How DBT Skills will Help your Teen

How will you know if Dialectical Behavior Therapy is right for your teen? DBT teaches your teen skills that will help with acceptance and change. The main goals of DBT skills therapy are safety, learning useful coping skills, and creating a life worth living. In addition, DBT helps your teen become mindful about their emotions, develop healthy relationships, and find balance in their life.

Consider these three reasons why DBT will help your teen:

1. DBT skills will help them to prioritize safety, learning useful coping skills, and creating a life worth living.
They help people learn more about who they are and their emotions, how to regulate and tolerate them, and how to develop and maintain successful relationships. As a teen, big emotions infiltrate experiences and much of one’s understanding of themselves is impacted by their peer relationships. DBT skills will help them navigate their teen years most effectively!

2. DBT is packed with concrete, identifiable skills to fill your teen’s toolbox!
Oftentimes, teens will seek out external forms of coping. They may cope through food, drugs, alcohol, self harm, or by means of another individual. DBT helps teens develop internal coping mechanisms to regulate their emotions independently and in a healthier way. Learning these coping skills and being aware of how to best use them can prepare your teen for any stressful, emotionally-charged situation.

3. DBT skills help teens deal with powerful emotions.
Did you know your teen’s brain is not fully developed until the age of twenty five? Because of this, the teenage brain looks much differently than that of the fully grown adult. It is in the nature of an adolescent to have an increased intensity of feelings with limited inhibition on acting on these feelings. During this critical period of brain development, DBT is incredibly helpful for teens better manage the intense emotions that accompany this stage of life.

DBT skills are useful at any life stage, especially during the complicated teen years. By equipping your teen with these skills, they will be best prepared to handle emotionally charged situations—both now and for the rest of their life.