Skills Training Groups in TF-DBT?
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- The purpose of a TF-DBT group session is to teach specific skills and provide psychoeducation.
- Systematically cycle through the major skill sets, revisit mindfulness after every module, and revisit all other skills, as necessary.
- It’s better to have two group facilitators.
- A typical group session follows this format:
- Do brief mindfulness exercise.
- Review homework.
- Do psychoeducation regarding trauma.
- Do skills training.
- Assign homework.
- Conclude with a mindfulness exercise.
Materials Downloads
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Transcript
Welcome to the fifth video in this module. In a previous video, we were introduced to the four components of a DBT program which, as you recall, include group sessions, individual sessions, between-session support, and the consultation team. In this video, we will learn more about TF-DBT group sessions. So, let’s get started. Okay.
So As we’ve already established, the main purpose of a TF-DBT group is to provide psychoeducation. So in other words, DBT groups are mostly didactic in nature. The focus is not on providing psychotherapy or trauma processing, which are the goals of individual sessions. Rather, the main focus of a DBT group is to teach specific skills related to stabilization and self-regulation. And as we’ve already heard by now many times over, those skills include mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, dialectical thinking, and interpersonal effectiveness. Now, another important part of the psychoeducation piece is also providing psychoeducation regarding trauma and the effects of trauma, so that also gets addressed in a TF-DBT group session.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K., & DePasquale, D. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (1st ed.). New Harbinger Publications.
Now, one of the main advantages of groups, so this is an advantage that groups have that individual sessions do not have, is just think of how many opportunities there are to learn, practice, and model dialectics within a group context. In other words, learning skills from as many angles and perspectives as possible. So why is that the case? Well, just think of the wide diversity that the group members bring to a group session. So For example, group members represent a wide variety of personality styles, a wide variety of different life experiences, a wide variety of different trauma experiences, also a wide variety in coping styles.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K., & DePasquale, D. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (1st ed.). New Harbinger Publications.