LLC is owned and run by just Audrey and one of the qualifications to provide full DBT services is a team environment, DBT groups and weekly DBT therapy. In all this can be 2.5 hours or more of therapy a week which is quite the commitment. For some this level of care is needed, however, for most people this is not necessary. If you are looking for full DBT services Audrey whole heartedly suggest The Meaningful Life Center located near UCF for full DBT in the Orlando area after working there for over 2 years. In many cases full DBT is not needed and if you’re not sure which level of care you need please reach out.
Your Questions, Answered
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DBT can help with quite a few different issues including overthinking, insomnia, panic attacks, dissociation, anxiety and trauma to name a few. If you have an issue that you don’t see here feel free to reach out for more information.
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Not at all! While it was originally created for BPD DBT has been validated to help with anxiety, PTSD and ADHD to name a few. Originally depression was found to be helped with DBT but later it was disproven. Even still, Audrey prefers to review some DBT skills with clients diagnosed with depression to prepare for EMDR.
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Absolutely, DBT can help with the overthinking, the body tension, the “on-edge” feeling and even the nighttime doom scrolling (or thinking).
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Yes! This is the core of DBT, it is all about understanding your emotions and learning how to respond more effectively to them. The four sections of DBT all work together to help you regulate your mood and find balance. Mindfulness helps you to pay attention to the right things, interpersonal effectiveness helps relationships go smoother, emotion regulation teaches skills to help you understand and change your emotional responses and distress tolerance helps you when things get a bit messy.
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There is no strict answer here but typically 9-12 months. However, once we have an intake I can provide a better estimate when I have an idea of what our goals are and what we are working towards. For some clients we may only have 5-10 DBT sessions in our work together if we are mostly focusing on EMDR, for others it could be months of just reviewing, learning and practicing DBT skills. It is all very dependent but reach out for more information.
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No, Audrey only provide DBT-informed therapy. However, she has previous experience working with full model DBT and recommends The Meaningful Life Center if you are looking for full model. If you are unsure if you need full model DBT please reach out to Audrey and she is happy to provide a brief consultation at no charge. Many people do not require full model, however, in other cases it is necessary.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT was the very first effective therapy and it is often used today. If you’ve been to therapy before there is a good chance that your therapy was using CBT techniques, especially if it was talk therapy.
DBT was created to fill the gaps that CBT does not include. It is often thrown around within the mental health world that DBT is CBT+compassion and acceptance or that it is CBT+mindfulness. Many people find that CBT feels like you are trying to force yourself into feeling differently than you do now. DBT does a bit of a better job at understanding that your reactions and behaviors will not always make sense. I also find that the emphasis is more on changing your behaviors than just your thoughts.
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Yes, they work very well together. DBT has 4 stages of treatment. The first is behavioral control and stabilization, this helps us prepare for EMDR and reduce any possible negative side effects such as a “crash out” as the kids say now. Next is reducing quiet desperation which is a fancy way of saying trauma therapy and re-experiencing negative past events A.K.A. EMDR. So EMDR and DBT go very well together. The next two stages are about resolving ordinary problems in living and increasing your capacity for joy and meaning.
Contact Me to Secure your Spot
Interested in working together? Please send an email at audrey@willowtherapyframework.comor give me a call (407)-429-5660.
