For many people with depression, it can be hard to find an assertive, but not hostile, way of dealing with conflict. Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) addresses many practical problems such as this with straightforward answers. This comes from the “Interpersonal Effectiveness” module of DBT. The acronym to remember is DEAR MAN: Describe Describe the situation in as objective …
Distress Tolerance
A wonderful young woman we have been seeing for a few months asked for some recommendations for skills to help her deal with her experience of moments of overwhelming negative emotions that often seem to come out of nowhere. This post is a relatively quickly pulled together document derived from Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Think of it as a “draft” …
DBT for Bipolar Group
We are very happy to pass this information on about a great group for people with bipolar being offered in the bay area by an expert in the psychosocial treatments for bipolar: Dr. Jenifer Culver. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills Group for Individuals with Bipolar Disorder in Los Altos, CA. The Next group begins September 2015. This group focuses on teaching …
Effective Communication
A friend recently asked for my advice about how to talk with his manager about some concerns he was having at work. He explained that these concerns were growing in intensity over the last few weeks, and he had yet to mention them because he did not want to “cause waves,” didn’t want to offend anyone, and didn’t actually know what to say …
Distress Tolerance
I have been doing some blog – surfing and happened upon a wonderful series, on the “disorderly chickadee” site that I have referred to in the past, about the skill of “Distress Tolerance.” In working with patients with depression, we often find ourselves encouraging them to learn about Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). And of the many parts of DBT that …