DBT for Life: Skills to transform the way you live is a self-help book that teaches skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Engaging and accessible, the book features full-color illustrations, graphics, and short stories illustrating how to use skills in real life.
DBT is an evidence-based therapy that is highly effective for emotionally sensitive people. DBT teaches skills in mindfulness, managing overwhelming emotions, caring for relationships, and getting through a crisis without making it worse.
Diana Partington is a licensed professional counselor specializing in DBT. She wrote her master's thesis at Vanderbilt on teaching DBT skills to people with varied learning styles, such as social, kinesthetic, or visual learners. Since then, she has taught thousands of clients and therapists how to use DBT skills. Diana worked closely with editors, illustrators, and designers to create a beautiful book. She hopes that a self-help book full of life, color, and compassion will make DBT skills more accessible to everyone who needs them.
Dr. Marsha Linehan created Dialectical Behavior Therapy as a cure for suicide. Based on copious research, this treatment is incredibly effective for anyone who struggles with overwhelming emotions. As a therapy, DBT is arduous and often difficult to access.
Diana hopes the book will provide a powerful way to connect with DBT skills.There are over a hundred skills in DBT. In DBT for Life, every chapter teaches one of the more significant skills. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction to the skill. Then a short story illustrates effective use of the skill. The stories are fictional composites based on emotionally sensitive clients, friends, family members, and the author's experience living as an emotionally sensitive person. Diana also provides a detailed explanation of the skill, ideas for practice, and plenty of supplemental material.
The book features a "choose your own adventure" style. You may read the book from cover to cover or read chapters out of order. You may choose stories based on the illustrations. Or select a chapter based on a skill you need at that moment. You can approach the book in whatever way is most effective for you.
