Highly reactive clients can test the empathy of even the most compassionate therapists—so how do we support them and also stay grounded ourselves? This video offers answers in the form of compelling strategies taken from Marsha Linehan’s venerable Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Here, DBT experts Drs. Shelley McMain and Carmen Wiebe demonstrate a selection of key interventions from the method, designed to help clients navigate waves of emotional dysregulation. What’s more, they outline the essential DBT mindset that will help you, the therapist, maintain your own equilibrium in the room.
In a series of brief didactic interviews alongside clinical vignettes, Wiebe and McMain reveal how to integrate specific techniques into challenging sessions. Focused here on helping a female client eliminate self-harming behaviors, they present core DBT theories, emphasize the quality of the client-therapist dyad, and promote the use of validation, commitment strategies, problem solving, and distress tolerance skills training.
You’ll get an overview of the three core tenets of DBT—learning theory, Zen philosophy, and dialectics—which together form the therapist’s guiding framework for the model. You’ll understand the significance of an invalidating early environment, and find eight DBT assumptions about clients that can help you stay compassionate. Practical skills are covered as well, including validation techniques, strategies to gain and keep a client’s commitment, and problem-solving methods that enhance deeper treatment. Most important, McMain and Wiebe present effective distress tolerance skills that you can incorporate into your work right away.
While each clinician has a different style, they both convey firm guidance alongside tangible warmth and empathy; their client gains valuable insight and tools that eventually lead to significant improvement. This video is an excellent resource for anyone seeking a DBT primer, tools for handling emotional dysregulation, or simple reassurance that you’re not alone in feeling challenged by this work. Check it out today.
This video is part of the 6-video series, Psychotherapy Essentials To Go. Other self-study videos in this series include:
- Achieving Psychotherapy Effectiveness
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy Techniques for Emotional Dysregulation
- Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Depression
- Motivational Interviewing for Concurrent Disorders
