Dialectics in Practice: Trauma-Focused DBT Summary
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- The main areas of dialectical dilemmas are awareness, reaction, emotion, thinking, and relating.
- The main purpose of trauma-focused DBT is to help clients stabilize and self-regulate to proceed with deeper trauma work.
- DBT differs from traditional CBT with its focus on mindfulness, emotions, dialectics, openness to spirituality, appropriate therapist self-disclosure, and its emphasis on a treatment team approach with between-session support.
Materials Downloads
DBT for Trauma Online Training
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Transcript
Welcome to the tenth and last video in this module. In this final video, we will briefly review the main points from the entire module. So let’s get started.
First point, the polyvagal theory explains why trauma survivors have extreme responses of either too much or too little or both at the same time. Dialectics is all about the process of finding a middle path between two extremes.
Second point, the main polarities or dialectical dilemmas experienced by individuals with trauma histories include the following: overawareness vs underawareness, overreacting vs underreaction, overemoting vs underemoting, and overthinking vs underthinking. In relationships, trauma survivors also tend to be either too aggressive or too passive.