DBT Helps Teens Prevent Crisis

This year is particularly hard for teens and emotions are often running high. I’m sure many parents have experienced situations similar to this…

Your teen comes home from school, is stressed, overwhelmed, and their emotions are high. 

Your teen is almost bursting into tears as they tell you (or don’t tell you) about their day. The next thing you know, before you can even respond, they shut down, burst into tears, and run off into their rooms. 

They hide in their room for the rest of the night, avoiding dealing with whatever situation was bothering them. 

Is this a crisis or an everyday situation?

In DBT group, we teach teens distress tolerance skills. During this module of DBT teens learn the difference between crisis situations and everyday life stressors.

Teens typically define crisis as experiencing intense emotions that overwhelm them. 

In group, we help them identify everyday life stressors such as talking to a new person or forgetting your homework and understand the distinction between stressful situations and crises.

We help teens learn ways to skillfully manage their emotions when they experience inevitable stress or pain.

The distress tolerance module has two main skill sets: crisis survival skills and reality acceptance skills.

Crisis survival skills are all about using skills to get through the moment without making things worse.This is often about distracting yourself in the moment in order to get through the situation.

Some examples include:

• Watching a youtube video

• Going for a walk

• Listening to music

• Drawing

These are just examples to name a few. The idea is to distract your teen so the situation doesn’t become more intense. 

Practicing distraction skills can also help teens avoid making impulsive decisions which they often regret later.

The second part of distress tolerance is: reality acceptance skills.

These skills help your teen accept the things we cannot change. Not all problems have a solution. Sometimes we just have to accept life on life’s terms. When we accept painful situations, we can minimize suffering and better solve problems.

Our teens may experience this often. A loss of a pet or relative, not making a sports team, attempting to find a new friend group, etc. These difficult situations are painful and more long-term challenges that are often out of their control.

Reality can be hard for our teens to accept. But with your support and DBT skills teens can learn to practice acceptance and minimize their suffering. 

As the holidays are nearing and stress can be increasing, helping your teen learn and practice distress tolerance skills may be an essential skill to getting through the next couple of months. 

If you have a teen who is feeling overwhelmed and want to learn more about how DBT skills can help them contact us today!