Traditionally, DBT skills group contains the following skills modules:
Mindfulness
Mindfulness: The practice of being fully aware and present in the current moment. This is a strong foundation for DBT treatment, as mindfulness skills are an essential component of all the other skills taught.
Emotion Regulation
What are the functions of emotions? This module focuses on the function of emotion, learning to understand and name emotions, decrease unwanted emotions, decrease vulnerability to emotions, and decrease emotional suffering. In other words, regulate (change) emotions if you want to.
Walking the Middle Path (adolescent group only)
This module is focused on avoiding parent/teen extremes, learning how to validate (understand) others, and how to increase behaviors you want while decreasing behaviors you don’t want.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
This module focuses on having effective relationships, including building healthy relationships, maintaining self-respect, and being effective in asking for what you want while also saying “no” effectively.
Distress Tolerance
These skills are focused on crisis survival: how to cope with painful emotions and experiences without making them worse. In a crisis, it is difficult not to act impulsively: these skills are to help in those times.
