DBT Informed Therapy

What Is DBT Informed Therapy?
And How is it Used During Addiction Rehab?

DBT, or dialectical behavior therapy, is a widely-practiced addiction therapy, and one of the best ways to help clients find meaningful ways to live with some of the most difficult aspects of addiction while still striving towards their goals. But there’s often confusion as to how DBT works, or how it’s different from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Below, you can read up on DBT, and how the team at Extra Mile Recovery uses it during addiction rehab to empower clients to succeed in their recovery.

What Is DBT And How Does It Work?

DBT is a talk therapy that uses cognitive behavioral principals. Through DBT-focused group therapy and recovery skill development sessions, clients learn practical ways to improve their mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. In simpler terms, DBT teaches clients how to handle triggers and manage their emotional responses.

Originally designed to treat people with extreme emotions and unhealthy responses to triggers, DBT is excellent for addressing substance abuse disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), severe depression, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder (BPD), and suicidal impulses.

How Is DBT Different from CBT And Other Therapies?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a blanket term for most talk therapies. CBT’s goal is to help the client identify how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors relate to one another, so they can think and act in new ways that achieve healthier emotional responses. In practice, this often means discussing situations in the client’s life, then analyzing their response to those situations.

DBT is a specialized form of CBT with a greater focus on managing and accepting negative feelings. CBT, in general, helps clients understand their mental processes, but DBT spends more time helping clients continue to live their life in a positive way despite difficult feelings.

How Is DBT Used in Alcohol & Drug Rehab Programming?

During alcohol and drug rehab programming, our ultimate goal with DBT is to help our clients build a life that they want to live, which is why our licensed substance abuse counselors utilize the principles of DBT to help clients set meaningful life goals. Many of our clients have never done this before, let alone with the help and guidance from a professional.

From there, clients consider the negative thoughts and behaviors that may get in their way of reaching these goals, and work on ways to lessen these negatives and replace them with positive, life-affirming thinking and actions.

During our addiction rehab program, dialectical behavior therapy is used to help clients establish goals, manage pain, and find ways to reach those goals despite the cravings and difficulty that come with life in recovery. For example, while CBT might help a client understand and resolve the guilt or shame they feel for losing a job, DBT counseling hinges on the understanding that these feelings may never be completely resolved. In this case, DBT focuses on helping clients manage these feelings while they look for a new job.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy At Extra Mile Recovery

DBT informed therapy is one of the most important tools we have at our disposal to help clients understand and overcome their addiction, but it’s far from the only one. Alongside other therapies such as CBT, our specialized EMDR Therapy for trauma, dual-diagnosis treatment to combat the ways addiction and other mental illnesses feed into each other, and 12-step immersion to help foster accountability during recovery, we help clients see their addiction from new angles that make it easier to understand — and live a happy life in spite of the challenges they face. Through our small, all-male groups and serene addiction rehab campus in Mississippi, clients can explore these ideas in a peaceful, accepting place.

To learn more about our DBT counseling, DBT group therapy, and other therapies, please call Extra Mile Recovery at 662-810-4146 today.