Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/Emotion Regulation Skills

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Emotion Regulation

Borderline and suicidal individuals are emotionally intense and labile – frequently angry, intensely frustrated, depressed, and anxious. This suggests that borderline clients might benefit from help in learning to regulate their emotions. Dialectical behavior therapy skills for emotion regulation include:

• Identifying and labeling emotions
• Understanding the function of emotions
• Identifying obstacles to changing emotions
• Reducing vulnerability to “emotion mind”
• Increasing positive emotional events
• Increasing mindfulness to current emotions
• Taking opposite action
• Applying distress tolerance techniques