Two very different modalities of treatment developed for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP). Marsha Linehan, Ph.D, developed DBT in 1993, as a skill based behavioral treatment for patients with BPD who generally experience intense emotions that they relieve using self-injurious behaviors. DBT has shown to be useful in treating a variety of issues including eating and mood disorders, as well as, reducing behaviors such as bingeing, purging, and cutting.
DBT is an adapted version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which combines reality testing along with mindfulness, interpersonal and distress tolerance skills training, and emotion regulation techniques. …show more content…
Certainly it can be very challenging to help patients with BPD, thus DBT clinicians check-in with one another in consultation groups.
In my opinion DBT has several strengths. I value the skills that can help patients change, accept, and address their personal problems. I think that group sessions can help patients learn to identify their own feelings by hearing what others have to share. Patients can benefit interpersonally by developing a therapeutic alliance with their therapist, which might be one of the first honest, intimate, attentive, and emotionally healthy relationships they may have ever had. I also like the idea of being able to reach out to a therapist if and when one has the urge to self- harm. The phone coaching can bring awareness to the self-harming behaviors that many of my patients express as being habitual. The diary cards, similar to self-monitoring in CBT, provide information from moments in time during the week when a patient is in life. This information would be very helpful to explore while in individual sessions. I feel that many patients forget exactly when and how they felt during the week. Monitoring behaviors sheds light on a patients, thoughts, actions, and subsequent
DBT is an adapted version of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which combines reality testing along with mindfulness, interpersonal and distress tolerance skills training, and emotion regulation techniques. …show more content…
Certainly it can be very challenging to help patients with BPD, thus DBT clinicians check-in with one another in consultation groups.
In my opinion DBT has several strengths. I value the skills that can help patients change, accept, and address their personal problems. I think that group sessions can help patients learn to identify their own feelings by hearing what others have to share. Patients can benefit interpersonally by developing a therapeutic alliance with their therapist, which might be one of the first honest, intimate, attentive, and emotionally healthy relationships they may have ever had. I also like the idea of being able to reach out to a therapist if and when one has the urge to self- harm. The phone coaching can bring awareness to the self-harming behaviors that many of my patients express as being habitual. The diary cards, similar to self-monitoring in CBT, provide information from moments in time during the week when a patient is in life. This information would be very helpful to explore while in individual sessions. I feel that many patients forget exactly when and how they felt during the week. Monitoring behaviors sheds light on a patients, thoughts, actions, and subsequent