Our therapists offer DBT / dialectical behavior therapy in Woodbridge, VA

My use of DBT skills is based on incorporating skills beneficial for the regulation of intense emotions. I like to utilize these skills because they provide tools that are most beneficial for teaching clients to regulate intense emotions and ground themselves.

I teach the following tools with individual therapy:

• Recognizing emotions on the feelings wheel
• Wise mind
• Urge surfing
• Coping skills and strategies for managing and regulating emotions and stress
• Accumulating positive emotions in the short and long term

I can tell a client is making meaningful progress in DBT when they are able to come back session after session and confidently report their ability to use skills, strategies, and routines they have been working on in treatment. Also, when they are using terminology they learned and demonstrate increased awareness and ability to regulate and manage whatever they are there working on in treatment.

I encourage clients to supplement their work in dialectical behavior therapy with positive, healthy, and effective activities, or what we refer to as pleasant events, utilizing them in their daily lives to help them feel like they are making progress towards a life worth living. Clients can also discuss activities, practices, routines, and habits that provide life satisfaction and help them feel like they are working toward long-term life goals. We will often look at a balanced life wheel that I have been known to share.

I encourage clients to prepare for their first DBT session by thinking about the areas of their lives where they hope treatment can help address intense emotional responses they are experiencing, allowing them to better regulate themselves and establish future goals in their lives they want to work toward.