Ever get hijacked by your emotions? With the right skills, says therapist and DBT educator Nina Kaweblum, you can actually regain control of your emotions and respond with grace instead of impetuosity
W e’ve all had the experience of acting from our emotions. We yell we withdraw we engage in harmful behaviors like overeating. Then we’re stuck with the resulting mess like distanced relationships loss of self-esteem and guilty feelings — not to mention that we still haven’t dealt with the original problem. We resolve never to act that way again… until the next time when flooded with emotion we revert back to our “go to” reaction.
In theory we know we can grow even transform ourselves — that’s the whole premise of teshuvah. But in practice we’re often left wondering How do I get from here to there?
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) was created to help people do just that. It not only equips people with skills to break out of their old patterns and develop new ones it also teaches people how to use these techniques even when they’re feeling a torrent of emotion.
And it works. Marsha Linehan the creator of DBT was just selected as the 2017 Grawemeyer Award winner for her contribution to psychology. Time magazine included DBT as one of the 100 New Scientific Discoveries in 2011 describing it as “a treatment with evidence of efficacy that works and gives hope for clients.”
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