Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
Practical skills for navigating intense emotions, difficult moments, and relationships.
When emotions feel overwhelming, it can be hard to know what to do with them. You might react before you've had time to think, find yourself turning to behaviours that aren't helping, or feel like your emotions are simply too much to manage.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is a structured, skills-based approach that was originally developed to help people experiencing severe emotion regulation difficulties, suicidal behaviours, and borderline personality disorder. It has since been adapted for a range of concerns and for adolescents.
At Sholinder Counselling Collective, DBT-informed counselling can provide practical skills for understanding emotions, getting through difficult moments, improving relationships, and responding more intentionally.
What is DBT?
DBT is built around two ideas that can seem like opposites:
Acceptance and change.
You can acknowledge that something is difficult and that your feelings make sense, while also working toward changing behaviours or patterns that are causing problems.
DBT places a strong emphasis on learning practical skills rather than simply talking about problems. The approach includes four core areas: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
How DBT Can Help?
DBT can help you develop practical ways of responding when emotions or situations feel overwhelming.
Together, we might work on:
Understanding emotions — noticing what you're feeling and what may be contributing to it.
Managing intense emotions — learning strategies to respond to strong emotions without immediately acting on them.
Getting through difficult moments — building skills for tolerating distress when you can't immediately change what's happening.
Improving relationships — practicing communication, boundaries, and ways of handling conflict.
Making different choices — creating more space between a feeling and an action so you have more options for how to respond.
The goal isn't to stop you from having strong emotions. It's to help you feel more capable of handling them.
What Can DBT Help With?
DBT has particularly strong evidence for borderline personality disorder and has been studied for suicidal behaviour and self-harm. DBT adapted for adolescents (DBT-A) has also been studied for young people experiencing self-harm and suicidal thoughts, with research showing reductions in these difficulties compared with control conditions.
DBT-informed skills may be useful for people experiencing:
Intense or overwhelming emotions
Emotional regulation difficulties
Self-harm
Suicidal thoughts or behaviours
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Relationship difficulties
Impulsive or reactive behaviours
The right approach depends on the person. A DBT-informed approach may be one part of a broader treatment plan, particularly when someone is experiencing significant risk or complex mental-health concerns.
What Does DBT Look Like?
DBT is practical and skills-focused. Rather than expecting you to simply "control" your emotions, we work on understanding what is happening and building different ways of responding.
Depending on your needs, sessions may include:
Learning and practicing DBT skills
Identifying emotional triggers
Looking at what happens before and after difficult behaviours
Developing strategies for managing distress
Practicing communication and boundary-setting
Working on relationship patterns
Developing safety plans when appropriate
For adolescents, DBT can be adapted to developmental needs, and caregivers or family members may be involved when appropriate. Clinical guidance specifically recognizes adapted DBT as an option for young people with significant emotional dysregulation and frequent self-harm.
What Are The Four Core DBT Skills?
Mindfulness
Learning to notice what is happening in the present moment without immediately reacting.
Distress Tolerance
Learning ways to get through difficult moments without making the situation harder.
Emotion Regulation
Understanding emotions and learning strategies for managing them more effectively.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Developing skills for communicating, setting boundaries, handling conflict, and maintaining relationships.
What We Like About DBT
What we appreciate about DBT is that it doesn't ask you to simply “control” your emotions.
Strong emotions are part of being human. Sometimes, though, the way we respond to those emotions can create additional problems.
DBT gives us practical tools for slowing things down, understanding what's happening, and creating more choices in how you respond.
Is DBT Right for Me?
DBT-informed counselling may be a good fit if you experience intense emotions, struggle with emotional regulation, have difficulty navigating relationships, or find yourself using behaviours that you want to change.
You don't need to have an official diagnosis to learn DBT skills.
You also don't need to know whether DBT is the right approach before reaching out. We'll start with what's happening for you and talk about which tools would make the most sense.
Curious about DBT?
If you're curious about DBT or wondering whether DBT-informed counselling might be a good fit, you're welcome to book a free 15-minute consultation.