Resources: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Skills Group

Medications alone are rarely sufficient to propel you to your best life. The scope and variety available through mental health service offerings can be confusing and appear contradictory, even for us professionals.

This is why I am passionate about helping clients understand the limitations of medication, and learn about non-medication based services that may augment your care.

To this end, I recommend Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills training to many of my clients, to address emotional regulation or interpersonal difficulties.

My colleague, Megan Quigley, LCSW, offers a virtual, weekly 24-week dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills training group that will begin on Wednesday, January 10th, 2024!

This group will be offered to adults 18+ in Oregon. It will meet Wednesday evenings from 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM PST via Zoom and will cover all of the standard DBT skills:

• Mindfulness 

• Emotional Regulation

• Distress Tolerance

• interpersonal Effectiveness

Additional requirements for this group include:
1. Clients must meet with their primary therapist once per week for the duration of the group.

2. Cost is $50 per group session (per week).

Megan offer complimentary 20-minute consultations by phone, video or in-person, so you can learn more about the group and get a feel for her style as a clinician.

Please feel free to reach out to Megan directly.

Past client responses:

"I am so glad that I chose to participate in this group! Thank you for welcoming me and for your support throughout. It’s been a helpful, meaningful, and rewarding process. I am 'observing mindfully' that I am going to miss meeting each week."

"Group with Megan has been tremendously helpful! I’ve been seeing myself move through conflicts in a smarter, less stressful way - and having less anxiety day to day. I feel like I’m becoming a functioning adult!"

Psychotherapy: Focus on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Medications alone are rarely sufficient to propel you to your best life. The scope and variety available through mental health service offerings can be confusing and appear contradictory, even for us professionals.

This is why I am passionate about helping clients understand the limitations of medication, and learn about non-medication based services that may augment your care.

To this end, I recommend Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills training to many of my clients, to address emotional regulation or interpersonal difficulties.

The core areas of focus in DBT skills training include mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

1. Mindfulness: This aspect teaches individuals to be present in the moment and develop an awareness of their thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without judgment. This skill is crucial for self-awareness and grounding, helping individuals to break free from automatic, often negative, thought patterns.

2. Distress Tolerance: DBT helps in coping with painful emotions in a healthy and non-destructive way. Distress tolerance skills are particularly beneficial for individuals who experience intense emotional responses, providing them with tools to survive crisis situations without worsening them.

3. Emotion Regulation: This involves understanding and naming emotions, and learning to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems in a person's life. Emotion regulation skills are key to reducing emotional vulnerability and increasing positive emotional experiences.

4. Interpersonal Effectiveness: DBT also focuses on improving relationships through assertiveness and interpersonal problem-solving. These skills help individuals to communicate their needs and boundaries effectively, maintain relationships, and manage conflicts.

By developing these skills, individuals can achieve greater emotional stability, improved relationships, and a better quality of life. DBT is often used to treat borderline personality disorder, but its skills are broadly applicable and can benefit anyone seeking to improve their emotional and interpersonal functioning.

My Diagnostic Approaches

I begin with the premise that patients are the experts of their experiences and emotions. They often come to me because they feel that something in their lives is amiss. What this is may feel unclear and vague, or precise and concrete. My approach is psychodynamically-driven, in that I assess not just what the patient feels they consciously need in the moment, but also the unconscious drivers that may be at play. I do this by asking many questions. The patient's approaches to these questions are often just as instructive as the answers they may provide. Patients are often not yet ready to uncover traumas buried deep within them, and may not even be aware that they exist. Nevertheless, I recognize the need to meet patients exactly where they are ready to be met.

Diagnostics are ongoing with each successive visit and are intended to provide more than what can be achieved by psychological case formulation. I also want to help the patient uncover, to the best of my ability, any biological or psychosocial underpinnings of their experiences. Biological causes of emotional distress can include chronic high levels of inflammation, thyroid disorder, low vitamin B12 levels, ongoing drug or alcohol use, obstructive sleep apnea, mutations of certain key genes, and family histories. These may be identified through interviews, lab tests, collaboration with other providers, or specialist clinical tests.

Environment plays an outsized role in a patient’s mental health, but is often overlooked or minimized. It is imperative that we examine the impact of life situations, such as a toxic work environment, an unsupportive domestic situation, a recent breakup, or a death in the family. In addition, the effects of past environments, such as childhood bullying, can linger into adulthood. And pervasive societal situations, such as microaggressions endured by BIPOC in their daily lives, can have cumulative effects.

Given the vast complexity and uniqueness of each individual, the work of a diagnostician may never be fully complete, but with time and commitment, many patients can realize positive and lasting improvements to their daily lives.

My goals for the diagnostic process are twofold: first, to continuously clarify the patient's mental health goals in time-limited and measurable ways, if possible; and second, to help the patient come up with a "curriculum" to work on in their pursuit of these mental health goals, using all available resources at the patient's disposal. The "curriculum" in the population I treat often involves medication, but that is not necessarily a given.

Coming up … My Approaches to Treatment

My Overall Approach

I strongly believe the key to being an effective and present provider is taking care of myself the way I advocate for my patients to take care of themselves.

My overall approach is anchored in the psychodynamically- and trauma-informed self-care regimen I have developed for myself over the years.  This regimen, based in mindfulness and acceptance, allows me to be open to many different diagnostic and treatment approaches. It creates a sense of gratitude for the honor of being part of a patient’s journey.