Individuals with borderline personality disorder and suicidal individuals are frequently emotionally intense and labi le. They can be angry, intensely frustrated, depressed, or anxious. This suggests that these clients might benefit from help in learning to regulate their emotions. Dialectical behavior therapy skills for emotion regulation include:
- Identifying and labeling emotions
- Identifying obstacles to changing emotions
- Reducing vulnerability to emotion mind
- Increasing positive emotional events
- Increasing mindfulness to current emotions
- Taking opposite action
- Applying distress tolerance techniques
Skills within the Emotion regulation module
- Story of Emotion
- Used to understand what kind of emotion one is feeling. To use this, list the following:
- Prompting event
- Interpretation of the event
- Body sensations
- Body language
- Action urge
- Emotion name, based on previous items on list.
- PLEASE MASTER
- Having ineffective health habits can make one more vulnerable to emotion mind. This skill is used to maintain a healthy body so one is more likely to have healthy emotions. It is an acronym that stands for the following:
- PhysicaL Illness (treat): If you are sick or injured, get proper treatment for it.
- Eating (balanced): Make sure you eat a proper healthy diet, and eat in moderation.
- Avoid Mood-Altering Drugs: Do not take non-prescribed medication or illegal drugs. They are very harmful to your body, and can make your mood unpredictable.
- Sleep (balanced): Do not sleep too much or too little. 8 hours of sleep is recommended per night for the average adult.
- Exercise: Make sure you get an effective amount of exercise as this will both improve body image, and release endorphins (making you happier).
- MASTERy (build): Try to do one thing a day to help build competence and control.
- Opposite Action
- This skill is used when you have an unjustified emotion, one that doesn’t belong in the situation at hand. You use it by doing the opposite of your urges in the moment. It is a tool to bring you out of an unwanted or unjustified emotion by replacing it with the emotion that is opposite.
- Problem Solving
- This is used to solve a problem when your emotion is justified. It is used in combination with other skills.
- Letting Go of Emotional Suffering
- Observe and experience your emotion, accept it, then let it go.