Do you feel your mind is being pulled in a hundred different directions at once? Do you have a hard time handling some of your emotions, and does this cause any problems in your relationships?

Modified Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) offers individuals comprehensive skills to manage painful memories and emotions and decrease conflicts in their relationships. This modality focuses on 4 specific areas of therapeutic skills. These are:

• Mindfulness – Helps individuals be present in the current moment.
• Distress tolerance – Most people try and keep themselves safe from all negative emotions. Distress tolerance is geared toward increasing a person’s tolerance of negative emotions.
• Emotion regulation – Offers strategies to manage intense emotions that are the root cause of problems in a person’s life. 
• Interpersonal effectiveness – These techniques allow an individual to communicate with others in a confident, assertive way that maintains self-respect and strengthens relationships.

How Does it Work Exactly?

Many of us live our daily lives with a constant stream of uncontrollable negative emotions right under our awareness. These emotions affect how we feel about ourselves and how we interact with other people, including friends, romantic partners, and family members.

Modified DBT essentially works with individuals to help them find ways to manage their negative emotions so they can feel balanced, in control, and able to interact respectfully and successfully. The message at the heart of Modified DBT is acceptance and change.

When is DBT Used and What Can You Expect?

Modified DBT treatment usually consists of a combination of modified DBT skills groups and individual therapy sessions. The individual therapy sessions allow you to have one-on-one contact with a trained therapist who will help you apply modified DBT skills to your daily life, address any obstacle that may arise, and keep you motivated! The modified DBT skills group interactions will help you practice skills with others and offer mutual support.

"Modified DBT therapy" means that a therapist is delivering Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) while adapting certain aspects of the treatment to better suit the specific needs of a client or population, such as tailoring skills training, focusing on particular areas of concern, or adjusting the treatment duration based on individual circumstances; essentially, it's not following the standard DBT protocol exactly, but using the core principles to address unique challenges. 

If you or someone you know may benefit from modified dialectic behavioral therapy, please get in touch with me. I would be happy to discuss how I may be able to help.

Adapting to the client:

Therapists may modify DBT based on a client's specific mental health issues, cultural background, developmental stage, or other factors that could influence how they respond to treatment.

Focus on specific areas:

While traditional Modified DBT covers all four core modules (mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance), a modified approach might prioritize certain skills depending on the client's needs.

Length of treatment:

Depending on the situation, a modified DBT program might be shorter or longer than standard DBT, with more or fewer sessions.

Integration with other therapies:

Sometimes, modified DBT might incorporate elements from other therapeutic approaches to enhance treatment effectiveness.