DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets

As someone who has been in therapy for a while, I found the DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets to be an extremely valuable tool in my journey toward better emotional regulation and coping strategies. It’s been a game changer for helping me apply the skills I’ve learned in therapy to real-life situations.Pros:✅ Easy to Understand: The handouts break down the DBT skills into simple, digestible steps, which makes learning complex techniques much easier for me to follow.✅ Practical and Actionable: The worksheets aren’t just theoretical—they actually give me practical exercises to work through on my own. It’s made a huge difference in my ability to manage distressing emotions and situations.✅ Focus on Self-Reflection: I love how many of the exercises encourage me to reflect on my thoughts and behaviors, helping me gain insight into my emotional triggers and how to deal with them more effectively.✅ Organized and Structured: The material is laid out in a clear, structured way, so I never feel lost or overwhelmed by the information. I can go at my own pace and revisit skills whenever I need to.✅ Support for Everyday Life: The worksheets have helped me apply DBT skills to everyday challenges, from stress at work to personal relationships. It feels like I have a toolbox to pull from when things get tough.Cons:🔹 Requires Commitment: While the handouts are great, they do require consistent effort on my part to fully engage with them. It’s not a quick fix, but I’ve seen great results when I stick with it.Final Verdict:I highly recommend the DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets to anyone who’s working on improving their emotional health and coping skills. It’s been such a helpful resource for me as a therapy client. The material is easy to follow, practical to apply, and most importantly, it’s helped me make real progress.Definitely worth using in therapy! 🌟

Skills to Help Increase Resilience: Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT)Learn How to Build a Life Worth Living**TRIGGER WARNING**: Briefly mentions suicide and suicidal ideation.....These are trying times. If struggling at all with suicidal ideation, multiple, and or/several mental disorders, please seek help from a licensed mental health professional — this is just a peer-to-peer support group.Everyone’s trauma and treatment are different, but I wanted to offer support for anyone still asking themselves the same question I use to ask myself when feeling down, “Why do I feel this way?”I highly recommend researching DBT (Dialectal behavioral Therapy) and speak with a licensed mental health professional — specifically a provider that offers this type of specialized therapy. These skills were originally designed for clients with high suicide risk, but since, “there has been an explosion of research”. These helpful skills comes from a variety of sources and disciplines while combining many practices such as “mindfulness” from Zen meditation training and pulling from cognitive and social psychology.Dialectical Behavioral Therapy didn’t necessarily save my life, but it helped me save my life.The developer and author is a Professor of Pyschology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Director of the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics at the University of Washington, Marsha M. Linehan, PhD, ABPP. DBT Skills Training, Second Edition with Handouts and Worksheets, helps to teach life skills in order to learn how to build ”a life experienced as worth living.”DBT was developed for those with high suicide risk and multiple, severe mental disorders. The sections include worksheets on four of the main DBT skills modules: Mindfulness Skills, Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills, Emotion Regulation Skills, and Distress Tolerance Skills. “Every skill works for someone and no skills work for everyone”.Years after finishing, DBT skills continues to help me understand myself and my tendencies towards ADHD, Anxiety, BPD, Depression and OCD. Better able to recognize emotional triggers, I can now cope and redirect negative behaviors, events, and thoughts when I too intensely experience and feel: Hopeless, empty, unstable, on edge, constantly in fear, anxious, full of self-hatred, doubt, depression, insecurity, internalized homophobia, isolation, impulsivity, inner turmoil, frustration, loneliness, impending doom, darkness, and suicidal ideation.As someone who really truly knows what it is like to suffer and sincerely wants to help… Please know that, “unwanted behaviors, emotions, thoughts and events in your life that cause you misery and distress”, are manageable. Of course, with professional training and the right application of DBT skills — it is possible to have a “wise mind” and “build a life worth living”.Falling off the deep end and “hitting rock bottom” in my personal, professional, and social life was finally enough for me to fully realize my BPD diagnosis. Feeling exhausted with emotional despair without answers on my own, I finally embraced therapy and gave it all the time and energy I could at the time. I actually start absorbing the content and slowly, the DBT skills taught in group and individual therapy became instinct. Applying tools takes a lot of time and effort to finesse, but I practice them in my everyday life.For example, I often practice skills and tools taught like: Avoid Avoiding, Build Mastery, Checking the Facts, Coping Ahead, STOP, Walking the Middle Path, and Wise Mind. Aimed at finding a synthesis between emotional extremes DBT teaches, “how to change what it and how to accept what is”. DBT allows us to become more mindful, improve relationships, and find a balance between the emotional extremes. Once really practicing the skills I learned new ones more easily, they became more of a habit. Healing became instinctual.Determined with my learned skills sets, I accelerated faster than most in the film/television industry. With new found focus, as well as failures, a great support system and much effort I finally got into the Union! Currently, I’m proud to be an Assistant Editor position with the Motion Pictures Editors Guild on HBO Max. I’m happily employed full-time working on my Editing Career and joyfully in love living with my soon-to-be-Fiancé!Now, three years have passed since my last attempts at self harm and suicide. DBT is how I now, “build a life worth living”.We can heal. These are skills anyone can learn. Mindful of the past, please don’t let resistance to new therapy and change hold back true healing — try DBT Skills!

Helpful to nephew

Ordered this per my therapists suggestion, and it’s been an amazing tool to have on hand. It’s very thorough yet still easy to understand. I recommend this to everyone looking into DBT!

recently being diagnosed with bpd and getting into my therapy journey i’ve been working more and more with dbt. my new therapist is niche for this and ive learned a lot about dbt and marsha and ive already bought her biography too. but anyways we work heavily with this book and my therapist offered the idea to get it and my gf nodded towards going for it. it felt convient to have my own physical copy and just seemed like a good idea for putting work in. i couldn’t be more grateful. having this resource created by someone who actually understands/experiences the complexities that require these resources. hence why it has become my new safety raft. a tangibal resource i can bring myself back to, that actually gets the depths and complexities of what i need. i am grateful for the opportunity to have this resource

Marsha Linehan could've put the list of handouts and worksheets in an easier to understand listing in the front of the book. It's still hard for me to quickly find what I'm looking for. The handout and worksheets are wonderful! If you're taking the DBT course you'll want this as the handouts and worksheets are essential. While my instructor does provide the handouts and worksheets, I like having my own to copy because the ones I receive are of the poorest quality. This is a wonderful book even if it is a tad difficult to find just what I'm looking for.