DBT skills training is a group treatment proven to help clients reduce suffering and get control of emotions so that your emotions stop controlling you. DBT skills training overs four skills modules:

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness is about learning how to stay present in the moment and be where your feet are. So often we are caught up in the past or thinking about the future; rarely do we spend much time in this one moment. Mindfulness helps us to slow down and be more aware of our present experience. It can help us to increase our focus and decrease suffering. Mindfulness is the core of all of the DBT skills and it is crucial that we learn to be mindful so that we can use the other skills.

• Interpersonal effectiveness: In the interpersonal effectiveness module, you will learn how to identify and prioritize your goals in interpersonal situations. You learn how to ask for what you want or say no effectively. You learn how to interact with someone when getting or keeping the relationship is important, as well as how to navigate interpersonal relationships when your self-respect is important. You will also learn how to figure out how intensely to ask for or say no to something.

• Emotion regulation: If you think about your emotions like a thermostat, emotion regulation skills teach us how to dial back the intensity of our emotions (or, in some cases, to turn them up). In this module, you’ll learn how to change your emotion or to change the intensity of the emotion. You’ll learn how to solve emotional problems and to keep yourself from acting in ways that are not aligned with your long-term goals.

• Distress tolerance: Do you often do things that make things worse when you’re in emotional crises? Distress tolerance skills are designed for crises when you are at your skills breakdown point. You will learn how to tolerate your emotion so that you stay alive and don’t make things worse. You will also learn how to practice accepting the facts of reality so that you decrease suffering.