The following is adapted from Marsha Linehan's DBT Skills Training Manual:
1. All human beings are loveable. By virtue of inclusion in the human race, everyone is loved or loveable by someone.
2. People are doing the best they can at any given moment.
a. People are always doing the best they can to try to manage emotions, solve problems, and otherwise live life.
b. One’s best differs over time.
c. No one wants/tries to make their life worse, even when problematic behaviors do so.
d. Therapy can enhance your maximum potential.
3. You want to improve.
a. All people want to improve their lives and be happy.
b. Difficulty with improvement is probably a result of:
i. missing skills (which can be learned)
ii. faulty beliefs (which can be challenged [check the facts])
iii. uncomfortable emotions (which can be faced [opposite action])
iv. environmental factors (which can be changed or avoided).
c. In DBT, we attempt to treat these problems rather than assume someone “just doesn’t want to get better”.
4. You must learn new coping responses in therapy and implement them in your everyday life.
a. Wanting to get better is not enough. You must actively participate in learning new behaviors, even if you are skeptical or fearful of failing.
b. Individual therapy helps you generalize the skills you learn in group to real-life situations.
c. You must learn how to cope effectively even in the face of intense emotion – not just during times of emotional equilibrium.
5. You cannot fail DBT.
a. If you participate actively in DBT and do not improve, then the treatment failed. Perhaps it was not implemented effectively or was not the best treatment for you. The point is, there are factors beyond just you.
b. No treatment works 100% of the time.
6. You may not have caused all of your problems, but you may have to address them anyway.
a. When faced with a problem, you really only have four options:
i. fix it [problem-solve]
ii. change your thoughts about it so you feel better about it [check the facts]
iii. accept it [radical acceptance]
iv. or make it worse/stay miserable [not a DBT skill…]
b. Waiting for others to fix a problem for you is generally not effective. Often more effective is to change one’s own responses or environment.
c. Therapists are effective when they take care for you, but not of you. Their primary role is to coach you on how to use skills to solve your problems, rather than to intervene on your behalf. No one can cure you, save you, or simply take away your pain.
7. Your current ‘best’ may need to be better. You may need to learn how to try harder, cope smarter, and be more motivated to change. While we assume the best about you, your best might need to be improved so that you can reach your goals, unless progress is already steady.
8. The lives of suicidal people are unsustainable or unbearable as currently being lived.
a. Self-destructive behaviors are survival strategies; people utilize them when they have no more effective ways to cope with suffering.
b. DBT can help you create a life worth living, if you do not already experience it as so.
9. All behaviors (actions, thoughts, emotions) are caused.
a. There is always a cause or set of causes for our actions, thoughts, and emotions, even when they operate outside of our awareness.
b. All emotions are ‘valid for the person’, meaning they would make total sense to us if we knew enough about the person’s history, interpretations, etc.
c. Some emotions are not justified (do not fit the facts) and/or are ineffective to express.
10. Figuring out and changing the causes of behavior work better than judging and blaming.
a. While judging and blaming are often easier and more gratifying, if we want to create change in the world and in ourselves, we must identify and change the chains of events that cause unwanted behaviors and outcomes.
b. Causes are not always identifiable.
c. The effects of behaviors are not necessarily intended. Just because someone “gets attention” for a behavior, he or she is not necessarily seeking it; just because an addict relapses does not mean he or she “doesn’t want recovery enough”.
11. Pain plus non-acceptance tends to generate more pain.
a. Pain cannot be avoided and is a part of life.
b. We can reduce our suffering by living life on life’s terms and letting go of fighting realities that cannot be changed (right now).
c. Life can be worth living even when it contains pain.
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