DBT is full of terms, names and acronyms that are downright confusing.
I want to list all of the terms and phrases that you’ll come across so you’re armed with the knowledge of what all of these things mean.
If you’ve forgotten, it’s a way to refresh your memory.
Likewise, if you’re just starting DBT, knowing what some of these terms mean will make attending DBT easier.
So, let’s get to it.
I’ve broken the list down into:
- Acronyms
- General DBT Terms
- DBT Skill-Based Terms
Table of Contents
Acronyms
ABC PLEASE: Accumulate positives, Build mastery, Cope ahead; Physical iLlnes (treat), Eating (balanced), Avoid mood-altering drugs, Sleep, Exercise. ABC PLEASE is like a maintenance schedule for your overall well-being, combining strategies to improve your emotional health by taking care of your physical health and environment.
ACCEPTS: Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Push away, Thoughts, Sensations. ACCEPTS is a distress tolerance strategy, like a first aid kit for tough times. It offers a variety of tools to help you distract yourself from overwhelming emotions until you’re able to address them more effectively.
BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder. BPD can feel like riding an emotional rollercoaster without a safety harness. It’s characterized by intense mood swings, fear of abandonment, and difficulty in relationships. The diagnosis can be a starting point for finding strategies to achieve more stability in your emotions and relationships.
DBT: Dialectical Behavior Therapy. DBT is like a toolkit for managing intense emotions. It combines understanding from both behavioral science and mindfulness to help you navigate emotional storms more effectively.
DEAR MAN: Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, Mindful, Appear confident, Negotiate. DEAR MAN is a technique for asking for what you need or saying no, like navigating a negotiation to ensure both parties feel heard and respected.
ER: Emotion Regulation. Emotion Regulation is learning to manage your emotions, similar to adjusting the thermostat to keep the room at a comfortable temperature. It’s about understanding and reducing emotional intensity, so you can respond to situations in a more balanced way.
FAST: Fair, Apologies (no unnecessary), Stick to values, Truthful. FAST is about maintaining your self-respect in interactions with others, kind of like holding your ground in a strong wind. It emphasizes being fair and truthful, both to yourself and others.
GIVE: Gentle, Interested, Validate, Easy manner. GIVE is like building a bridge between you and others, focusing on how to communicate in a way that keeps your relationships healthy and respectful.
IE: Interpersonal Effectiveness. This is about building stronger relationships, much like planting and nurturing seeds to grow a garden. It focuses on communicating your needs and boundaries in a way that’s respectful to both you and others.
IMPROVE: Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing in the moment, Vacation, Encouragement. IMPROVE is like a soothing balm for your emotional scrapes and bruises, providing strategies to help make a difficult situation a bit easier to bear.
STOP: Stop, Take a step back, Observe, and Proceed effectively. STOP is like hitting the pause button in the middle of an emotional storm, allowing you to take a breath, assess the situation, and choose how to respond calmly.
TIPP: Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Paired muscle relaxation. TIPP is for quickly reducing emotional distress, like using a fire extinguisher on a sudden blaze. It uses physical techniques to help bring your emotional intensity down when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
General Terms
Addict Mind: Your Addict Mind is that voice inside you that seeks immediate pleasure or escape through unhealthy means, like substance abuse or other harmful activities. It’s like having a sneaky trickster in your brain trying to convince you to take the easy route, even when it’s not good for you.
Biosocial Theory: The Biosocial Theory suggests that emotional problems can arise from both biological factors and social interactions. It’s like a dance between your nature and your environment, where sometimes they step on each other’s toes. Understanding this can help you see why you feel or react a certain way, and guide you towards change.
Black and White Thinking: Black and White Thinking means seeing everything in extremes – something is either all good or all bad, with no middle ground. It’s like only seeing the colors black and white, without recognizing the shades of grey in between. This way of thinking can limit you, and learning to see the nuances in life can open up new possibilities.
Chain Analysis: Chain Analysis is like being a detective for your own behaviour. You look back at an event and break down everything that led up to unwanted behaviour, step by step. It helps you understand what happened, why it happened, and how you might change things in the future.
Clean Mind: Clean Mind refers to a state of mental clarity and being free from urges to engage in harmful behaviours. It’s like having a fresh start or a clean slate. In this state, you’re more in control, making decisions that support your well-being and long-term happiness.
Dialectics: This is the idea that two opposing ideas can be true at the same time. It might seem like that’s not possible, but as an example, something that is taught in DBT is ‘I accept myself as I am, and I am ready to change.’. As you can see, both things are true at the same time, even though they seem like they can’t be. #lookatthecat
Emotion Dysregulation: Dysregulation means a lack of regulation. Basically, it means that your emotions are all over the place and you can’t manage or control them. The Emotion Regulation module helps you understand this better and gives you key skills to help manage your emotions more effectively.
Missing-Links Analysis: Missing-links analysis is a bit like filling in the blanks in a story. It helps you identify what you might have missed in your understanding of a situation, especially those moments leading up to problematic behaviour. It’s about getting the full picture so you can make better choices next time.
Modules: DBT has four main modules. These help with parts of your life that you might have found tough before starting therapy: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Emotion Regulation.
Skills: DBT teaches coping skills. Skills are new ways of thinking that will help improve your life and deal with tough emotions. Like any skill, you get better at it over time as you use it. So once you’ve practised them regularly, they become second nature.
Wilfulness: Wilfulness is when you dig your heels in and refuse to accept reality as it is. It’s like being at odds with how things are, perhaps because you wish they were different. But being willful only makes things harder for you, as it’s like trying to swim against the current. It’s about learning to let go and not fight the flow of life.
Willingness: When you’re open to experiencing things as they are, without trying to resist or change reality. You’re being reasonable and open-minded when you’re willing.
Wise Mind: Your Wise Mind is that part of you where your emotional side and your rational side meet. It’s like having a wise advisor inside you, helping you make decisions that are both smart and considerate of your feelings. When you’re in your Wise Mind, you find that sweet spot of balance, making choices that truly reflect what’s best for you.
Unwanted Behaviours: Unwanted Behaviours are actions you wish you didn’t do, usually because they cause problems for you or others. It’s like having habits you want to break because you know they’re not helping you live the life you want. Recognizing these behaviours is the first step towards changing them.
Validation: Validation is acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and experiences for what they are. It’s like saying, “It’s okay to feel this way.” Validation can come from others, but it’s also something you can give yourself. It’s a powerful way to feel heard and understood, which is comforting and healing.
Skill-Based Terms
Alternate Rebellion: Choosing a less harmful way to express disagreement or frustration, akin to painting your room a new colour instead of moving out, offers a safe outlet for rebellious feelings.
Being Mind: Being Mind is a state of simply existing in the moment, experiencing life as it comes without actively trying to change or analyze it. It’s like stopping to smell the roses, allowing yourself to just be. Balancing Being Mind with Doing Mind can lead to a more fulfilling life.
Body Scan: Engaging in a body scan to note physical sensations and tensions mirrors performing a system check to identify and resolve issues. This practice promotes relaxation and awareness of the body.
Check the Facts: Acting as your own detective, Check the Facts means examining your situation without bias to determine if your emotional reactions match reality. It encourages a response based more on reality than on assumptions.
Describe: Describe is the skill of putting words to your experiences. After observing, you verbally note what you’re feeling, thinking, or sensing. It’s like narrating your own life movie, which helps you understand and communicate your experiences more clearly.
Distract: Using distraction to shift focus from distress mirrors changing the channel to avoid a sad film, providing temporary relief until you’re more capable of addressing the issue.
Distress Tolerance: Withstanding tough emotions or situations without escape strategies parallels enduring a storm by finding ways to stay steady until it passes. It’s crucial for managing life’s challenges without turning to negative behaviours.
Doing Mind: Doing Mind is about being focused on action and accomplishing tasks. It’s when you’re in a mode of planning, executing, and getting things done, like ticking off boxes on your to-do list. It’s important, but being in Doing Mind all the time can keep you from appreciating the moment.
Effectiveness: The principle of doing what works in a given situation. It’s about focusing on goals and values rather than on being right or wrong. Being effective means acting in ways that are most likely to achieve positive outcomes.
Half Smiling: Deliberately adopting a slight smile to influence your emotions can be compared to opening a window to let in light, subtly changing your mood from within.
How Skills: How Skills in DBT are about the manner in which you practice mindfulness skills: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively. They guide you on how to approach life and mindfulness practices, ensuring you get the most out of your experiences.
Improve the Moment: Imagining or acting to make a difficult situation more tolerable is similar to sweetening lemonade to improve its taste. Strategies include finding meaning, pausing, or using humour to lighten the atmosphere.
Meditation: Meditation is the practice of focusing the mind, clearing the mental clutter, and making the mind more peaceful and functional. It enhances focus, lowers stress, and boosts well-being.
Middle Path: Finding the Middle Path means striking a balance, avoiding extremes in thought and action, akin to maintaining your footing on a tightrope to avoid falling. This approach aids in resolving conflicts by considering both sides and finding a meeting point.
Mindfulness: Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment, aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without judgment. It’s like tuning in to a radio station that’s always playing but often gets lost in static. Being in the here and now helps you experience life more deeply and calmly.
Mindfulness of Current Emotions: Observing and accepting your emotions as they are, without judgment, can be compared to watching waves crash and recede on the shore. It enables better emotional understanding and regulation.
Mindfulness of Current Thoughts: Paying attention to present thoughts without getting ensnared by them is akin to watching clouds drift by in the sky, recognizing their presence but not clinging to them. This practice fosters perspective and reduces harmful thought patterns.
Nightmare Protocol: Tailored for coping with traumatic nightmares, this method involves rewriting the nightmare with a positive outcome, resembling the process of changing a film’s scary ending to a happier one, which can help lessen fear and improve sleep.
Non-Judgmentalness: Non-Judgmentalness is approaching your thoughts and feelings without labelling them as good or bad. It’s like observing clouds passing in the sky without getting caught up in whether they’re fluffy enough. This attitude fosters acceptance, reduces stress, and helps you see things more clearly.
Observe: Observing is a mindfulness skill that allows you to notice your experiences without getting caught up in them. It’s like being a fly on the wall in your own life, watching your thoughts, feelings, and sensations pass by without getting swept away by them.
One-Mindful: One-Mindful is about focusing on one thing at a time, giving your full attention to the task or moment without distraction. It’s like reading a book without glancing at your phone every few minutes. This skill helps reduce stress and increase your effectiveness and enjoyment of the activity.
Opposite Action: This involves taking actions that directly contradict your emotional urges when they don’t serve your goals, similar to smiling when you feel sad to elevate your mood. It’s a strategy for breaking free from harmful behavioural patterns.
Participate: Participate is fully immersing yourself in activities or interactions, engaging with them wholeheartedly. It’s like jumping into a pool rather than just dipping your toes in. When you participate, you experience life more richly and meaningfully.
Pleasant Events: Scheduling activities that bring joy, akin to planting flowers in your garden for their beauty, enhances emotional wellness. It’s a deliberate effort to cultivate positive experiences and improve mood.
Problem Solving: DBT’s approach to Problem Solving is a step-by-step method for tackling issues. It involves identifying problems, brainstorming solutions, choosing the best one, and acting on it, much like piecing together a puzzle by methodically considering each piece. This equips you to handle problems constructively.
Pros and Cons: Pros and Cons is a DBT skill where you weigh the benefits and drawbacks of a behavior or decision. It’s like making a list to help you see clearly whether an action is in your best interest. It guides you to make choices that align with your long-term goals and values, rather than acting impulsively.
Radical Acceptance: Embracing life as it is, not as you wish it to be, is similar to acknowledging the sky is cloudy when you hoped for sunshine. It’s about fully accepting reality to lessen suffering.
Self-Soothing: Comforting oneself through the senses is akin to enveloping yourself in a warm embrace during tough times. It’s a method for calming and stabilizing emotions.
Sleep Hygiene: Ensuring good sleep through consistent, restful practices is comparable to setting the stage for a peaceful night to wake up rejuvenated. It’s about creating optimal conditions for restful sleep.
Turning the Mind: Choosing to accept reality repeatedly, like rerouting your path when you encounter a roadblock, helps steer away from denial towards acceptance. It’s a conscious decision to align with reality.
What Skills: What Skills in DBT involve the actual practices of mindfulness: observe, describe, and participate. They focus on what you can do to live in the moment, increase awareness, and improve emotional regulation.
Willing Hands: Adopting a posture of openness and acceptance, as if holding something precious in open palms, facilitates emotional acceptance and reduces resistance.
