Emotional Pest Control With DBT

Greetings, and welcome to the sixth video in this module on emotion regulation. Let’s continue our garden analogy. In a real garden, we need to plant the right seeds, do some weeding, and make sure we have the correct soil. However, even if we’re doing all of this, the garden will be destroyed if we do not protect it from predators.

That’s why we also need to do some pest control. The same concept applies to our garden of emotions. In this case, pest control refers to teaching our clients to become more effective problem solvers. So let's get busy. Okay. So Unresolved problems are like pests or predators which attack the stability and vitality of our emotions.

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.

In this video, we will learn 10 basic steps to help our clients become better problem solvers. So the first step is to simply define the problem, so just one problem at a time, not all 500. And once you’ve identified the specific problem that your client would like to address, the second step is to brainstorm possible solutions. And I like to abbreviate brainstorm as BS. So when I’m working with a client, I tell them, you know what, this is just BS anyway so let’s BS as many possible solutions as possible. It doesn't matter what we come up with.

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.