Dialectical behavior therapy (also known as DBT) is a type of talk therapy used for people experiencing severe mental health issues. Although not always talked about, DBT provides skills and resources to help people improve their mental well-being. Even if you don’t experience mental health issues, DBT can help you learn more about how your brain works and explain the reasons behind your gut reactions. All of this information was compiled from my own personal experiences with DBT and notes I took along the way.
Before you can help yourself feel better, you need to understand why you are feeling a certain way. I like to call this “reverse engineering your brain.” In your brain, you have a window of tolerance for fight or flight responses. Within that window, there is a certain range where your emotions are regulated. In a healthy nervous system, your thoughts stay within that normal range. Here, you are able to think and feel at the same time. You are able to realize what emotions you are feeling and control those emotions or urges you have.
When you have a nervous system that has experienced some form of trauma, your emotions don’t always stay within that normal range. You can experience hyperarousal, when you have an excessive amount of energy that materializes in the form of anxiety, panic, or fear, or hypoarousal, where you shut down or dissociate, usually after a period of hyperarousal.
Imagine you run a marathon. When you finish, you may have energy and adrenaline from finishing such a hard task, but not long after that it fades into exhaustion. While in this unbalanced state, you can’t think logically. This can lead to negative coping mechanisms like self-harm, drugs, and alcohol. To control this you can use TIP skills.
TIP stands for temperature, intense exercise, and paced breathing. All of these techniques help relax your nervous system. Once you are back in the window of tolerance, breathing exercises, grounding techniques, self-affirmation, and taking life moment by moment, can help you remain in that normal range.
WISE MIND
Another concept I was introduced to is the wise mind. In your brain, you have your emotional mind and your rational mind. The wise mind is an important balance between the two. The emotional mind is where your actions are led by your emotions. Some pros of this are, being in tune with your emotions and wants, and being empathetic. This type of thinking can be more enjoyable. Cons of the emotional mind can be irrational decision-making and being controlled by your emotions.
The other part of your brain is your rational mind. This is where your actions are led solely by facts and logic, and your personal values and empathy can be lost. The advantages of this are having well-thought-out actions and a greater ability to focus. The disadvantages of the rational mind are not taking others’ emotions into account and possibly hurting people with your actions and decisions.
The wise mind is the best of two worlds. Also known as a “gut feeling”, the wise mind is the state where you are the wisest and make the best decisions, based on a combination of emotional and rational minds.
HABIT LOOPS
Another step in reverse engineering your brain is recognizing your habit loops. This can be used to stick to new habits or leave old bad habits behind. As habits become normalized, less thought is put into that action. The steps in the habit loop are cue, action, and reward. These steps are used to change behaviors.
First, you must identify any cues. Ask yourself, “What makes me want to do this?” Answers to this could be boredom, anxiety, frustration, or any emotion or situation that triggers your behavior. Once you’ve identified the cue, update your environment as much as possible to remove them. Next, identify the reward. What makes this habit worth doing? Then, you can find something else that can give you that same reward, without continuing the bad habit. And finally, identify supports. Find people in your life or community who can help you through this process. Having someone to hold you accountable can make a big difference and give you more motivation to break the habit.
To create new habits, the process is very similar. You want to create an environment that reminds or motivates you to do the new behavior, take small steps towards creating the habit, and keep track of whatever you are doing, whether that is by yourself or having someone else to hold you accountable for that task. You also want to create or identify some kind of reward or goal that you want that helps you move towards creating a new, healthy behavior.
RIDING THE WAVE
Controlling unwanted behaviors is something that can majorly impact your mental health. This specific technique is called “urge surfing” (also known as “riding the wave”). There are four stages of controlling unwanted behaviors or urges that correlate with a crashing wave in the ocean.
The first stage is the trigger. Sometimes the trigger can be easily identified as the cause of the urge, but in other cases, it can be harder to find. As soon as you recognize the trigger, you want to implement any coping strategies until the urge goes away. During that time you will experience stage two, the rise. The rise happens very quickly and can be barely noticeable. The intensity of the rise depends on the effectiveness of the skills you are using. Next, you reach stages three and four, the peak and then the fall. The peak is the highest intensity of the urge. After that, the fall occurs. The fall is where the urge subsides and you can reflect on the situation and what triggered your urge.
Constant exposure to triggers can restart the cycle over and over again. The stronger your coping skills are, the more manageable the urge becomes. These skills come with time, practice, and experience.
RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
Another concept to help control your brain is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance can be difficult to achieve. It is the idea that you need to accept things without expectations. Issues can stem from the need to change things out of your control, or that can’t be changed. Some examples include wanting to control others’ actions, traffic or weather, and events in the past.
Accepting situations without expectations helps eliminate the need to control events, because the specific outcome was never something you expected in the first place. This helps you control strong emotions, like anger, and helps avoid an overreaction. It can also reduce stress because you aren’t overthinking issues that are out of your control.
It is important to accept and process those emotions in a controlled and comfortable way. The use of the word “should” shows non-acceptance of a situation. Saying, “Ugh, I should have done that instead,” doesn’t help you to travel back in time and change what you did. Once an event happens, it is out of your control, so saying what you should have done doesn’t cause anything but more stress and regret over something you can’t do anything about. Similarly, saying a phrase like, “I should do this instead,” is setting expectations for a situation in the future. It implies that one outcome is better than the other and those expectations can lead to future disappointment if the desired outcome doesn’t occur.
Radical acceptance is something that I have been slowly working on for years. For example, after I take a big math test, I am naturally anxious about the outcome. I try to control that anxiety from spiraling out of control by telling myself, “You already took the test, you can’t go back now, and there is nothing you can do, so don’t stress.” For some people, this might seem impossible. And, for a while, it was for me too. It is a new way of thinking that you have to retrain your brain to follow, which isn’t the easiest task for many people, especially those who struggle with overwhelming anxiety. Others would tell me, “Oh, don’t stress about it! Worrying won’t help anything.” This is something that is commonly said by those who don’t experience severe or chronic anxiety. It took until I slowly came to that realization myself for it to click, and for me to follow that advice. It takes time, but by not setting expectations for yourself, your grades, your social life, etc. you can create a future environment for yourself with less stress and disappointment.
COPING SKILLS
Applying coping skills to situations is also something that can take time, but eventually has a great payoff. By practicing coping skills, or making a routine including some coping skills, your body and mind will become more adjusted to them and gravitate towards them in a time of distress.
In general, there are four types of coping mechanisms. The first is creating distractions. Taking a break from a trigger or stressor by distracting yourself can help you get through a crisis. This is something that I have found extremely helpful, especially before I built up all my current coping skills. I was able to turn on a show or play a game on my phone to help my mind focus on something other than distressing thoughts. Tasks that take a lot of focus are good for this.
Another technique is grounding. These coping skills are very helpful when having a panic attack or feeling disconnected from the world around you. One example I like is identifying different things with all 5 senses. Focus on a bird chirping, the smell of a candle, the feel of the wind, etc. Another example I gravitate towards is the rainbow technique. The goal is to find something of every color of the rainbow in your surroundings. There are a ton of techniques out there, and it might take a few tries to find something that works for you.
The third type of coping mechanism is emotional release. This is most effective with emotions like anger or fear. It helps you release the pressure of an overwhelming feeling. Examples could be writing down your feelings or talking about them to someone, basically anything to get those feelings and thoughts out of your head. It’s almost like keeping a secret for a really long time, and getting a feeling of relief when you are able to tell other people about it.
The final type of skill is thought challenge. This can be difficult and is more of a long-term skill. The goal is to shift past negative thinking habits into more positive ones. In this case, the logical mind can be used to reduce extreme emotions. You want to challenge your thoughts to determine if they are really logical, or if they are an emotional response to a situation.
A good thing to remember is that not all of these concepts will work for everyone. There is no reason to feel defeated if you aren’t able to figure out a skill, or if it simply doesn’t work for you. Different situations call for different coping strategies. Figuring out what works for you, and in what situation, may take time. Rushing the processing of emotions can, in my opinion at least, be just as harmful as burying them away.
These concepts are used to show how your brain works, and what the process your brain goes through looks like. Understanding how your brain works can hopefully help figure out how to counteract any negative thoughts and emotions, to eventually improve your overall mental wellbeing.
Below is a link to my full notes, which are a more accessible and quick version of this article:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LC5uz2pIUdl3GE0F39C68_gBBtamQ5RJ/view?usp=sharing