Posts Tagged ‘DBT’
Apply Opposite Action to Painful Emotions
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran Emotions can often be experienced so suddenly or deeply that little time or energy is given to question the facts or happenings that prompted the emotional experience. When emotions feel visceral and real in this way, we may…
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Resolve 10 Dialectical Tensions for a Balanced Lifestyle
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” – Viktor Frankl Things in life are rarely “always” one way or the another. When you live according to absolutes or extremes, there is a tendency to become easily overwhelmed, overly stressed,…
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How to Practice “Radical Acceptance”
“The curious paradox is when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), the word “dialectic” refers to balancing and comparing two things that seem to be quite different – even contradictory. In DBT, this balance is between change and acceptance. For many people,…
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Jealousy vs. Envy
“Envy assails the noblest: the winds howl around the highest peaks.” – Ovid Jealousy and envy, while painful and distressing, serve important functions in our lives. Emotions that cause suffering to ourselves and others are designed to act as useful indicators to promote our survival. If we were to never experience the emotions of jealousy…
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Founder of DBT Reveals Personal Struggle with Mental Illness
“You can feel like a mental patient, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like one.” – Marsha Linehan In the Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 issue of The New York Times, renowned leader in the field of mental illness and creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Dr. Marsha Linehan revealed her own personal struggle with…
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Doing What’s Effective
“Life is not about being right, it is about being effective.” – Marsha Linehan, Ph.D. Dr. Marsha Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), contends that it is far more important in life to be effective than it is to be right. At a recent DBT emotion regulation training event that I attended, Dr. Linehan…
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Recognize Your Emotions in 6 Steps
“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.” – Vincent Van Gogh In order to effectively manage our emotions we must first learn how to accurately recognize them. Some people try to ignore their emotional reactions, letting a whole host of emotions…
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Guilt vs. Shame
“Shame occurs when you haven’t been able to get away with the ‘who’ you want people to think you are.” – Carl Whitaker We have all had moments in our lives when we are not feeling particularly proud of something that we have done. It could be as minor as making an inappropriate joke to…
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How to Calm Down from Extreme Emotions in 30 Seconds
“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” – Publilius Syrus This week I attended a 2-day workshop on emotion regulation in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), conducted by DBT’s creator, Dr. Marsha Linehan. The past two days (along with a thick binder) have been filled with copious amounts of information on specific skills…
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Self-Preservation vs. Self-Transformation
“There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin In order to transform ourselves in positive and healthy ways, we have to leave the safe zone of defending or preserving the self. We must choose to step away…
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