Florida Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) helps patients find a balance with typically opposing views in their lives. DBT utilizes two major techniques to help patients accept and regulate their emotions to better change behaviors. Acceptance techniques help patients understand why they engage in certain behaviors, and change techniques help patients replace these unwanted behaviors with more positive actions. Someone who struggles with a mental health disorder can greatly benefit from this focused treatment approach, and DBT has helped many people overcome their struggles. Our mental health treatment center in Boca Raton offers dialectical behavioral therapy for mental health treatment. Our patients receive fully customized treatment plans that meet their needs and recovery goals.

This is a form of talking therapy designed to help clients manage difficult emotions. The aim is to help them learn how to accept these emotions and regulate them so they are better able to change any behavior that may be harmful or unhealthy. First, let’s look at what ‘dialectics’ means. This essentially means balancing opposing positions and seeing how they can go together. For example, in DBT you will be working towards finding a balance between acceptance (accepting your emotions and who you are) and change (making positive changes to your behavior and life). To help create this balance, acceptance and change techniques are used.


Acceptance Techniques

These techniques look at helping you understand yourself and why you might do the things that you do (i.e. abuse alcohol or self-harm). Rather than blaming yourself and telling yourself you’re wrong or a bad person for the way you behave, a DBT therapist will help you understand why you’ve turned to these behaviors. For some people, the behaviors are the only way they’ve been able to deal with intense emotions. This technique helps you understand that to your mind, these behaviors make sense.


Change Techniques

Once you have a greater understanding of why you behave in certain ways, you can look to make positive changes. The techniques used here help to replace unwanted behaviors with more positive behaviors. For example, you can start to challenge negative thought patterns and learn how to develop a more balanced approach.

Dialectical behavioral therapy can help treat any mental health illness and this approach has been proven successful. This treatment approach was initially designed for people with suicidal tendencies as well as emotional struggles. DBT focuses on problem solving in therapy as well as acceptance-based tactics to help individuals overcome their struggles. Both individual and group therapy utilize DBT, and patients learn to develop behavioral skills needed to recover and better manage their symptoms.


If you or your loved one struggles from any mental health illness, dialectical behavioral therapy can be used in a treatment plan to fully recover. Our mental health treatment center in Boca Raton offers DBT amongst other therapy approaches to truly help our patients change their unhealthy behaviors and live a normal lifestyle. Contact Banyan Mental Health today to learn more about our treatment programs.