Hi @Becstar160 I did a little bit of DBT with a psychologist, and all too late, I found his delivery of it was unexpectedly religious. I did not end up completing it because I found his approach to the religious content inappropriate, and it eventually became belittling, depressing and unethical. I can't speak to its effectiveness as a therapy, because I got worse under his 'care'. I wasn't diagnosed with BPD - I think it was just that this psych's only tool was hyper-religious DBT, and so every problem got fixed with it. I have some health issues which result in chronic pain and chronic tiredness, and this impacted on my motivation to participate in DBT.
DBT was created by Marsha M. Linehan in the 60s and 70s, coming from her own experience with being diagnosed with schitzophrenia and the treatment she recieved as a MH patient. She did an in-depth interview with the NY Times in 2011 which goes into her philosophy. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 It takes some concepts from Catholicism and Zen Buddhism and combines them with CBT.
I found that as I got into it, it had a very 'tough love' approach - every objection I made to the therapy was treated as a sign of my mental illness. I don't think this was solely due to my psychologist, either - on DBT's website, it says that (my emphasis) "Clients unintentionally positively reinforced their therapists for ineffective treatment while punishing their therapists for effective therapy. For example, the research team noticed through its review of taped sessions that therapists would "back off" pushing for change of behavior when the client's response was one of anger, emotional withdrawal, shame, or threats of self-harm. Similarly, clients would reward the therapist with interpersonal warmth or engagement if the therapist allowed them to change the topic of the session from one they did not want to discuss to one they did want to discuss."
http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
I agree that at least some of the skills seem too commonsensical - but they might be helpful for others.
I found that the concept of radical acceptance entirely too radical, it seemed like accepting abuse - which could have been due to my psych being unethical. I found the 'radical acceptance' aspects of my DBT to seem to try to force me to bear the unbearable (this is called 'distress tolerance' in DBT). My psych only defined radical acceptance when I compared radical acceptance to abuse.
This is not fuzzy bunny feel-good therapy, this is bootcamp to help deal with a valley of tears by practice, practice, practice... and I eventually felt like if I didn't make a formal complaint, someone else like me could end up seriously hurt. I only got a small way through 'intelligent people love talking about religion' DBT and that was well and truly more than enough. I would urge you to know your rights as a patient before going in.
