Do you encounter resistance in your family? Do you ever feel like you are single-handedly keeping your house from falling into chaos?

For many, reality is hard to accept. Unexpected and overwhelming events like lost jobs, physical illness and financial problems can make us want to give up or refuse to acknowledge the realities of our circumstances.

In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, the ability to accept life, the reality of circumstances in which we find ourselves and the painful events that each of us must endure is taught as a skill.

These skills can be difficult to teach and learn because the ability to respond to the world as it is, is an underlying attitude towards life. These skills, taught in the Distress Tolerance Module of the skills training group, include strategies to get both our bodies and our minds into more accepting attitudes.

Below are a few exercises on acceptance:

Some people experience a narrow range of emotions. Certain situations arise and they may feel irritation or amusement. Others find themselves careening from one extreme emotion to another. These are the people that might respond to events with more intense feelings like vengefulness or jubilation. Although we all enjoy a little jubilation, the reality is that the rollercoaster from one extreme to the next can leave you exhausted and feeling out-of-control. To make matters worse, people who experience intense emotions often find themselves stuck in negative feelings and unable to get rid of them for long periods of time.

What makes some people able to manage life’s daily stresses and burdens with equanimity, while others experience an emotional rollercoaster when they hit even the slightest bump in the road? Are they simply built differently? Is it a result of a better childhood? Traumatic experiences? Our DNA?

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) often experience some of the greatest struggles with everyday obstacles. They frequently describe themselves as having problems controlling emotions, being moody, getting angry quickly and feeling like relationships are out of control. Superficial cutting, over or under eating, drinking excessively, substance abuse, using physical violence and interpersonal struggles with friends and family members are common high risk behaviors. Negative emotions and problem behaviors seem ever present, whether they want them or not.

In her book Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., explains her bio-social theory for understanding where these problematic emotions and behaviors originate. Linehan’s theory suggests that BPD is primarily a dysfunction in how our bodies regulate emotions. In other words, some people are hard-wired to be more sensitive to emotional stimuli than others. Those who are diagnosed with BPD tend to be highly sensitive and reactive to emotional events.

I’m pleased to introduce you to Dialectical Behavior Therapy Understood, a blog about DBT from Christy Matta, MA.

Christy Matta, M.A., is a trainer, consultant and freelance writer. She has worked in mental health since 1994, is intensively trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and has extensive training in Mindfulness. She is an experienced group leader and trainer in both Mindfulness and DBT Skills Groups.

She has provided clinical supervision to DBT residential programs and was a member of the senior administrative team that designed Grove Street Adolescent Residential Program, a winner of the American Psychiatric Association’s Gold Award. She functioned as The Bridge of Central Massachusetts DBT training supervisor for clinicians from the department of counseling psychology of Assumption College and the department of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

She also co-authored the article ”DBT for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities: A Program Description.” Learn more about Christy Matta here.