Benefits of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Addiction in Lake Villa, IL

What is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy?

Dialectical behavioral therapy is a therapeutic technique used to address and treat difficult behaviors and psychological disorders. The principles of DBT evolved from cognitive-behavioral therapy and are especially effective for those struggling with addiction and other mental health disorders.

Attempting to force an addicted individual to change can cause them to become reactive, shut down emotionally or act out with aggression. Anger and hostility toward therapy means that a patient can’t or won’t benefit from this healing process. DBT was designed as a solution to this.

Dialectical behavior therapy focuses on accepting seemingly opposite ideas — thus the term “dialectic.” If you can allow that ideas which seem to oppose your own can both be true, you may no longer feel the need to defend your own truth.

Within our DBT program, you’ll form an alliance with your therapist to achieve the main components of this therapeutic technique:

• An open, aware and accepting state of mind
• A balance between your own needs with those of others
• Emotion regulation that allows you to experience a range of emotions while keeping perspective and behaving in a manner that aligns with your core values
• New skills and strategies to manage extreme emotions and physical or emotional pain
• The ability to experience intense feelings while still remaining rational
• Acceptance that belief systems, personal ideas and assumptions about the world that seem to oppose your own can also be true