By: Sarah Penny, Tina Stephenson & Stacey Wilson

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

In Japanese culture, the Cherry Blossom symbolizes impermanence, the transience of life and hope

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

DBT = standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for

emotion regulation + reality-testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness Rooted in behaviourism
Linehan realized CBT wasnt effective in her work with

clients with BPD, and therefore added elements of mindfulness and acceptance into her approach, to help with emotional regulation

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

DBT assumes that: 1) people with BDP lack key interpersonal and self regulation skills, and 2) personal and environmental factors may block or inhibit the use of behavioral skills and reinforce maladaptive behaviours (Feigenbaum, 2007).

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

A major premise of DBT is to encourage clients to

recognize, accept and moderate their emotional responses, skills they were not able to learn in emotionally invalidating childhoods DBT works effectively with clients with Borderline Personality Disorder becausevalidation is an issue of theirs???

Validation
Change, dialectical strategies, and acceptance strategies

which include validation strategiesmake up the core set of treatment strategies. Therefore our group decided to focus on how validation strategies can be used in counselling in order to enhance a clients emotional regulation.

DBT defines validation as empathy plus the

communication that the clients perspective is valid in some way (Koerner, 2012, p. 111). With empathy, you accurately understand the world from the clients perspective; with validation you also actively communicate that the clients perspective makes sense (Koerner, 2012).

Other client groups

DBT has also been found to be effective for clients with

eating disorders, depression and suicidality, and those with pervasive emotion regulation deficits