From joy and love to hatred and disgust, emotional experience is part of everyone’s life. However, some people are more sensitive to emotions than others. They experience feelings quickly and intensely, and take more time to “recover” from strong emotions. The reason for this sensitivity can include biological causes, as well as growing up in a family where one’s feelings were ignored or dismissed as unreasonable.
An emotionally invalidating family experience deprive us of the opportunity to learn the skills we need to cope with strong, sudden emotion in healthy ways. Instead, we can find a temporary solution for emotional pain through behavior that damages our bodies, our relationship, and our lives, such as self-injury, irregular eating, or drug use. This solution comes with a series of their own problems which ultimately adds to the feeling that a person’s life is out of control.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) provides an opportunity to gain the skills necessary for identifying, experiencing and regulating emotions, in order to interact more effectively with ourselves and others. There are two components for DBT: skills training groups and individual therapy. You can hire best DBT therapy services provider in Los Angeles.
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In the skills training group, lecture and discussion focus on emotional management, learning to be more effective in relationships, and learning techniques to tolerate pressure. Individual therapy focuses on staying motivated, understanding how and why problem behaviors occur and identifying alternative, more skillful ways of coping.
The overall approach to therapy is called “dialectical” because it seeks balance between opposites such as acceptance and change, validation and challenge, rigidity and flexibility. Underlying DBT is the practice of “mindfulness.” Drawn from the Eastern tradition of meditation, mindfulness is about attending to the moment, without judgment or impulsivity.