If someone told you about a procedure that would change your life for the better, but they said it would be uncomfortable, costly, and have only about a 5% effectiveness rate long-term, would you go for it? Given those terms, probably not! However, those terms actually describe what we call ‘dieting’ for weight loss. The […]
Category: EMMI BARNOSKI
The Freeze Response in Trauma Therapy
Trauma is defined as an “emotional response to a terrible event.” However, trauma can present in ways beyond emotions. Those who have experienced traumatic events will likely report some form of a physical, somatic, response as well. This is a survival instinct! It has proven to be extremely helpful for individuals to understand the neuroscience […]
Self-Respect Effectiveness to Detach with Love
DBT Skill of the Month #4 Luckily for some, February is the shortest month of the year, as, unfortunately, Valentine’s Day is sometimes viewed as The-Day-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. Love is wonderful and, in the spirit of being dialectical, love hurts. And this includes all kinds of love-romantic, familial and friendly. Sometimes, when love is especially challenging, we […]
Radical Acceptance
Holiday time often equals stressful times, and that’s when DBT skills come in handy! Radical Acceptance is a Distress Tolerance skill that shows you how to manage situations that are undesirable and completely out of your control. To radically accept means to utterly and completely accept a situation as reality and not try to change […]
Mindfulness
Effectiveness is a Mindfulness skill that shows you how to practice being mindful. Mindfulness is the act of paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, without judgment. Mindfulness is helpful because it teaches you to control your mind. And that is desirable because often we unwittingly allow our mind to control our actions. Feeling […]
Opposite Action
Opposite Action is an Emotion Regulation skill for when you have an unjustified emotion that is triggering you to act in a way that doesn’t help you. All emotions are valid in that they are real and you experience them as physical sensations, thoughts and action urge. Some, however, are unjustified in that their extreme […]