DBT for Everyone

DBT for Everyone

Spread the love

A book review of DBT for Everyone: A Guide to the Perks, Pitfalls and Possibilities of DBT for Better Mental Health by Kate Sharman and Michelle Henderson

Stars: *****

Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2024)
Mental Health
208 pages

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.

Summary: DBT skills can be a fantastic way to approach life’s challenges. But where do you start?
This down-to-earth guide walks you through the four DBT modules, mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Each chapter explains how to practice the key skills and dives into the authors’ own experiences to explore what works, what doesn’t, and which skills work best for particular challenges. Journaling prompts help you work out how to fit the skills into your own day-to-day life, so you can make changes that work for you.

DBT works by helping you to understand difficult emotions and develop skills to regulate them in a healthy way. Whether you struggle with mental health difficulties, or just want to improve the way you handle everyday stress and challenges, this book will filter out the jargon and show you how to use DBT skills in real life.

I was very interested to read this as I am familiar with DBT, having taken it as a teen. DBT was originally a therapy for a specific set of symptoms or certain conditions but has since been recognized to be helpful for lots of people with mental health problems or those who are neurodivergent. The authors show us that DBT can be helpful for EVERYONE.

DBT has a LOT of acronyms (words that each letter stands for something.) TIPP, STOP, DEAR MAN and so much more. Each one is designed to help make it easier to remember the tools they teach.

The book is laid out in the same way for each chapter:

About This Skill
Kate’s Tips
Michelle’s Tips
Pitfalls
Benefits
Exercise

I like that not only do they teach the skill but they do it by giving tips on it’s use and including the pitfalls as well as the benefits. Most teaching books only tell you why you should do it that way, not what might make it difficult. This is helpful.

DBT teaches the skills of Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation and Interpersonal Effectiveness. You’ll find prompts for your toolbox for each of these skills.

I love that the book is from two authors with very different backgrounds. I appreciate that their tips are separated so you can see how someone with a life similar to yours uses the skills.

If you’re having trouble with wild emotions, socializing effectively, dealing with distress or your thoughts are running you ragged, this book may help.

Buy DBT for Everyone at Amazon.com and help support the blog.