Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, was developed by Marsha Linehan. A full DBT program is a specific, comprehensive treatment with several components. What I offer is different, and I want to be clear about it: DBT-informed skills. These are practical tools drawn from DBT's teaching on mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, woven into individual therapy when they fit your needs. It is an honest distinction, and it helps you know exactly what you are choosing.
DBT-Informed Skills
DBT-Informed Skills for Emotional Regulation
When emotions arrive fast and strong, skills can create a little space between the feeling and what you do next.
The Idea at the Heart of DBT
The word dialectical points to holding two things at once. In DBT, the central pairing is acceptance and change: accepting yourself and your experience as it is right now, while also working to change what is not serving you. That balance can be a relief if you have spent years either criticizing yourself for your reactions or trying to push them away. Acceptance without change can feel like resignation, and change without acceptance can feel like a fight with yourself. Each makes the other more possible.
The Skills We Might Practice
Depending on what you need, we may work with skills from these four areas:
- Mindfulness: noticing thoughts, feelings, and sensations without being swept away by them.
- Emotional regulation: understanding what an emotion is signaling and lowering its intensity when it runs too high.
- Distress tolerance: getting through a painful moment without making it worse.
- Interpersonal effectiveness: asking for what you need and saying no while protecting your relationships and your self-respect.
Skills for Everyday Life
DBT-informed skills are not only for crisis moments. They can help with ordinary friction: an email that makes your pulse jump, a family visit that tests your patience, a performance review that echoes an old wound. Practicing skills when the stakes are low makes them easier to reach for when the stakes are high. Together, we can build a short, personal set of go-to skills that fits your life and your temperament.
How Skills Fit Into Our Work
Skills are most useful when they are tailored to your life. We might take a recent moment when a feeling took over, such as a sharp reply in a meeting or a spiral late at night, and look at what could have created a pause. You may practice a skill between sessions and bring back what happened, including what did not work. Alongside skills, we can explore where the intensity comes from, drawing on psychodynamic, attachment-focused, or trauma-informed work. You can read about trauma-informed therapy and my broader approach.
Who DBT-Informed Skills Can Suit
These skills can help if your emotions sometimes feel bigger than the situation, if you react quickly and regret it later, or if you shut down when things become intense. They can also help if you manage well in public and struggle when you are alone with your feelings. Skills do not make difficult feelings disappear, and they are not meant to make you feel nothing. They give you more choice in how you respond. Therapy for High-Functioning Anxiety and anxiety and depression therapy describe related work.
What a Session Can Feel Like
A session that includes DBT-informed skills is still a conversation, not a class. We might spend part of the hour on what is happening in your life and part on a specific skill, practicing it together so it feels usable rather than theoretical. The tone is collaborative and practical, with room for curiosity and even humor. Over time, the skills can become more automatic, available in the moments when you need them most. Sessions take place in person at FUSE WorkSpace on West Highway 290 in Southwest Austin or by secure video anywhere in Texas, in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is This a Full DBT Program?
No. I offer DBT-informed skills within individual therapy, not a full DBT program. The skills are adapted to your goals and combined with other approaches when that helps.
Do I Have to Join a Group to Learn These Skills?
No. The skills are taught and practiced in individual sessions.
Can Skills Help With Anger or Irritability?
Emotional regulation skills can help you notice rising intensity earlier and respond with more choice. We can also explore what the anger may be protecting.
A thoughtful first step
You do not Have to Keep Carrying This Alone.
A free 15-minute consultation is a focused, private conversation about what is bringing you here and whether we may work well together.