An Online Course for Clinical Professionals
DBT Made Simple by Sheri Van Dijk
Foundational Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Help Your Clients Manage Emotion Dysregulation and Cultivate Lasting Well-Being
Watch a free video from this empowering new online course taught by DBT expert Sheri Van Dijk, MSW—opening for enrollment soon!
12 CE hrs.
Integrate Powerful DBT Skills
into Any Practice
In our new online course, DBT Made Simple by Sheri Van Dijk, you’ll learn powerful dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills and strategies and how to teach them to your clients.
While most DBT resources focus only on borderline personality disorder (BPD), psychotherapist and DBT expert Sheri Van Dijk teaches you how to use DBT across a broad range of disorders and problems of daily living.
If you’re addressing crisis after crisis with your clients and they struggle to engage in meaningful change due to anger, anxiety, sadness, and other emotion dysregulation, then this course is for you.
You’ll begin with the foundations of the DBT model and an overview of the underlying theories, including biosocial theory, behavior theory, and dialectics—everything you need to teach DBT skills effectively.
You’ll also learn communication styles, validation techniques, and dialectical strategies you can use to promote therapeutic change.
Then you’ll gain a clear understanding of the four sets of DBT skills and how to teach them to clients, including:
- Core mindfulness skills to help clients focus on the present moment, get to know themselves, improve memory and concentration, promote relaxation, and increase awareness of pleasant experiences.
- Distress tolerance skills to help clients weather a crisis without making it worse by turning to problematic behaviors, such as substance use or self-harm, and accept reality as it is rather than fighting it, which reduces painful emotions and suffering.
- Emotion regulation skills to help clients become more aware of their emotions, understand why they need them, and manage them more effectively.
- Interpersonal effectiveness skills to help clients improve communication, increase assertiveness, get their needs met, set limits, improve self-respect, and maintain healthy relationships.
This validating and compassionate approach can be applied in any setting, from private practice to full DBT programs, and can be integrated into any other therapeutic modality.
With an emphasis on understanding DBT skills and how to teach them to clients, you’ll come away with an extensive toolkit you can put into practice immediately to help your clients regulate their emotions, embrace change, and build a life they never thought possible.
Click below to watch a free video lesson from the course and be the first to know when the course opens!
In this video, you’ll learn about the powerful distress tolerance skill radical acceptance, including:
- What radical acceptance really means
- How fighting reality leads to suffering
- How radical acceptance helps manage emotional pain
- An exercise to help clients understand radical acceptance
Once you have powerful DBT skills in your toolkit, you’ll be well equipped to help your clients move beyond emotion dysregulation and make positive changes in their lives.
A Personal Note from Sheri Van Dijk
I was introduced to DBT at the beginning of my career, and it immediately resonated with me.
It wasn’t long before I realized I wanted to share DBT skills with not only my clients, but also all the clinicians out there who get stuck while using traditional CBT and other approaches with their clients.
But why do they get stuck?
As DBT developer Marsha Linehan discovered, the unrelenting focus on change in traditional CBT tends to be invalidating and can harm the therapeutic relationship for clients struggling with emotion dysregulation.
By validating a client’s experience and addressing emotion dysregulation, DBT prevents these roadblocks and helps the client open up to the change processes that can make a profound and lasting difference in their lives.
And because emotion dysregulation plays a role in most DSM disorders, including bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, and more, as well as problems of living such as anger, shame, low self-esteem, and relationship issues, DBT is useful and effective for a broad range of disorders and problems beyond just BPD.
In addition, you can add DBT to your practice no matter your current therapeutic approach—it will simply enhance the work you're already doing.
In my new course, I provide just enough theory to give you a firm foundation and focus primarily on explaining DBT skills and strategies and how to teach them to clients, so you come away with practical skills you can put into action right away.
Join me and learn how to use DBT to help your clients balance their emotions, open up to meaningful change, and build a life worth living more fulfilling lives.