Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Women in Los Angeles
In-person and virtual Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for women in Los Angeles & California. Learn practical mental health skills to be more mindful and navigate intense emotions.
THE BASICS
What is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy but it goes beyond just challenging unhelpful thought patterns to address four core skills: mindfulness, acceptance and distress tolerance, emotional regulation and interpersonal skills.
It is a very practical and skill-based type of therapy which means that the main goal of DBT is to teach you a variety of practical skills and tools that can help you improve your life, mental health and overall well-being.
In a traditional DBT setting, these skills are taught in classroom-like group sessions with several lessons being dedicated to each of the four core skills. In my own practice, I use DBT skills more flexibly throughout your unique therapy journey - when they are relevant and helpful to your current circumstances - without following the “strict” DBT schedule.
THE BENEFITS
What can Dialectical Behavioral Therapy help with?
Exploring the variety of DBT skills can be a great way to expand your personal mental health toolbox filled with a variety of different practices that you can depend on in stressful situations.
DBT tools can help you:
✦ Become more aware of your thoughts, emotions and behaviors
✦ Learn to accept intense emotions without fear or self-judgement
✦ Become less impulsive in situations when emotions are high
✦ Make it through painful emotions or crisis situations safely
✦ Learn to keep yourself calm, grounded and present throughout your day
✦ Navigate stressful periods of your life without unhealthy coping mechanisms
✦ Improve your relationships and interpersonal skills
WHAT TO EXPECT
What happens during Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?
The main focus of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy sessions is to help you learn the skills necessary to both accept who you are in the moment while also working to change some of your unhealthy patterns and behaviors.
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Mindfulness skills are viewed as the groundwork or starting point in DBT because they help you create better awareness of the present moment and teach you how to observe and describe your thoughts and feelings without judgement. Essentially, the goal is to help you break the cycle of your automatic thought patterns so you can go on to learn how to not respond and eventually shift into healthier thoughts and behaviors.
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Once you’ve become aware of yourself, your thoughts and your feelings, distress tolerance skills are designed to help you accept those difficult situations without judgement, shame or guilt. Rather than trying to immediately get rid of an uncomfortable emotion or situation, we'll explore tools that can help you accept what you're experiencing and reduce the likelihood of responding in ways that don't align with who you want to be.
The goal isn't to make difficult emotions disappear. It's to help you feel more capable of getting through moments of intense anxiety, fear, grief, anger or sadness without feeling like you have to act on them.
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Emotion regulation skills are about developing a healthier relationship with your emotions over time, rather than simply trying to manage them once they become overwhelming. Together, we'll learn how to recognize and understand your emotions, identify what makes you more vulnerable to becoming emotionally overwhelmed and develop strategies that can help you respond differently. Over time, the goal is to become less reactive and more confident in your ability to move through difficult emotions without feeling completely overtaken by them.
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Relationships can bring up some of our strongest emotions, which is why interpersonal effectiveness is another important part of DBT. We'll work on skills for communicating your needs, setting boundaries, navigating conflict, and asking for what you want while maintaining both your relationships and your own self-respect.
BEYOND DBT
My holistic therapy approach to support the whole you - mind, body & spirit
You may be coming to therapy with a specific approach in mind. Maybe you’ve heard that DBT skills are supposed to be effective at helping you manage your really intense emotions. If you’re interested in exploring DBT specifically, you’re more than welcome to let me know and we can incorporate that type of work into your treatment.
More often than not, therapy isn’t quite that straight-lined though. Holistic healing requires that you look at all the areas of your life - past and present, mind, body (and sometimes spirit). To achieve that, I like to use a variety of different types of approaches. That means one session we might use psychodynamic therapy to explore past experiences. Another, we might use attachment-based therapy to better understand your relationship patterns. If you’re struggling with anxious thoughts, we might explore CBT-based tools and if you’re struggling to feel present in your body, we might try some somatic-based tools.
My goal is never to fit you into one particular therapeutic model. It's to draw from the approaches that are most helpful for you when they are needed so we can achieve holistic healing on all levels.
MY SPECIALITIES
I offer Dialectical Behavior Therapy for women in Los Angeles navigating …
Anxiety, Chronic Stress
& Overthinking
Trauma & Inner Child Healing
Relationship, Dating
& Attachment
Pregnancy, Postpartum
& Infertility
Self-Esteem, Self-Love
& Self-Worth
Ambition, Achievement
& Burnout
Finding Yourself &
Your Identity
GETTING STARTED
Take your first step towards starting DBT
If you’re interested in getting started, have questions that aren’t answered here or would like to meet me, I invite you to reach out and schedule a free consultation. No pressure to commit, just a chance for us to get to know each other and see if we would be a good fit.