Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

Day 31: Set Your Intention:

Set your intention to continue to practice DBT skills every day.  You’ve started a healthy habit that you can continue to feed and cultivate.

Write about your experience with this 31-day challenge:

• what did you get out of it?
• what is your favorite DBT skill?
• which skills do you feel you need to practice more?
• what ways will you continue to practice?
• will you continue to journal each day?
• how else will you continue on this journey you’ve started?

Setting an intention is a lot like setting a goal.  Write out how you plan to continue on this path, and refer to it whenever you need to.

Continue on your journey to create a life filled with moments of joy, meaning and love.  You’ll be able to succeed at doing things you would have never dreamed of.  You’ll create and be an integral part of healthy and sustaining relationships!

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 30: The Mindful Moment:

Being mindful allows us to slow down our thought and action process.  It helps us to put time and space between our initial thought, feeling or impulse and any subsequent action we might take.

Today, when you feel the urge to do something, take a few moments before acting.  Start by noticing the urge.  Stop, consider the short and long-term effects of doing it, and then decide if the potential result of your action is in alignment with:

• who you want to be as a person
• your integrity
• your short-term goals
• your long-term goals

e.g. if you receive an email that made you feel upset, practice the mindful moment exercise before reply.  Write down a short plan on how you will handle the intensity of the elicited emotion the next time you are faced with that situation.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 29: Re-Parent Your Inner Child:

Many people in this world have a inner child.  If you feel that your inner child needs a lot of healing, then think about ways that you can begin to validate him or her and consider ways that you can begin to give yourself those things you longed for for didn’t fully receive when you needed them.

Here are some ways that you can re-parent your inner child by honoring him or her:

1. Acknowledge and Attend to Your Needs:  If you’re hungry, eat.  If you need a rest, take a nap.
2. Allow Yourself to Play:  Consider sitting down and doing a simple, child-like activity like finger painting, or coloring.
3. Reassure your Inner Child:  The next time you’re feeling emotionally triggered, remind your inner child that you are safe now.
4. Radically Accept the Childhood that You Actually Had:  It’s important to remember that accepting the past is very different from approving of it.  Accept what has happened and there’s no way to change it. Accept that your caretakers were doing the best they could at the time. Accept that there are things now you can do to help heal the wounds, but they will take work, commitment and time.
5. Work on Forgiving those who Harmed You as a Child:  This is a challenging aspect of healing but is very important as you’re only harming yourself by not forgiving others.  This is an ongoing process that requires lots of strength, determination, compassion and willingness.  It is a lifelong process.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 28: Practice Loving Kindness:

DBT takes a lot of cues from Buddhism – especially around mindfulness practices.  This DBT skill includes a traditional Buddhist prayer.  You can either use this or use a prayer about kindness from your personal belief system.

Do something kind today for yourself and three kind things for others.  It can be smiling at someone in the grocery store, or opening the door for a mother with children, or calling someone to cheer them up.

The Buddhist Loving Kindness Prayer:

May I be at peace.
May my heart remain open.
May I realize the beauty of my own true nature.
May I be healed.

May I be a source of healing for this world.
May your heart remain open.
May you realize the beauty of your own true nature.
May you be healed.
May you be a source of healing for this world.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 27: The Electronic Break:

Take a break today from all of your electronic devices, such as your cell phone, social media, online radio, and email, etc.

See which ones you can realistically take a 12 hour break from.  You may decide not to check your email for 12 hours. During this time, you may notice a bit of anxiety in response to the absence of this method of communication.  Just notice it.  Notice that you don’t have to do anything in response.  Distract and/or self-soothe until the feeling passes.

At the end of the 12 hours, see if you were able to follow through?  With this exercise, we can notice and experience the urge to quit and not quit at all.  Exercises like these can build our confidence around our willpower and ability to follow through.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 26: Self-Love Collage

Turn on some soothing music and create your Self-Love collage.

Flip through magazines and find images that call to you.  Find images that make you smile, images that represent something you wish to have in your life and images that evoke positive memories.

Put in the center of your paper ‘Self Love’, then surround it with the other images you selected.  Decorate around the pictures and add words that inspire you.  Date it and look at it often to unwind and reflect.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 25: Half Smile

The communication between our facial expressions and our moods is a two-way street. We may experience an emotion and have a corresponding facial expression, we can also deliberately create a facial expression and send feedback to the brain that affect our moods.

Half Smile is one of the DBT skills whereby we deliberately show a genuine, semi-smile which will in turn have a positive effect on our mood. It’s just a slight, up-curling of the lips while the rest of the face relaxes.  It’s not forced or over-done.  The famous Mona Lisa portrait is a great example of the Half Smile.

The next time you are experiencing a sense of melancholy, try this to shift your mood.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 24: Maybe It’s Not All You:

Environmental factors like the company we keep, including the attitudes and behaviors of others around us and the types of places we spend our time, all affect our moods and emotions.

Think about the places where are the people with whom you tend to spend a lot of time.  Do these people and places make you feel uplifted and encouraged, or oppressed and discouraged?

When we realize that our environment and the people we spend time with can affect our moods and emotions, we can become more  conscious about the choices we make with our time.  Choose environments that are good for our emotional well-being and relationships that are healthy & encouraging.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 23: Thoughts are Just Thoughts:

Today, focus on how we are not our thoughts.  Not only that, but focus on how thoughts are just thoughts. Not all thoughts are facts.  Sometimes thoughts are just thoughts.  They come and go, and they are not who we are.

Become conscious of your thoughts are start challenging them.  Pay special attention to thoughts that are negative toward yourself and others.  Also write down what your challenge to each thought was.

Once we learn that thoughts are just thoughts, they have a lot less power over us.  Once we realize that we have a choice about how we view and respond to thoughts, we are in more control of the situation and our lives.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 22: You Are Not Your Emotions:

Emotions are transient states that we experience, and they come and go.  Sometimes, it may be hard to remember that you are not your emotions.  e.g. You may say, “I am sad”.  Are you really sadness, or are you just experiencing sadness temporarily?

The next time you experience an uncomfortable emotion, try to separate who you are from the emotion you are experiencing. Instead of “I am angry”, say to yourself “Anger is coming up within me, and it will pass”.

Remind yourself: “I am not my emotion.  I am experiencing the emotion of (…), and it will pass”. By doing so, it will become easier for you to separate yourself from that emotion and allow it to pass.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso