Trauma Processing and Final Considerations
We have now covered each of the five main skill sets in DBT: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, dialectical thinking, and interpersonal effectiveness. The main aim was to help Maria self-regulate to the point where we could engage in trauma work, the second phase of treatment.
For that phase you, as a trauma specialist, will of course adopt the trauma model in which you’re trained. But you’ll also keep doing what you did in phase one. Maria needs to keep practicing the DBT skills she’s already learned, and may need to learn new ones. Phase one skills focused on stabilization, but if new situations arise, other skills may become relevant.