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Psychologist Dr. Marsha Linehan developed dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), which is generally the first-line treatment of choice for borderline personality disorder, a condition which she herself has. It's very skills-based, and many of the skills are more broadly applicable than just for BPD. The focus for this post, though, is some of the foundational concepts… Continue reading Wise Words on Mental Health from DBT Creator Marsha Linehan
I don't currently do therapy and haven't had a lot of success with it in the past, but I'm very pro-therapy in general. I've picked up a collection of therapy tools from CBT, DBT, and various others that are handy to pull out of the toolbox as needed. This post is a sample of a… Continue reading Therapy Tools for Mental Health
Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley is part of a series of pocket therapy books from New Harbinger Publishers. The book is short, the chapters are bite-sized, and it's very easy to read. The book is based on dialectical behaviour therapy, with a focus on emotional regulation.… Continue reading Book Review: Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance
The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley is a self-help workbook that covers the major skills involved in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT is considered the gold standard for treating borderline personality disorder, but its usefulness isn't limited to people with BPD. DBT is very skills-based, and many… Continue reading Book Review: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
This emerging blogger post by Tina from Really Real Blog is about the value of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) skills. The most life changing program for my mental health has been my DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) Skills Classes. DBT is a method created by Marsha M. Linehan, originally to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, however, now… Continue reading Applying DBT Skills (Guest Post)
Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) has a lot of useful concepts, but one of my favourites is wise mind. Wise mind is the area of overlap between our emotional mind and our reasonable/rational/logical mind. To put it another way, it's like being able to draw on our left and right brain at the same time. It's not that either… Continue reading Finding Wise Mind in DBT
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychological terms. This week's term is assertiveness. Wikipedia explains that assertiveness can be seen as falling in between passive communication styles and aggressive styles. Assertiveness training is a type of behavioural therapy developed in the 1960s that includes increasing awareness of one's own… Continue reading What Is… Assertiveness
Some studies have shown that the quality of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is a stronger predictor of therapeutic outcomes than the type of therapy used. However, it seems logical that the type of therapy should at least to some extent match up with how you tend to conceptualize the problems you're experiencing.… Continue reading Psychotherapy Alphabet Soup: CBT, DBT, ACT, and More
There are a lot of excellent mental health resources out there, and quite a few of them are actually free. Here are some of the good mental health workbooks and worksheets that I've come across. They're based on therapeutic approaches that have proven to be effective. This page is updated regularly, but the availability of… Continue reading Free Mental Health Workbooks