DBT Skills Groups

DBT Skills Groups are intended to help individuals learn new and more effective strategies for managing their emotions. It also helps ensure that individuals practice the skills they learn in their day-to-day lives. The group covers four skills modules:

These skills teach individuals to increase their focus, develop effective strategies for surviving painful moments, gain greater control of their emotions, increase positive emotions, improve relationships, and decrease interpersonal conflict.

Unlike many psychotherapy groups, DBT Skills Groups are run more like a class or seminar than a traditional therapy group. The group meets for 90 minutes once a week. Each group begins with a brief mindfulness exercise followed by a review of homework assigned from the previous week. The second half of the group focuses on teaching new DBT skills. Each module contains several skills, and completing a full cycle of DBT takes approximately 5-6 months. New members are introduced to the group at the beginning of each module and are expected to commit to a minimum of one full cycle of DBT to obtain the full benefit of the program.

Dr. Harari will work with you during your initial session to determine if the DBT Skills Group would meet your needs and objectives. He will also determine whether you may benefit from one of the other types of skills groups listed below.

DBT Skills Group for Substance Use Disorders (DBT-SUD)

Individuals who struggle with problematic drug or alcohol use frequently struggle with symptoms that DBT was developed to address including difficulty controlling emotions, unstable sense of identity, feelings of emptiness, impulsive behaviors, and interpersonal conflicts. It can be difficult to determine whether these symptoms are the result of a person’s substance use, or whether the substance use developed as an ineffective way of managing intense emotions. Special DBT skills have been developed for individuals who struggle with substance use in addition to the other symptoms DBT was intended to treat.

The DBT-SUD group is run the same way as the traditional DBT group, though it emphasizes strategies and skills specifically designed to manage substance use in addition to teaching the standard DBT skills.

If you are interested in the DBT-SUD group, please specify this in your initial contact.

DBT Skills Group for Gay Men

Many gay men struggle with issues that DBT was designed to address including intense and hard-to-control emotions, unstable sense of self, feelings of emptiness, impulsive and risky behaviors, thoughts of suicide, and unstable relationships. Often these symptoms result from the chronic invalidation that gay men face due to negative societal, communal, and familial messages about homosexuality.

General DBT group settings may feel unsafe for some gay men or inadvertently reinforce the chronic forms of invalidation that gay men face in their day-to-day lives. Therefore, Dr. Harari offers a DBT skills group specifically for gay men. The gay men’s DBT group offers a safe space where group members can speak freely and safely about issues related to their sexual identity while being offered the structure and skills of a standard DBT group.

If you are interested in the gay men’s DBT group, please specify this in your initial contact.