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Your Fights Are Too Intense? These DBT Skills Will Help!

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Today, I want to delve into an amazing set of skills for anyone who struggles with intense conflict in their relationships or who has difficulty calming their own internal emotional storms. In our daily lives, emotions often behave like a volume knob, sometimes turned to deafening levels by anger, sadness, or fear. These overwhelming emotions, often stemming from early life experiences or traumatic events, can feel like a tsunami, threatening to sweep us away and make us feel powerless to do anything. Suppressing these feelings might seem the safest option, but it often leads to another problematic effect, making emotions even more overwhelming.

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Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Is a therapeutic approach that has proven to be a guide of hope for anyone struggling with the intense emotional waves that seem to keep smacking them in the face despite their best attempts at "staying calm". As a couples therapist, I have FREQUENTLY recommended DBT to my couples, and many of our other therapists at Couples Counseling ATL do the same. Let me explain why it could be a game-changer for your relationship and personal well-being.

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Personally, I wish I'd been taught DBT skills as a kid, or at least by my teen years, when the hormonal emotional intensity began as it does for most of us. DBT skills should be called "emotional skills for life". Or something like "How to Navigate the Emotional Tsunami"! It would have saved me a lot of grief, and my relationships would have probably been saved from some damage, too.

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Now that I'm mainly on (an extended!) maternity leave, and I don't see clients right now, I have really been thinking about many of these couples who need couples therapy the most but who are struggling so much that most couples therapists won't even see them because their emotional intensity and fighting can get out of control and scare a lot of couples therapists. When I attend our weekly staff meetings, the sheer number of couples in need of emotional regulation skills is overwhelming, sometimes more formal DBT skills training is even needed as a prerequisite before even starting couples therapy. For example, if the intensity of the conflict is so high that couples are not able to take direction from the couples therapist, or one individual is struggling with verbally aggressive or self-harming urges they have difficulty controlling, we often refer out to local DBT experts, and we also have a few members of our staff who have been intensively trained and can take on a small number of individuals for DBT training before they begin couples therapy (i.e. Liz Clements, LCSW, who is amazing, but I'm clearly biased). Anyways...

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Your Journey with DBT Could Begin Here

We believe that DBT is not just a therapeutic approach but a life skill. At Couples Counseling ATL, we're passionate about providing you with the tools to navigate emotional storms and emerge stronger. If you're curious about how DBT can transform your life and relationship, we invite you to reach out. Let's embark on this transformative journey together. We have DBT-trained therapists on our staff, and we also know many great DBT experts in our Atlanta community as well!

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Stick around for our next newsletter, where we will delve deeper into the four critical skills of DBT, unveiling the core of this transformative therapy. Don't miss this opportunity to empower yourself with invaluable insights and skills.

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Stephanie Cook

Stephanie Cook, LCSW, is an expert relationship counselor with 17 years of clinical experience and the first certified Gottman Couples Therapist in the state of Georgia. She has been teaching as a certified Gottman Seven Principles Program Educator for seven years and is the founder and Executive Director of Couples Counseling ATL, the only Gottman method couples therapy center in the Southeast, with 7 full-time couples therapists serving couples 7 days per week.

She has been intensively trained in every offered training in the Gottman Couples Therapy Method and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) as well as the additional Gottman Method Trainings for Couples regarding Addiction Recovery, Infidelity, Trauma/PTSD, and Domestic Violence. She has also been trained in the PREPARE-ENRICH model of premarital counseling as well as the Discernment Method of counseling couples on the brink of divorce or separation.

Stephanie lives in Atlanta with her family, including her amazing husband and their three energetic young sons. She enjoys karaoke parties with her neighborhood friends in Grant Park, watching stand-up and improvisational comedy, family bike rides on her souped-up electric radwagon, which her husband calls "her hog", dancing, and general banter and philosophizing on the porch with her husband and friends. Check out more of Stephanie's educational videos here:

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