The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Diary

Book excerpt: Difficult emotions like anger, fear, sadness, guilt, and shame are part of being alive and are meant to help protect us, but when they get out of control, these emotions can also cause severe pain. When you're in the grip of an emotional storm, it's all too easy to overreact, lash out at others, or become angry with yourself. Therapists created dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, to help people with overwhelming emotions calm themselves when their feelings become too painful or out of control. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Diary presents an overview of each of the four DBT skills-distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness-and includes a journal you can use each day to monitor your successes, chart your progress, and stay on track making productive changes in your life. With this diary, you can: •Learn over twenty techniques to use when you feel overwhelmed •Observe and record your progress each day •Find out which coping strategies work best for you •Discover nutrition and lifestyle changes that can make you feel better