Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety: Proven Techniques to Overcome Fear and Worry

Healthful Vitality | 1/20/2025 | Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety: Proven Techniques to Overcome Fear and Worry.

Anxiety is a mental condition that includes excessive fear and worry because of real or perceived threats. Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) for anxiety is a therapy strategy that helps people with anxiety identify triggers and manage their condition through learning coping mechanisms. DBT has been helpful for a lot of people who haven’t found relief from traditional treatment options.

What Is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)?

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is a type of talk therapy best suitable for people who feel emotions deeply or intensely. The therapy is based on cognitive behavioral therapy but aims to help you achieve the following:

• Identify understand and manage difficult feelings
• Learn ways to combat difficult feelings
• Gain confidence and ability to effect positive changes in life

The basic concept of understanding DBT is from the term dialectical which entails the understanding of two things that might seem opposite yet true. For instance, accepting who you are and changing who are seems like the opposite yet one can achieve both. Through DBT you learn to first accept yourself and then acquire skills to Change who you are.

Is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Good For Anxiety?

DBT was initially developed for managing borderline personality disorder. However many of its concepts and strategies have been effective in managing anxiety. The therapy has also proved to be effective in managing other mental issues.

The main characteristic of anxiety is having worrying thoughts that lead to harmful behaviors like self-harm and others. DBT focuses on helping people change their negative behavior patterns. It ensures that apart from talking people out of having anxious thoughts, one is also equipped with skills and knowledge to avoid negative behaviors.

One of the most important elements of DBT is that it teaches both cognitive and emotional skills. Most importantly DBT is good for anxiety since you will learn how to apply these skills in real-life situations to change your life.

The DBT process helps you through anxiety by ensuring that you can achieve control of your feelings. Ultimately you will successfully manage anxiety when you control your feelings. Remember the goal of DBT is understanding who you are, accepting, and then learning how to change yourself.

How Does Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Work For An Anxiety?

By now you already understand that dialectical behavioral therapy is a groundbreaking therapy for anxiety. To understand the relation between DBT and anxiety it is essential to first understand how anxiety affects a person.

 Anxiety is a normal reaction you experience in stressful situations. It includes fear and worry which can be useful to an individual. The importance of anxiety is that it alerts you of potential harm and ensures you stay alert for your protection.

 Too much anxiety is however problematic and leads to anxiety disorders. Having an anxiety disorder means that you worry excessively and have too much fear of perceived dangers to the extent of affecting your normal function.  Common symptoms of anxiety include:

• Restlessness
• Excessive worry
• Panic attacks
• Lack of sleep
• Physical symptoms like Pains and aches.

These symptoms will affect your life and reduce your quality of life. For instance, you might have excessive fear that something bad is going to happen and stop doing the things you usually do like work.

DBT works for anxiety by introducing dialectical thinking where one accepts two truths that may seem opposite. Dialectical thinking is usually a framework to help you counteract thoughts associated with anxiety.

 DBT works by helping you identify your triggers and develop coping mechanisms to manage negative and anxious thoughts. Through learning different skills you can identify triggers and deal with them to avoid anxiety. DBT is effective as people experience long-lasting impacts that significantly improve their lives.

The Four Techniques For Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

DBT is more of a skills training where people learn to cope with different emotions. The skills or the training include four basic techniques or pillars of DBT for anxiety as covered below:

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is one of the most important areas of DBT that focuses on teaching you awareness. The mindfulness technique teaches you to be present and deal with your present.

Often people with anxiety might have disturbing thoughts about past experiences and have an intense fear of the future. For instance, someone may worry that something bad that happened to them in the past will happen again or if they don’t do something now something wrong will happen in the future.

Mindfulness helps you to forget the past, stop worrying about the future, and stay grounded in the present. You will learn to stop dwelling on past traumas so you can start living in the present and develop your present.

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is about managing your Emotions. Here DBT focuses on teaching you to handle overwhelming emotions and reduce negative emotions and emotional suffering. DBT recognizes that emotions are not always bad through the dialectical thing.

Dialectical thinking will help you accept the negative emotions and learn to let them go so that they do not control you. You will learn to care for emotions by being proactive and practicing a healthy lifestyle. Things like having enough sleep and exercising are essential to control your emotions.

DBT also teaches you that instead of doing the things that will increase anxiety you should do the opposite. For instance instead of ruminating on a stressful thought you should go have fun with your friends.

Distress Tolerance

Distress tolerance comes in since the feelings associated with anxiety such as fear and worry are sometimes unbearable. Dialectical behavioral therapy teaches you to recognize when you are in crisis and then learn how to tolerate the distress.

For instance, a panic attack is usually unbearable and many people do not know how to handle it. With DBT you learn when it starts and to tolerate it. Uncertainty is usually a big problem affecting people with anxiety. Uncertainty causes individuals to have a lot of distress entailing worry and panic.

The aim of dialectical behavioral therapy is not to ignore the cause of distress but to learn to handle yourself as you go through the situation to ensure you don’t end up in an anxiety spiral. Physical interventions such as breathing, muscle relaxation, and other strategies can help you stay calm and avoid an anxiety attack.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Most people with anxiety experience a lot of issues in relationships. They struggle to keep healthy relationships since they have difficulties setting boundaries, communicating their needs, or forming friendships. Such instances make them unable to enjoy social relationships.

Interpersonal effectiveness is meant to help people with anxiety strengthen connections and form meaningful relationships. It teaches you to interact with other people. For instance, you might have difficulty saying no to people because of anxiety. The impact of that inability is that people will take advantage of you. Interpersonal effectiveness teaches you to express yourself without fear so people can understand you.

DBT Vs. CBT For Anxiety

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) was developed based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Even though both have some level of success in managing anxiety, they are different.

CBT entails focusing on how emotions thoughts and behaviors influence each other. Learning these focuses on helping people determine when their thoughts may become troublesome and lead to bad behaviors and helps them redirect their thoughts. The main aim of CBT is to change the bad ways of thinking and bad behaviors.

DBT on the other hand works on emotions, feelings, and behaviors with more emphasis on regulating them, being mindful, and accepting them. It teaches a person to accept pain and unfortunate situations and then manage their emotions and situations as they get through them. DBT helps people to accept themselves, feel safe, and learn to regulate destructive behaviors.

In DBT the people often engage in sessions to build different skills and they are taught the four pillars or strategies of DBT in groups. It can also be taught to one individual at a time. Like any other form of therapy, you will be required to schedule regular visits with the therapist to learn new skills and strategies.

While learning DBT the most important aspect is ensuring you get the knowledge and practice it often to achieve great results. For instance, if you learn mindfulness techniques then you have to practice them often for you to get the full benefits of the practice.

Is DBT Good For You?

DBT is quite effective in managing anxiety and also other mental health issues such as depression. The skills that you will learn in the sessions will help you transform your life and will also prevent other issues in the future.

If you want to consider DBT you should also be aware that many conditions respond differently to different interventions. DBT might work for one person yet not work for you. Before considering the therapy you should consult a therapist who will assess you to determine if DBT is good for you.

If dialectical behavioral therapy is good for you should consider it for its immense benefits. Everyone is looking for a long-lasting solution to challenges such as anxiety. DBT for anxiety is one of the best solutions you can consider with benefits that will help you with other issues in life too.

Related Article:

Acceptance Anxiety: The First Step to Managing Anxiety.