With 25 years of experience as a psychologist, Dr. Lisa Galper provides independent care and also works at Scottsdale Weight Loss Center as a clinical psychologist. Dr. Lisa S. Galper is an expert in dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT, and she often uses this approach to help patients take control of their emotions.
Developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan and colleagues in the late 1980s, DBT is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy focused on helping people who exhibit self-destructive habits or struggle with emotional regulation. DBT incorporates the process of dialectics in psychological treatment, assisting patients to understand that, although their actions make sense within their context, some of them do not lead to the best approach for solving the initial problem.
Some common DBT strategies recommended by psychotherapists to their patients include developing mindfulness skills, distress tolerance skills, and emotion regulation. Mindfulness enables patients to focus on what is happening inside them and using their senses to understand what is happening around them without judgment. Distress tolerance skills, on the other hand, help with acceptance and managing intense emotions without self-harm. Another DBT skill is emotion regulation, which, when learned, helps the patient identify, name, and even change the nature of powerful emotions, consequently reducing their emotional charge.
