DBT Emotion Regulation Skills

"We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but a balance and order and rhythm and harmony." - Thomas Merton

Emotion Dis-regulation

• The inability, even when one's best efforts are applied, to change or regulate emotional cues, experiences, actions, verbal responses and/or non-verbal expressions under normative conditions.

Overview of Emotion Regulation Skills

1.  UNDERSTAND and NAME THE EMOTIONS YOU EXPERIENCE

• What good are emotions?
• Model for Describing Emotions
• Ways to Decrease Emotions.  

2.  DECREASE EMOTIONAL SENSITIVITY; Reducing unwanted emotions

• Changing emotional responses to situations
• Reducing vulnerability to negative emotions (ABC PLEASE skill to be described later)

3.  DECREASE EMOTIONAL INTENSITY: Stop or reduce the intensity of unwanted emotions once they start

• Mindfulness of current emotions
• Managing extreme emotions