DBT? Anyone tried?

DBT!  I'm losing track of all these acronyms, I thought it said ECT.

H O U N D S...embedded scratch card link embedded in this bot post.

Yes I’ve had DBT. A long time ago mind, I did the course 3 times, last time was in 2009. It was helpful, it’s primarily for borderline personality disorder, but it’s one of those things that if you put the effort in you’ll get the rewards from it, it you just go and not really engage you won’t. You really do have to practice what you learn in order for the therapy to be effective. It helped me overcome 20 years of self harm so I can vouch for its effectiveness. If you can get on the course I would definitely recommend doing it, it’s a lot different than CBT, more intense but it is worth it.

With all the skills learned, you’ll find there’s some that are more helpful than others, I guess it depends on what your main issues are. The distress tolerance section was what I found most useful, as well as the mindfulness stuff.

hope this helps 

Not tried it or even heard of it. Medication really works for me. Medication turned my life around for sure. Now I can do things I never thought I would ever be able to do. Medication doesn’t work for everyone though.

I'm currently having DBT. It does have many useful bits and I'm finding it much better for me than CBT. It is usually delivered in groups though so that is something you have to consider.

Tigernew40 said:

I’ve come across DBT which is dialectical behaviour therapy

It does look interesting:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/dialectical-behavior-therapy

One reservation I have is:

DBT incorporates many of the techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

CBT is one approach that does not typically work well for most autists unfortunately, but if you find it is effective then it has to be worth looking into further. I do note that it is an adaptation of the CBT approach as CBT has limited effectiveness for many in its native form.

From what I have read it requires a trained therapist as part of the work so this may limit its attractiveness to some (because of cost or the interaction part).

It would be great to hear from othes about their experiences with this technique from an autists perspective.

Yes I used it and it really helped when I was poorly with psychosis. I couldn't eat or sleep normally and this was the only way I learned how to relax my body in order to sleep at night. Paced breathing and paired muscle relaxation were amazing. Through practice of paired muscle relaxation, I managed to learn how to relax every muscle in my body by thinking of the word 'relax'. I also used these relaxation skills when I had my baby in 2022 and I had a really amazing and pleasurable birth due to being able to relax into the sensations, which led me to train as a birth doula :) but yes I have used dbt and found it useful 

I'd never heard of it before I'll have to and look it up now