How to Navigate Tough Times Using Dialectics

For you as a parent it may often feel like the hard parenting moments last a lifetime. Sometimes, your child’s 15-minute tantrum over having to clean up their room feels unbearable and incessant. While you know you’re doing the right thing by teaching them responsibility, you start to question your decision and ask yourself “Is this really worth it?” when your head starts to spin hearing your child complain over and over again. Well, this is where using dialectics may come in handy!

Parenting Without Judgment

Do you ever find you’re hard on yourself as a parent? Do you tend to assume the worst about yourself when the situation unfolds differently than planned? Judgments are FUEL on emotional fire. Although you need judgments in order to stay safe, negative judgments may impact your self-efficacy and how you view yourself in the parenting role. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy, acting non-judgmentally is essential to avoid mistaking your opinions or emotions as facts. Take a vacation from judgment and parent effectively by adopting a non-judgmental stance. Let’s explore how you can identify your judgments and replace them with a non-judgmental, neutral stance…

Parenting from a Dialectical Approach

It is not uncommon for parents of kids with unpredictable, frequently changing, or intense emotions to struggle with their own emotions when making parenting decisions. Parents tend to get caught in the trap of “extreme” or “black and white” parenting decisions—for example, either being too loose or too strict with rules. There are so many factors involved in making parenting decisions that it isn’t fitting to choose one extreme or the other. Parenting is all about balance—and so is DBT, or Dialectical Behavior Therapy. When you are dialectical, you are able to find balance, like the balance between acceptance and change. Interested in learning more about DBT? This is how you can adopt a dialectical approach in order to make parenting a bit easier…

The “What” Skills of Mindfulness

Mindfulness, a core practice in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, is incorporated into almost every aspect of treatment. At its simplest, mindfulness is just a conscious awareness of yourself and your surroundings. This is a simple concept to understand and a difficult practice to master. Practicing mindfulness has many health benefits, including improved emotion regulation, flexibility, and empathy, as well as decreased stress and anxiety, just to name a few. Mastering mindfulness starts with the “What” skills of DBT - Observe, Describe, and Participate…

How to Think and Act Dialectically

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a well-known and widely regarded, highly effective practice for a wide range of emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal issues. One of the first questions clients often ask is “So what does ‘dialectical’ mean? And why is it such a big part of this type of therapy?” Here are a some simple steps you can take to start thinking and acting dialectically...

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