DBT LifeSkills Training Modules

Mindfulness in Everyday Living ... Learn Tools and Techniques for Everyday Problems: You will learn to distinguished between your reasonable and emotional thinking and how to use your "wise mind" in making healthy decisions. LifeSkills you will learn include:

Observe --- just notice without getting caught in the experience.

Describe --- put words on the experience.

Participate --- become one with your experience.

Nonjudgmental --- see but do not evaluate; stick to the facts.

One-Mindful --- do one thing at a time.

Effective --- do what needs to be done in each situation.

Behaviors to decrease: Problems experiencing or identifying a sense of self; sense of emptiness, boredom or intolerance of being alone; problems in maintaining your own feelings, opinions, and decisions around others; feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or worthlessness.

Behaviors to increase: Mindfulness in Everyday Living ... learning to go within to find yourself. Learning to observe --- with no intention of changing or improving anything. observing and accepting life just as it is, with all its pleasures, pains, frustrations, disappointments, and insecurities which will enable you to become calmer, more confident and better able to cope with whatever comes your way.

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Intrapersonal Effectiveness ... Build a Roadmap to Self-Discovery: You will learn how to accept and love yourself through the identification of values, beliefs, and development of a personal life mission statement, as well as exploring affirmations and new ways of thinking. LifeSkills you will learn include:

approval of self
affirmations
deserving
beliefs and values
self-messages
new ways of thinking
meaning and life purpose
spirituality

Behaviors to decrease: Problems experiencing or identifying a sense of self; feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or worthlessness.

Behaviors to increase: Intrapersonal Effectiveness ... identification of self; identification of beliefs, values, and purpose; self-esteem enhancement.

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Interpersonal Effectiveness ... Enhance Communication and People Skills: You will learn how to apply interpersonal problem solving, social, and assertiveness skills to modify aversive (unpleasant/uncomfortable) environments and to obtain your goals in relationships, while retaining your self-respect and the respect of others. LifeSkills you will learn include:

DEAR WOMAN ... Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce ... (use) Wise mind, Observe, (stay) Mindful, Appear confident, Negotiate

GIVE ... (be) Gentle, (act) Interested, Validate, (use an) Easy manner

FAST ... (be) Fair, (no) Apologies, Stick to values, (be) Truthful

Behaviors to decrease: Unstable relationships; difficulty maintaining relationships; conflict in relationships; panic, anxiety, and dread over relationships ending; frantic attempts to avoid abandonment.

Behaviors to increase: Interpersonal Effectiveness ... assertiveness and problem solving; learning to deal with conflict situations; to get what you want and need; to say no to requests or demands; maintaining self-respect and others liking you and/or receiving acknowledgement and respect.

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Emotion Regulation ...Manage Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions: You will learn to focus on the nature of your emotions and identification; you will also learn how to experience emotion without becoming overwhelmed or frustrated through self-valuation, which will result in decreasing the intensity or changing the emotion. LifeSkills you will learn include:

reduce vulnerability (SLEEPS™)
build mastery
positive emotions for the short- and long-term
letting go
opposite to emotion
after-effects.

Behaviors to decrease: Emotional sensitivity; ups and downs; moodiness; emotional reactions; negative emotional response.

Behaviors to increase: Emotional Regulation ... emotional control; reducing the intensity of emotions; learning that emotions are a natural part of you ... you can have more control and learn to modulate emotions so that you are more balanced between the highs and lows of your emotional reactions.

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