This one was a new one for me. I had never heard of this kind of therapy and it had never been suggested for Sammy’s until his now former foster dad brought it up to me the other night.

Since I didn’t know anything about it, I did what I always do:

1) Research it.
2) Ask my friends about it.

Of all the people that I know who use different types of therapy for their kids, there was only one who was using this type of treatment for the child.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) is vastly different from traditional, or cognitive, therapy. From what I have read I find it quite interesting and will be doing even more research on it. The therapy is primarily used for people with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

In one of the articles that I read it says that “traditional” therapy focuses on eliminating a child’s distress. Heck, that’s the basis of attachment therapy and most therapies that I have been a part of. DBT is different in that it teaches the child how to cope with the distress rather than eliminate it. This peaked my interest because there are some kids who don’t WANT to get rid of the distress because that means it is a loss of control on their part. I’m not saying that is really the case, but it is how the kids feel. I believe Sammy is one of those.

Traditionally, EMDR has been used to eliminate or at least reduce a child’s distress or trauma over a certain event. We wanted to do this with Sammy, but have never been able to get it to work into his treatment with all the moves that he has had. One thing I have heard from some parents is that their child would not give up control enough to allow the EMDR to work.

In the Wikipedia article that I read, it talked about a theory of “mindfulness” that is common in the Buddhist community. This means that the child is aware of the choices being made and will actively work to correct them. This has been an issue for us in the entire nine years that Sammy has been with us. Many times he is not conscious of the decisions that he makes. He acts on impulse and only thinks about what he has done after he has done it.

The other two core areas for DBT is Interpersonal Effectiveness and Emotion Regulation. I will kiss the feet of anyone who is able to successfully complete this with my son. Sammy has no interpersonal effectiveness. He does not have relationships with other people because he has not been able to figure out how to make it work. As for emotion regulation, well, part of that goes along with his Bi-Polar disorder. He swings from one extreme to the other. Somewhere in between would be more than welcome in our house.

Have any of you ever used this type of therapy? What were your results with it? I really want to know more about it and would love to hear from you.

Photo credit - Sorry, I thought this was cute.