I’m not in therapy, but I do have a therapy journal filled with my favourite therapy concepts and tools (the notebook it lives in is from the lovely Candace at Revenge of Eve). In this post, I’ll share some of what it contains. Therapy concepts Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is probably the best fit …
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 …
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 acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), and various others that are handy to pull out of …
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. …
Book Review: Pocket Therapy for Emotional Balance Read More »
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 …
Book Review: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook Read More »
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 …
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. Emotional mind deals in feelings, while reasonable mind deals in facts and evidence. Neither emotion mind nor reasonable mind is wrong or invalid, …
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 …
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. …
Psychotherapy Alphabet Soup: CBT, DBT, ACT, and More Read 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, most of which are available as downloadable PDFs. They’re based on therapeutic approaches that have proven to be effective. This …
