DBT Skills for Couples

DBT Skills for Couples provides couples with skills to more effectively cope with intense emotional patterns that commonly arise in intimate relationships. Each class begins with a mindfulness exercise, followed by each participant's report on practicing the previous week's skills with brief feedback/coaching by the group leader(s). After a short break, new skills are taught and practiced. This is a class format, not a therapy group. The focus is on becoming more skillful, rather than processing the events of the week. Participants tend to be diverse across a range of age, race, gender, therapy experience, and interpersonal styles/levels of struggle. All seek to learn, to become more skillful, and are willing to commit to actively apply the skills from each class, such as:

• Understanding Emotion in Relationships

• Mindfully Accepting Yourself & Your Partner

• How to Stop Making Things Worse

• Being More Alive Together

• Reactivating Your Relationship

• Accurate Expression via Emotion Regulation

• What and Why to Validate

• How to Validate your Partner

• Recovering from Invalidation

• Managing Problems/Negotiating Solutions

• Transforming Conflict into Closeness

DBT Skills for Couples is based on the work of Alan Fruzzetti and Marsha Linehan. The recommended "text" for the class is The High Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation by Alan Fruzzetti

Carrboro

Facilitators: John Mader, LMFT and co-leader/participant-observer. Location: Online. Meeting Time: Tuesday, 6:30-8PM. Cost: sliding scale available. Insurance Accepted: None. Contact: jmaderlmft@gmail.com; www.dbtfamilyskills.com