DBT: Beyond the CBT Foundations
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- We attribute our emotions and behaviors to specific circumstances.
- CBT claims that our emotions and behaviors result from our thoughts or beliefs.
- The main goal of CBT is to correct thinking errors.
- There are limitations to CBT for trauma work.
- While we can use our thoughts to mediate our emotions, our emotions also strongly mediate our thoughts.
- Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors affect each other at all times.
- While CBT focuses mainly on changing thoughts and behaviors, DBT has many more points of intervention.
- CBT encourages an adversarial relationship with thoughts, whereas TF-DBT recommends becoming more aware and accepting of them.
Materials Downloads
DBT for Trauma Online Training
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Transcript
Greetings, and welcome to the second video in this series on dialectical thinking. In the previous video, we explored both the philosophical assumptions as well as the clinical applications of the concept of dialectics. In this video, we will discuss the limitations of the original CBT way of viewing our thoughts, especially as it relates to trauma work. So let's get started.
Okay. So let's talk a little bit about, how does original CBT, so in other words, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, what, what does original CBT say and teach about our thoughts? Well, original CBT has this basic premise that we tend to blame our emotions and our behaviors on specific circumstances. Well, CBT basically says that, no, our emotions and behaviors do not result directly from specific situations but rather from our thoughts or beliefs about those situations. So that’s why CBT has this specific sequence of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. So, in other words, our thoughts influence how we feel, and from there, our emotions influence our behaviors.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. New Harbinger Publications.
So therefore, when our thoughts are out of whack, our emotions become out of whack. And therefore, ultimately, our behaviors also become out of whack. Therefore, the main goal of CBT is to identify and correct what are called thinking errors or cognitive distortions. So CBT does not have a concept of feeling errors or behavioral errors but rather thinking errors. The idea is, let’s nip this in the bud. If if, if how we think is causing all these other issues, then let’s figure out what’s going wrong in our thinking and let’s correct our thinking. And from there, our emotions will fall in line, and so will our behaviors.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. New Harbinger Publications.