The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Card Deck: 52 Practices to Balance Your Emotions Every Day

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Look for shame in particular as a secondary emotion. It is common to feel shame in response to the primary emotion or the behaviors you used in response to the primary emotion. For example, you may feel shame about lashing out in anger. Emotion Myths Use the Behavioral Pattern Breaking worksheet to help the client focus on tasks they expect will cause them distress. This could be based on prior experience. The client can compare expected versus actual distress scores and use their healthy adult mode to engage in positive dialogue. 4. Explore coping modes There are three maladaptive coping styles that we typically engage in (sometimes more than one at a time), often unconsciously (Young et al., 2007): During imagery, schemas and modes are activated through deeply engaging with existing emotions and the biographical memories upon which they are based. Trauma is rescripted and reimagined, meeting the needs of the badly treated child. 5. Behavioral intervention techniques

emotional regulation. (More on emotional regulation here, but essentially it’s the ability to return to baseline well-being after being pushed beyond our capacity to handle it).IMPROVE: The IMPROVE acronym is a group of skills that can help calm ourselves (or a student, child, client, or customer) when we are feeling very upset. Learn IMPORVE skills to walk through the following: GIVE: Give is a DBT skill acronym that can help us to maintain healthy relationships. Give stands for: Tried Grounding with Senses: This refers to using one’s senses (taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell) to soothe ourselves when we are upset. Early on in ST, the client must develop an understanding of their mode model and its implications for treatment (Arntz & Jacob, 2013).

Imagery can be a powerful technique for helping clients “push through their coping styles of avoidance and overcompensation to discover alternative ways of relating” (Young et al., 2007). I believe that some resources used in Mental Health treatment are unnecessarily cold, clinical, or technical. These hard-to-relate-to resources may risk pushing people away instead of inviting them to engage in both a healing relationship with their therapist and with information that could help their recovery. My work seeks to offer resources like worksheets, visuals, and handouts that bridge this gap. If you are someone who has not yet incorporated some of these things into your life, make a plan for doing so, perhaps trying just one thing at a time. Dear Man: Learning and using the Dear Man skills can help us grow our ability to communicate and function in healthy relationships. Dear Man is an acronym that stands for: Sometimes this is not the best thing to do. If you are afraid because you are in an unsafe situation, pay attention to that fear. Do not go into that unsafe situation.TIPP: The TIPP acronym is a distress tolerance skill meant to be used when emotions are overwhelming. The aspects of the DBT TIPP skill can help alleviate acute distress, like a surge of anxiety or uncontrollable tears. TIPP stands for:

The therapist provides limited parenting (within professional guidelines) to recognize, articulate, validate, and help fulfill the client’s needs. Early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) are “pervasive life patterns which influence cognitions, emotions, memories, social perceptions, and interaction and behavior patterns” (Arntz & Jacob, 2013).The therapist asks the client to carry the diary with them and complete it when a schema is triggered. Once the therapist has helped the client become familiar with their coping modes, use the Explore Coping Modes worksheet to capture when they happen, what emotional needs underlie them, and the early warning signs that hint at their onset. 5. Schema Diary It’s important to know that this skill is not about trying to suppress your emotions. You are using that angry feeling to take a different action. The result of this will be a gradual change in your emotions.

Mindfulness How Skills: The mindfulness “how” skills describe how one should be mindful: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively. Diagnostic imagery helps the client understand the origins of existing emotional problems and dysfunctional behavior patterns and thinking (Young et al., 2007). While similar to the schema flashcard, the schema diary is a little more advanced and useful later in treatment when the client is more comfortable with the terms. The Schema Diary worksheet captures:Recognizing & Naming Emotion: This refers to being aware of and able to identify emotions in the body that you may be experiencing. (Refer to my Emotion-Sensation Feeling Wheel or articles on Emotional Regulation for more information on how practicing recognizing, expressing, and naming emotions are part of mental health recovery for many people)