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Building commitment to change: Lessons from DBT
Author(s) -
Gold Andrea L.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent behavior letter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7575
pISSN - 1058-1073
DOI - 10.1002/cbl.30526
Subject(s) - acceptance and commitment therapy , psychology , psychotherapist , context (archaeology) , supervisor , dialectical behavior therapy , anxiety , work (physics) , social psychology , intervention (counseling) , management , psychiatry , borderline personality disorder , mechanical engineering , paleontology , engineering , economics , biology
Every day in my work as a therapist, supervisor, and clinical team member, I seek out opportunities to assess and strengthen commitment in myself and others. Much of what I do to build commitment I learned from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT describes commitment as an intention to take specific actions (or inaction) as a clear plan toward one's goal. Here I share lessons on commitment work in psychotherapy, which I have drawn from my training in DBT, my clinical experiences treating individuals and families with severe anxiety and emotion dysregulation, and my experiences both receiving and providing supervision and consultation on interdisciplinary treatment teams. First, I frame and flesh out commitment in the broader context of DBT. Then, I describe specific commitment strategies taught and practiced in DBT.