Completing a full 24 weeks of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) rather than just a basic 12-week program offers a more comprehensive and in-depth approach to mastering the skills necessary for long-term emotional and mental well-being. The extended duration allows participants to thoroughly learn and internalize both foundational and advanced DBT techniques, providing ample time for practice and integration into daily life.

This longer commitment ensures a deeper understanding and more effective application of the skills, fostering greater resilience, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Additionally, the 24-week format offers sustained support and guidance, helping individuals to navigate and address complex issues more effectively, thus promoting lasting positive change and a higher quality of life.

If you haven’t done an advanced DBT group program yet, here’s why it’s a great idea.

Benefits of Learning Advanced DBT Skills

1. Long-Term Resilience: Advanced DBT skills promote long-term resilience by equipping you with tools to handle a wide range of emotional and interpersonal challenges. This resilience helps in maintaining mental health and preventing relapse into unskillful behaviors.

2. Empowerment and Autonomy: With a deeper understanding and more refined skills, you gain greater control over your emotional and mental states. This sense of empowerment fosters independence and self-reliance.

3. Increased Emotional Intelligence: Advanced DBT training enhances emotional intelligence by teaching you to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions more effectively. This can lead to better decision-making and stronger relationships.

4. Improved Stress Management: By applying advanced DBT techniques, you can manage stress more effectively, reducing its negative impact on your health and well-being. This includes learning how to respond to stressors in healthier ways.

5. Greater Life Satisfaction: As you become more adept at managing your emotions, solving problems, and navigating relationships, your overall satisfaction with life improves. You feel more capable and content, contributing to a higher quality of life.

6. Enhanced Coping Strategies: Learning advanced DBT skills provides you with a wider array of coping strategies for various situations, from daily stressors to significant life changes. This diversity in coping mechanisms allows for more adaptive responses to life’s challenges.

7. Better Mental Health Outcomes: Research has shown that advanced DBT skills can lead to better mental health outcomes, including reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. This is due to the comprehensive nature of DBT in addressing underlying issues.

8. Strengthened Self-Identity: Through advanced DBT practice, you develop a clearer and stronger sense of self. This includes understanding your values, strengths, and areas for growth, leading to a more authentic and fulfilling life.

9. Community and Connection: Engaging in an advanced DBT program connects you with others who are on similar paths of self-improvement. This sense of community provides support, encouragement, and shared learning experiences.

10. Lifelong Learning and Growth: Advanced DBT skills foster a mindset of lifelong learning and personal growth. This continuous development is crucial for adapting to new challenges and opportunities throughout life.

Dialectical Living’s Advanced DBT Program

Here’s an overview of what you can expect with Dialectical Living’s DBT200 Advanced DBT group.

1. Deepening Understanding of Dialectics and Walking the Middle Path

One of the cornerstones of advanced DBT is the concept of dialectics, which teaches us to resolve inner and outer conflicts by allowing opposing realities to coexist peacefully. Through this module, you will learn advanced strategies to navigate life’s complexities with balance and flexibility, fostering a more harmonious mindset.

2. Enhanced Self-Awareness with Diary Cards and Chain Analysis

Tracking your progress and understanding your crisis moments are pivotal in preventing future setbacks. By mastering the use of diary cards and conducting thorough chain analyses, you will gain invaluable insights into your behavioral patterns and triggers, empowering you to make more informed decisions and enhance your emotional resilience.

3. In-Depth Exploration of Emotions

Understanding the characteristics and underlying drivers of emotions is crucial for managing tough behaviors and feelings. This module delves into the intricacies of various emotions, helping you to identify and address the root causes of emotional turmoil, leading to greater emotional clarity and stability.

4. Mastery of Mindfulness of Current Emotions

Learning to observe and accept your emotions without judgment or reactivity is a vital skill in DBT. This segment focuses on riding the “wave” of intense emotions as an observer, promoting a healthier relationship with your emotional experiences and reducing the impact of negative emotions on your well-being.

5. Advanced Problem-Solving Techniques

Through modules on checking the facts, opposite action, and problem-solving, you will refine your ability to challenge automatic assumptions and decide whether to act opposite to a strong urge or solve a real-world problem. These advanced techniques will equip you with practical tools to handle life’s challenges more effectively.

6. Elevated Interpersonal Skills with Mindfulness and DEARMAN

Bringing mindfulness into your relationships and practicing advanced DEARMAN techniques will enhance your interpersonal effectiveness. This module provides you with the skills to navigate complex social interactions with greater ease, fostering more meaningful and supportive relationships.

7. Profound Validation Techniques

Learning to validate the emotions of others at an advanced level involves in-depth practice with the six levels of validation. Therefore, this skill is crucial for building trust and empathy in your relationships, making you a more compassionate and understanding communicator.

8. Acceptance of Difficult Thoughts

Mindfulness of current thoughts teaches you to allow difficult thoughts to come and go without reacting to them. This advanced mindfulness practice helps in reducing the power of negative thoughts over your actions and emotions, promoting mental clarity and peace.

9. Cultivating Advanced Reality Acceptance

Embracing reality acceptance at a deeper level can paradoxically lead to radical change and letting go. This module focuses on cultivating a profound acceptance of yourself and your reality, freeing you from the constraints of resistance and opening the door to transformative growth.

10. Healing and Self-Validation

Healing from invalidating experiences and environments is crucial for emotional recovery. So, by deepening self-validation practices, you will learn to soothe and heal deep emotional wounds, fostering a stronger sense of self-worth and inner peace.

11. Addressing Addictions

Whether you struggle with substance use or other unskillful coping habits, this module offers strategies to reduce or eliminate addictive behaviors. Therefore, it’s an essential component for anyone looking to break free from the cycle of addiction and build healthier coping mechanisms.

12. Comprehensive Skills Review and Graduation

Lasly, the final session provides a complete review of the 12-week program, ensuring you leave with a refreshed and robust DBT toolbelt. Celebrate your incredible accomplishments with a graduation ceremony, marking your journey towards a more skillful and balanced life.

Get started!

Our program is designed to make learning DBT fun and interactive, providing ample opportunities for skill practice, self-reflection, and group discussion. So, join us and take the next step towards a more balanced, skillful, and fulfilling life. Renew, recharge, and revive with the Advanced DBT Group Program–sign up here!