When you come to treatment, it’s important that your addiction to drugs or alcohol is treated from a variety of different angles. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, DBT, is one of the newer forms of addiction treatment that has seen some incredible results. Dialectical Behavior Therapy is not only beneficial for those struggling with substance abuse issues, but it’s also highly recommended for anyone who has a dual diagnosis. If depression or post-traumatic stress disorder is one of the reasons that you turned to drugs or alcohol, Dialectical Behavior Therapy can be extremely beneficial. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy can help people who suffer from trauma, have had little success with traditional types of therapy, or are adult children of addicts or alcoholics. It can also help those who struggle with self-harm and low self-esteem.
What is Dialectical Behavior Therapy?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy was originally created for people who had suicidal thoughts as well as some form of a borderline personality disorder (BPD). The idea of Dialectical Behavior Therapy is to integrate opposites into a person’s programming during addiction treatment. By a therapist presenting opposites of what the client is thinking, it may begin to help retraining the person’s mind to help him or her learn how to reach different goals.
There are four different sets of behavioral skills that a person learns while they’re going through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.
- Mindfulness – This is designed to help a person be fully aware of the present moment, which is helpful because many people with an addiction regret the past and fear the future.
- Distress tolerance – It is meant to help clients learn how to tolerate a painful situation rather than try to run from it or cover it up with substance abuse.
- Interpersonal effectiveness – This set of skills is meant to help the person develop self-respect and confidence while also working on how to manage relationships with friends, family and others.
- Emotion regulation – Some emotions are completely normal, but the problem comes when a person sits in negative emotions for too long. Through emotion regulation, a person is taught how to change the emotions that are having a negative impact on their life.
Why is Dialectical Behavior Therapy Effective?
When a person comes into treatment, they have typically reached a point of surrender where they realize that their way of living hasn’t been working. With Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, the goal is to begin to retrain the brain to help the person develop new behaviors. Often times, alcohol and drugs are only a symptom of the person’s addiction. Many aspects of the addiction come from a person’s thought process and how they perceive different situations in everyday life.
If you’re ready to begin a new life and want to learn strategies that will help you stay sober for years to come, Pinnacle Peak Recovery is here for you. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is only one of the many treatment methods that we offer, and we’ll work with you to find which treatment methods work best for you. You can learn a new way of living by coming to Pinnacle Peak Recovery, so contact us today.