DBT Program

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DBT Program

The therapists at the DBT Center of the South Bay have been helping patients overcome hardship and live fuller lives for over a decade. Our center is focused on providing strict DBT treatment in order to ensure patients’ success. A true Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) program is composed of four key elements. These elements include individual psychotherapy, skills training, phone coaching, and consultation team. You will be involved in three of these four elements simultaneously. On another note, our adolescent, adult, and advanced DBT programs all contain these elements.

Individual Psychotherapy

The first piece of a comprehensive DBT program is individual psychotherapy. This will take place in weekly one-on-one sessions with a therapist. Furthermore, this part of our program focuses on building your motivation and helping you apply skills for the challenges in your life.

Building Motivation

Often when clients begin our program, they have low motivation. This may be motivation tied to analyzing thoughts and beliefs, changing behaviors, or feeling better altogether. When you have been struggling on your own for so long, it can be difficult to see that hard work will make a difference in your future. It can feel impossible to have hope for your future self. We want to help you see that there is hope for you. And we will provide a safe and comfortable space for you to explore all the feelings and behaviors that have led you to feel so hopeless.

Applying DBT Skills

The second function of individual psychotherapy is for the therapist to guide you in applying skills learned in skills training. Learning the skill is the first step, but implementing it when you’re in challenging situations is the tough part. But, this is the piece of DBT that makes it effective.

So, in individual psychotherapy sessions, you and your therapist will talk through potential situations in which you have a choice. You can choose to engage in previously used, harmful behaviors, or you can choose to apply the healthy learned behaviors from skills training. Over time, you will not only be discussing these choices in therapy but will be able to apply them in your real life.

DBT Skills Training

When you begin skills training, we want you to know that we do not have judgment toward your previously used (or current) behaviors. As therapists, we understand that feelings can be painful, which often results in turning to unhealthy behaviors. And we understand that these behaviors have arisen as a way to soothe yourself and feel better in the moment. A central idea in DBT is that humans are doing the best they can with what they have right now. So, it is our goal to give you tools and behaviors that will expand your choices for how to respond to painful situations.

The skills we focus on in skills training are:

Mindfulness – increasing awareness of the present moment and slowing down
Distress tolerance – learning how to sit in painful situations without action
Interpersonal effectiveness – building healthy relationships with effective communication where you matter and so does the other person
Emotional regulation – learning how to manage intense emotions

Each of these broad skills have particular behaviors that you will learn about in skills training. You will work on each of these skills during individual psychotherapy as well. Furthermore, you and your therapist will discuss which particular skills will be most helpful to you depending on your unique circumstances.

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Phone Coaching

A unique aspect of DBT is that you are encouraged to reach out to your therapist between individual psychotherapy sessions and group skills sessions. Many other therapeutic treatments do not allow for your therapist to communicate with you outside of sessions. However, we have seen impressive results from our clients having support available when they are in the real world.

How does phone coaching with my therapist work?

Every day, you can run into a situation, person, or place that can bring up painful emotions and urges for unhealthy behaviors. And if you were in a session with your therapist, you’d likely discuss why that was painful and how to manage those feelings, then apply skills. However, when you are in the real world without someone talking you through things, making decisions can happen instantaneously. This is what we are trying to stop in DBT treatment.

We want you to learn to be present in each moment and make conscious decisions about how to react when pain presents itself. So, this is where phone coaching comes in. When you encounter something that makes you want to turn to unhealthy behaviors, you call your therapist. The therapist may not be available at that exact moment. However, the therapist will return your call as promptly as possible and coach you through it. This lets you take a pause, think before acting, and make a conscious choice moving forward. Coaching calls are brief to get you living in your life.

Consultation Team

The final piece of our comprehensive DBT program is the consultation team for our therapists. Clients are not part of this. However, you will benefit from it as our therapists in the team do DBT on each other to enhance the quality of DBT each of them provides. Furthermore, this is a space for them to learn and grow. In the consultation team, we discuss how to best help clients. Sometimes, our therapists share about clients’ situations because they want to make sure they are providing the best services possible.

Further, DBT is a highly researched treatment, which means that there may be new science coming out about it. When this happens, our team focuses on making changes to our treatment to ensure clients are receiving the most cutting-edge services. Our consultation team is put in place to verify that our clinicians have the best skills in order to teach the best skills.

Begin Our DBT Program in Torrance, CA

We know that life is painful. And when we don’t have the tools to manage, we can create bigger problems for ourselves. You deserve to be heard and supported as you learn skills to live a more intentional, fuller life. If you are ready to start DBT at our Los Angeles area center or online in California, follow the steps below.

Reach out to us here.
Start meeting with a trained DBT therapist.
Find hope and motivation to learn and grow.

Other Services at DBT Center of South Bay

Our DBT center located just south of Los Angeles, CA has helped many people find the motivation to live fuller, more connected lives. We provide treatment to adolescents and adults. Furthermore, we provide DBT to help with managing anger, family dynamics and social isolation and loneliness. And our therapists specialize in helping those experiencing suicidal thoughts and self-harm behaviors. And you can access our services from anywhere in the state using online therapy in California.