A friend of mine recently asked me, “What is the difference between CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy)?”
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a new form of treatment that assumes that conflict between competing (and frequently contradictory) emotions, wants, demands, and expectations make feelings intense and linger beyond their usefulness.
These competing needs and wants are called “dialectic conflicts” because we want to satisfy both sets of needs or wants, but because they conflict a satisfactory resolution is frequently not possible. DBT helps to identify areas of conflict. Another assumption of DBT is that invalidation of emotions (either by yourself or by others) increases the intensity of emotions. DBT helps you to accept emotions just as they are, and to form new strategies to deal with emotions such that either the environment or you change in ways that make your feelings less intense and more adaptive.
Finally, DBT assumes that high emotional intensity causes us to frequently avoid or escape our emotional experiences (because they are unpleasant). Such avoidance and escape increases emotional intensity over the long run. DBT offers new psychological coping skills to replace avoidance and escape of emotional experience.
In short, DBT is differentiated, both in theory and practice, from CBT, where DBT involves self-management of affect rather than cognitions.
For more information about DBT, please read my FAQ.
Therapists who wish to increase their understanding of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as it can be used in private practice settings as a therapeutic orientation to treat acute mental disorders can do so through my book, Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Private Practice, published by New Harbinger Press. The text is 266 pages with almost 300 scientific and professional references to the extant literature. This publication is the first professional book to extend DBT theory and technology beyond the diagnostic and clinical application to suicidal and borderline pathologies, and thus offers a new synthesis of research and theory that can guide patient treatment.
