5 Free DBT Worksheets
Download the free bundle of five DBT worksheets
Download free resource
Enter your email below to access this resource.
By entering your email address, you are opting-in to receive emails from SimplePractice on its various products, solutions, and/or offerings. Unsubscribe anytime.
Looking for DBT therapy worksheets? This free bundle of five DBT worksheets helps clients in building distress tolerance and emotional regulation skills.
Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a type of treatment used by mental health therapists to improve a client’s coping strategies.
This guide to DBT worksheets provides an overview of DBT, explains key DBT exercises, and provides a bundle of DBT therapy worksheets to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for repeated use with clients.
What is DBT and how can it help clients?
Dialectical behavioral therapy is a structured, evidence-based intervention used by therapists to empower clients to build resilience, coping skills, and self-awareness.
This type of therapy can be used to treat anxiety, depression, personality disorders, self-harm, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use disorders.
The benefits of DBT include:
- Enhances capacity to regulate emotions
- Strengthens interpersonal relationships through improved communication strategies
- Improves distress tolerance skills and resilience to challenging emotions and situations
- Reduces unhelpful behaviors for dealing with stress, like drinking, gambling, or acting out
- Increases motivation and quality of life
- Enhances capacity to accept situations as they are
Types of DBT exercises
There are four main components of DBT, which all involve a set of core skills and practices.
The four types of DBT skills include:
Distress tolerance
Distress tolerance skills emphasize ways to withstand stressful situations and emotions without seeking to change them.
Key distress tolerance skills and exercises include:
- ACCEPTS skill
- REST skill
- TIP skill
- Self-soothing
- IMPROVE skill
- Pros/cons
- Problem solving
- Urge surfing
- Radical acceptance
Mindfulness
Being mindful is a skill that means being present in the moment without judgment, attachment, or seeking to change our environment.
There are several ways to practice mindfulness, including meditation, mindful awareness, and DBT exercises such as the Wise Mind tool, “What” skill, and “How” skill.
Emotion regulation skills
Emotional regulation activities improve awareness of emotions while decreasing their negative effects.
DBT emotional regulation exercises include: ABC PLEASE, the STOP skill, opposite action, build mastery, cope ahead, and positive self-talk.
Interpersonal effectiveness
This component of DBT teaches individuals how to meet their needs, improve communication strategies, and enhance their relationships.
Interpersonal skill exercises in DBT include the DEAR MAN skills, boundary setting, FAST skills, GIVE skills, and assertive communication.
You’ll find some of these exercises in the DBT therapy worksheets that you can download above, and save to your EHR for future use.
5 DBT worksheets
Here’s a list of the dialectical behavior therapy worksheets included in the DBT worksheet PDF that you can download at the top of this article:
1. REST skill
The REST skill can help clients withstand overwhelming emotions by providing a structure to increase stress tolerance.
The REST acronym stands for Relax, Evaluate, Set an intention, and Take action.
2. Self-soothing skills
Self-soothing involves using the five senses to provide stress relief.
For example, look at a pleasant photograph or object, or observe the sounds of nature, like trees rustling in the wind or waves on the beach.
3. Radical acceptance
Radical acceptance means accepting things as they are without judgment or trying to change them.
The steps to radical acceptance include first noting what happened in the distressing situation, then considering any events that may have led to it. Then, reflecting on the roles that both yourself and others had in the situation. What do you have control over and what do you not have control over? Reflect on how you responded to the situation and how it affected your thoughts and feelings, and those of others.
Once you do this, consider alternative ways you could’ve responded that would’ve caused less suffering, and how this practice of radical acceptance would have affected your state of mind and the way others responded to your actions.
4. DBT ACCEPTS skill
The DBT ACCEPTS tool can help manage stress and difficult emotions by accepting present conditions as they are.
ACCEPTS stands for: Activities, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Pushing away, Thoughts, and Sensations.
5. Urge surfing worksheet
Used to overcome intense cravings, the urge surfing skill visualizes riding a wave of an impulse until it passes. Over time, the craving will weaken, strengthening a person’s ability to overcome impulses.
Download the free Urge Surfing Worksheet for the full list of steps to practice urge surfing.
These five skills are included in the downloadable bundle of DBT skill worksheets found at the top of this article.
How to use the DBT worksheets
You’ll find a link to these DBT worksheets in a downloadable DBT skills handouts document above. Therapists can use the DBT worksheets in sessions with clients to demonstrate a DBT skill, or provide them to clients to take home and practice in between sessions.
Alternatively, print the worksheets and create a DBT booklet of distress tolerance skills to leave in your office or treatment room.
How SimplePractice streamlines running your practice
SimplePractice is HIPAA-compliant practice management software with everything you need to run your practice built into the platform—from booking and scheduling to insurance and client billing.
If you’ve been considering switching to an EHR system, SimplePractice empowers you to streamline appointment bookings, reminders, and rescheduling and simplify the billing and coding process—so you get more time for the things that matter most to you.
Try SimplePractice free for 30 days. No credit card required.