Posts Tagged ‘dialectical behavior therapy’
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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Do You Have a Passive or Aggressive Interpersonal Style?
“The secret of many a man’s success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men and his tact in dealing with them.” – J.G. Holland Our patterns of relating to others have an incredible impact on all of our relationships. We generally learn our adult styles of relating to others through…
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Apply Opposite Action to Guilt & Shame
“The guilty think all talk is of themselves.” – Geoffrey Chaucer In yesterday’s post, I discussed some of the important functional differences between guilt and shame that were discussed at a recent Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) workshop run by Dr. Marsha Linehan on emotion regulation. Guilt and shame can both be very painful emotions to…
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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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Tolerate Distress with A-C-C-E-P-T-S
“The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.” – Thomas Merton Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers many useful approaches to…
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