I have intensive training in DBT, CBT and EMDR and use strategies from both to help you heal and thrive. DBT teaches coping skills to help you be more mindful, manage strong emotions, and improve your relationships. CBT guides you in adapting your thinking so you can face your problems more positively and productively. EMDR helps you recover from the past while strengthening your tolerance for today and tomorrow’s stresses. Below is more detailed information.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
The goal of DBT is to live a life worth living. I think of DBT as skills we should all have learned as children but didn’t. We can all benefit from learning these skills and incorporating them into our lives.
DBT teaches four sets of behavioral skills:
- Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the act of consciously focusing on the present moment without judgment and without attachment. It is a way of living with our eyes wide open that helps us focus and be present in the very moment we are in.
- Distress Tolerance: It can be difficult to sit with uncomfortable feelings. Employing DBT skills can help us survive a crisis and accept life as it is in the moment. These skills can also be useful to manage addiction.
- Interpersonal Effectiveness: These skills help us ask for what we need, say no, and manage conflicts, all while maintaining our relationships and self-respect.
- Emotion Regulation: DBT can help us understand what we are feeling, change unwanted emotions, and become less vulnerable toward negative feelings.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Everyone has negative thoughts, but when these thoughts get reinforced over time they can affect your mood, causing anxiety, depression, relationship problems and other problems. For example, if you believe “no one likes me,” you may feel lonely and depressed, and this might result in your avoiding becoming close to others.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) teaches you identify, challenge and replace these negative thoughts. This gives you more control over how you feel, helps you see situations more clearly and allows you to react in a more effective way.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
We have all lived through trauma. Some of us have survived big ‘T’ traumas – injury, violence, threats to our lives. Others of us have survived little ‘t’ traumas – distressing events like bullying, loss, emotional abuse, break-ups. While big ‘T’ traumas may lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), little ‘t’ traumas can still be extremely distressing and cause significant emotional damage.
EMDR is an interactive psychotherapy technique that helps people heal from the symptoms and distress of big ‘T’ and little ‘t’ traumatic life experiences. EMDR involves recalling distressing events while your therapist directs your eye movements. It is often less emotionally upsetting because your attention is diverted, and allows you to be exposed to the memories or thoughts without having a strong response.
EMDR can be effective in treating the “everyday” memories that are the reason people have low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, and all the other problems that bring them in for therapy. Our minds seek mental health, and EMDR is a powerful tool to lessen the impact our memories and past experiences have on us.
Melinda Lehman, LCSW 