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Things to Know About Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (others call it Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is a treatment pioneered by Marsha Linehan, PhD, in 1991. It is a cognitive behavioral treatment which combines cognitive-behavioral theory and methods with eastern meditative principles and practices. Dialectical Behavior therapy was developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan.

Who Benefits from DBT Skills Training?

DBT can be useful for Borderline Personality Disorder, Substance Abuse, self-injury, Bulimia, and Binge Eating Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, and depression.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training

Usually, DBT includes a combination of group skills training and individual psychotherapy. There are four main types of skills that are focus in DBT.

Mindfulness techniques

Mindfulness is cornerstone in DBT. Mindfulness is an open, accepting, non-judgmental awareness. It helps individuals for accepting and tolerating the strong emotions. Therefore mindfulness considered “core” skill, because is essential to implement the other DBT skills successfully. When you’re mindful, you observe your behaviors, emotions and thoughts from outside, without judging and labeling.

The goals of teaching mindfulness skills in Dialectical Behavior Therapy are:

Fully observing without judgment
Describing without judgmental statements
Participating in the activity with fully focus

Distress Tolerance

Distress tolerance skill is an ability for accepting and tolerating painful events and emotions when, there is no way to solve the problem or get rid of the stressful situation.

Individuals who have low distress tolerance do self destructive behaviors for escaping from severe emotional pain. Self destructive behaviors destroy oneself, one’s family and causes emotional crisis for the long term. Self destructive behaviors include three categories:

1. Self harm.
2. Drug abuse.
3. Suicide.

There are four categories of distress tolerance skills in Dialectical Behavior Therapy:

1. Distraction.
2. Self-Soothing.
3. Improving the moment.
4. Focusing on the pros and cons.

Distress tolerance skills help individuals for tolerating stressful situations and managing difficult emotional states without using Self destructive behaviors.

Emotion Regulation

Individuals with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and suicidal individuals suffer from uncontrolled emotions such as depression, mania, anger and anxiety. Learning to regulate our emotions enables us to manage our emotions instead of being managed by them.

Emotion Regulation skills include three stages:

understand what you’re feeling
reduce your vulnerability
Decrease emotional suffering.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Our interactions with other people can generate stress. Stress can also lead to self destructive behaviors. On the other hand, our relationships are the effective tools for coping with stress. Interpersonal response patterns taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy include effective strategies for asking for what you want.

Meehlfoundation.org is available to help you with dealing with a bipolar spouse, living with a bipolar spouse, and bipolar relationships, understanding bipolar disorder, bipolar depression, and bipolar information, facilitating bipolar family support and bipolar disorder treatment, bringing bipolar speaking engagements and workshops to your community and providing one-on-one Life Coaching on issues relating to bipolar disorder and depression. Tell them what personally works for you in dealing with BPD!

Looking for a Snoring Solution?

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Snoring is a widespread problem that can range from merely annoying to quite dangerous to peoples health. The snorer can be at risk as the snoring interferes with the oxygen flow to the brain and often causes them to wake many times during the night disturbing their rest and making them less functional during the day. The other people in the household often suffer more as they cannot sleep with noises that can reach extremely high decibel levels; this also affects their daytime performance as lack of sleep kicks in. Are you looking to buy some sort of solution to help yours or your partners snoring problems? Maybe you have been told to check out a CPAP machine or even research surgery? Discover some even better solutions for your self and get back to living life.

First of all lets start with why you snore. Hopefully you already know this but its worth while revisiting as the only real solution to snoring is to cure the root causes. Have a look at this list of root causes and see if you can identify with two or three of them.

* Heredity
* Being middle-aged or beyond
* Being male (Sorry Men but its a fact)
* Allergies, asthma, a cold, or sinus infections
* Being overweight or out of shape
* A history of smoking
* Alcohol or medications
* Sleeping posture

All these issues are basically at the root of snoring and all affect the airways in one way or another.

Now we have had a brief look at causes, lets get into looking at the solutions. So what’s hot at the moment. From my research I can tell you that natural remedies are the buzz at the moment. I think the world has become frustrated with trying to use machinery and drugs to help alleviate snoring as most of the time these aren’t required and simply do not fix the root cause.

Take a look at alcohol for instance. By having a drink before you go to bed, a night cap if you will, you are filling your body with one of the best relaxants around. This causes the muscles in your throat to relax during sleep. Now I am sure that even the most chronic a snorer would rather choose a better drinking habit over the use of a CPAP machine. The habit change could be as simple as not drinking before going to bed or switching to lower alcohol content drinks.

So why not use a CPAP machine or Surgery? Don’t get me wrong. These things work and they can be very affective and sometimes there’s just no other choice. What I believe the world is looking at is not turning to these things as a first choice like it has for the past years. This is especially prudent when its not necessary. Most times you will find all you need is some knowledge, a little discipline and a good plan.

Lets have a look at another example. What about being a bloke? These isn’t much you can do about that is their (well apart from another topic we wont get into here). Its not that your a bloke that’s an issue its that most blokes tend to have a narrower airway which leads to being more prone to snoring. How do you deal with that without considering being tethered to a machine the rest of your natural life?

How about doing some simple exercises that singers do to overcome the exact same problem. Imaging 3 minute exercises each night and your on your way to freedom.

As you can see there are plenty of options when consider what to buy for a snoring solution. Some of the best solutions are actually the simplest and they are available now if you look around.

Vitalsleep is a quality product. It will significantly decrease your snoring at night. It has been designed with comfort in mind and is easily adjustable. You will feel more refreshed in the morning after an uninterrupted night of sleep. VitalSleep is the FDA cleared mouthpiece for snoring that can help you stop snoring at night and rest peacefully. It’s a simple and budget friendly solution. The advantages of the VitalSleep stop snoring device include: Provides a Quiet & Restful Sleep, Renews Energy, An Innovative Design to Prevent Snoring, A Fully Customizable Fit