DBT Emotional Regulation Worksheets
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Looking for DBT emotional regulation worksheets? Keep reading to learn how DBT emotional regulation skills can help clients and download a free emotional regulation worksheets PDF.
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is an effective type of treatment to support clients in overcoming emotional dysregulation by strengthening distress tolerance skills and interpersonal effectiveness.
This article describes how DBT emotional regulation worksheets can help both adults and children with emotional regulation. Additionally, you can download a free emotional regulation worksheet PDF to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for use in your practice.
What are DBT emotion regulation skills?
DBT is a type of psychotherapy used to treat mental health conditions that feature emotional dysregulation, such as borderline personality disorder, substance use disorder, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression.
Emotional dysregulation might look like:
- Strong reactions to certain situations
- Conflict in relationships
- Seeking validation
- Harmful behaviors, like self-injury, eating disorders, dissociation, alcohol or drug misuse, and impulsive behaviors
The core tenets of DBT are intended to help improve the understanding and regulation of emotions through four skills:
Mindfulness
By enhancing a person’s ability to be present with their emotions, bodily sensations, and environment, the DBT mindfulness skill helps to foster mindful decision-making and observing emotions with curiosity.
Emotional regulation
Through psychoeducation about emotions and problem solving techniques, this skill helps individuals gain perspective, create more adaptive behaviors, and reduce their emotional vulnerability.
The main focus of emotional regulation is to empower individuals to gain a fresh perspective on their emotions, learn to better tolerate them, and to remind clients it’s their choice how they respond to their emotions.
Interpersonal effectiveness
The interpersonal effectiveness skill is taught through assertive communication strategies and conflict resolution skills.
Distress tolerance
Distress tolerance helps clients learn how to survive crises through radical acceptance, self-soothing behaviors, and adaptive distraction.
Types of DBT emotional regulation activities
While all parts of DBT focus on emotional regulation, there are specific skills—illustrated through the following DBT emotional regulation worksheets—that can foster more adaptive coping.
Here are a few types of DBT emotional regulation worksheets you can share with clients:
STOP skill
The STOP tool is an acronym for:
- Stop: When you feel intense emotions, stop and pause to prevent a reaction.
- Take a step back: Take time to take a breath and figure out the situation.
- Observe: Once you feel calm, observe your thoughts, check the facts, and ensure you don’t jump to conclusions or overreact to the situation.
- Proceed mindfully: Consider possible outcomes from a calm and mindful place.
Opposite action
This skill encourages clients to choose an opposite response to one that they’ve come to rely on.
For example, if a client feels depressed, the opposite action would be to move their body and socialize.
When feeling anger, the opposite action is to consider the situation from another perspective and find ways to emphasize or show compassion.
Ride the wave
While technically a distress tolerance skill, this skill teaches clients to ride waves of intense emotions.
Like urge surfing, riding the wave means acknowledging the emotion and practicing mindful observation while focusing on the breath. Where is the emotion felt in the body and how would your client describe it?
After 10 to 15 minutes, the feeling or intensity of the emotion should pass.
Check the facts
In this activity, the focus is on asking questions to fact-check the thoughts around an emotion.
For example, prompts for clients may include:
- Name the emotion
- What preceded the emotion?
- How is the emotion experienced in the body?
- What assumptions are being made about the emotion and the event leading up to the emotion?
- Is there a real threat?
- What are some other possible explanations?
- How can I respond mindfully, or find another outcome to this situation?
- Does the intensity of the emotion fit the facts?
PLEASE skill
This tool emphasizes healthy habits to improve emotional regulation.
The acronym stands for:
- PL: Attend to PhysicaL illness
- E: Eat healthy and nutritious food
- A: Avoid substances
- S: Get enough Sleep
- E: Exercise
Cope ahead
The cope ahead skill emphasizes being prepared for events that may cause difficult emotions by:
- Describing the situation and checking the facts
- Equipping yourself with problem-solving skills
- Imagining the situation
- Rehearsing the situation and your coping skills in action
- Relaxing after the practice
How DBT techniques for emotional regulation can help clients
The activities above can be used as emotional regulation worksheets for adults that may be feeling stressed about a job interview, conflict at home, or a difficult family situation.
You can also adapt some of the activities as emotional regulation worksheets for kids to help them cope more effectively with the stressors related to school and social dynamics.
If you are working with a teen who has anxiety, the check the facts tool could help them understand what they are fearful of in order to create coping strategies to quell their anxiety.
How to use the DBT emotional regulation worksheets
Download the free emotional regulation worksheet PDF to use with clients of all ages.
You can either print the emotional regulation worksheet PDF to use in session, save it to your electronic health record (EHR) to use as a whiteboard activity during virtual therapy, or give them to your clients to take home to practice the skill.
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