Not all therapists can work with all people...

DBT Workbook

DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition by Marsha M. Linehan PhD ABPP, 2014.

Featuring more than 225 user-friendly handouts and worksheets, this is an essential resource for clients in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills training groups or individual therapy. All of the handouts and worksheets discussed in Marsha M. Linehan’s DBT Skills Training Manual, Second Edition, are provided, together with brief introductions to each module written expressly for clients.


Books for Adult Clients

The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Miracle of Mindfulness is about how to take hold of your consciousness and keep it alive to the present reality, whether eating a tangerine, playing with your children, or washing the dishes.  

A world-renowned Zen master, Nhat Hanh weaves practical instruction with anecdotes and other stories to show how the meditative mind can be achieved at all times and how it can help us all “reveal and heal.”

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety: Breaking Free from Worry, Panic, PTSD and other Anxiety Symptoms by Alexander L. Chapman, PhD.

In The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety, you’ll learn how to use each of these skills to manage your anxiety, worry, and stress. By combining simple, straightforward instruction in the use of these skills with a variety of practical exercises, this workbook will help you overcome your anxiety and move forward in your life.

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder: Using DBT to Regain Control of Your Emotions & Your Life

Even if you’ve just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, it’s likely that you’ve been living with it for a long time. You’ve probably already developed your own ways of coping with recurring depression, the consequences of manic episodes, and the constant, uncomfortable feeling that you’re at the mercy of your emotions. Some of these methods may work; others might do more harm than good. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder will help you integrate your coping skills with a new and effective dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) plan for living well with bipolar disorder.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, & Distress Tolerance by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley.

Research shows that DBT can improve your ability to handle distress without losing control and acting destructively. In order to make use of these techniques, you need to build skills in four key areas-distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Binge Eating and Bulimia

This groundbreaking book gives clinicians a new set of tools for helping people overcome binge-eating disorder and bulimia. It presents an adaptation of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) developed expressly for this population. The treatment is unique in approaching disordered eating as a problem of emotional dysregulation. Featuring vivid case examples and 32 reproducible handouts and forms, the book shows how to put an end to binge eating and purging by teaching clients more adaptive ways to manage painful emotions. Step-by-step guidelines are provided for implementing DBT skills training in mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance, including a specially tailored skill, mindful eating. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible handouts and forms in a convenient 8 1/2″ x 11″ size.

The High Conflict Couple : A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy and Validation by Alan E. Fruzzetti, Ph.D.

The Hight Conflict Couple adapts the powerful techniques of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) into skills you can use to tame out-of-control emotions that flare up in your relationship.  You’ll discover ways to manage problems with negotiation, not conflict, and to find true acceptance and closeness with the person you love the most.

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.

ost of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the Highly Sensitive Person, it’s a way of life.  In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a psychotherapist, workshop leader and highly sensitive person herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations.

Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Put You in Control by Scott E. Spradlin, 2003.

This book develops proven dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) techniques into worksheets, exercises, and assessments that show you how to pay attention to emotions when they arise, assess blocks to controlling them, and overcome them to eliminate overpowering feelings. This workbook teaches you to reduce the impact of painful feelings and increase the effects of positive ones so that you can tolerate life’s ongoing stresses and achieve a sense of calm coexistence with your emotions.


Books for Teens

Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills for Helping You Manage Mood Swings, Control Angry Outbursts, and Get Along with Others by Sheri Van Dijk.

In this book, you’ll find new ways of managing your feelings so that you’ll be ready to handle anything life sends your way. Based in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a type of therapy designed to help people who have a hard time handling their intense emotions, this workbook helps you learn the skills you need to ride the ups and downs of life with grace and confidence.

The Self-Esteem Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help You Build Confidence and Achieve Your Goals by Lisa M. Schab LCSW.

In The Self-Esteem Workbook for Teens, you will learn to develop a healthy, realistic view of yourself that includes honest assessments of your weaknesses and strengths, and you will learn to respect yourself, faults and all. You will also learn the difference between self-esteem and being self-centered, self-absorbed, or selfish. Finally, this book will show you how to distinguish the outer appearance of confidence from the quiet, steady, inner acceptance and humility of true self-esteem.

Mindfulness for Teen Anger: A Workbook to Overcome Anger and Aggression Using MBSR and DBT Skills (Paperback) by Mark C. Purcell MEd PsyD and Jason R Murphy MA.

Using proven effective mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), Mindfulness for Teen Anger will teach you the difference between healthy and unhealthy forms of anger. Inside, you’ll learn how to make better choices, how to stop overreacting, find emotional balance, and be more aware of your thoughts and feelings in the moment. You’ll also learn skills for building positive relationships with peers, friends, and family.

Stopping the Pain: A Workbook for Teens Who Cut and Self Injure by  Lawrence Shapiro PhD.

The exercises in Stopping the Pain will help you explore why you self-injure and give you lots of ideas how you can stop. The book will help you learn new skills for dealing with issues in your life, reduce your stress, and reach out to others when you need to. Work through the book, or just check out the sections that speak to you the most. This is your own personal and private road map to regaining control of your life.


Books for Parents

Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Help Your Child Regulate Emotional Outbursts and Aggressive Behaviors by Pat Harvey ACSW LCSW-C, Jeanine Penzo LICSW.

Parenting a Child Who Has Intense Emotions is an effective guide to de-escalating your child’s emotions and helping your child express feelings in productive ways. You’ll learn strategies drawn from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), including mindfulness and validation skills, and practice them when your child’s emotions spin out of control.

Helping Teens Who Cut: Understanding and Ending Self-Injury by Michael Hollander.

In this compassionate, straightforward book, Dr. Michael Hollander, a leading authority on self-injury, spells out the facts about cutting–and what to do to make it stop.  Helping Teens Who Cut  demonstrates how to talk to your teen about cutting without making it worse, and explains exactly what to look for in a therapist or treatment program.

Drawing on decades of clinical experience as well as the latest research, Dr. Hollander provides concrete ways to help your son or daughter cope with extreme emotions without resorting to self-injury.

Helping Your Troubled Teen by Cynthia Kaplan, PhD, Blaise Aguirre, MD, Michael Rater, MD.

This book offers a comprehensive look at teens self destructive behavior and gives parents solutions for dealing with it.   Helping Your Troubled Teen instructs parents on how to identify an at-risk adolescent and discuss warning signs of injurious behavior, before the problem(s) become severe enough that a child is in crisis and/or legal actions are taken against them.

DBT Therapeutic Activity Ideas for Kids and Caregivers

Dialectical Behavior Therapy is for children who have difficulty managing their emotions and behavior.

Dysregulated children may display behaviors such as physical aggression, yelling, demanding, refusing to comply with requests, shutting down, and irritability. DBT Therapeutic Activity Ideas for Kids and Caregivers gives caregivers and therapists activities to help children learn effective strategies to cope and manage emotions, behaviors, relationships and cognitions.


Books for Family Members and Friends

I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help! How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment. 10th Anniversary Edition. by Xavier Amador, PhD.

I AM NOT SICK, I Don’t Need Help! is not just a reference for mental health practitioners or law enforcement professionals. It is a must-read guide for family members whose loved ones are battling mental illness. Read and learn as have hundreds of thousands of others…to LEAP-Listen, Empathize, Agree, and Partner-and help your patients and loved ones accept the treatment they need.

The Burden of Sympathy: How Families Cope With Mental Illness by David A. Karp.

In this vivid and thoughtful study, David Karp chronicles the experiences of the family members of the mentally ill, and how they draw “boundaries of sympathy” to avoid being engulfed by the day-to-day suffering of a loved one. Working from sixty extensive interviews.

 Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul Mason and Randi Kreger.

Stop Walking on Eggshells has already helped nearly half a million people with friends and family members suffering from BPD understand this disorder, set boundaries, and help their loved ones stop relying on dangerous BPD behaviors. This fully revised edition has been updated with the very latest BPD research and includes coping and communication skills you can use to stabilize your relationship with the BPD sufferer in your life.

Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Keep Out-of-Control Emotions from Destroying Your Relationship by Shari Manning.

If you’re struggling in a tumultuous relationship with someone with BPD. Dr. Shari Manning helps you understand why your spouse, family member, or friend has such out-of-control emotions—and how to change the way you can respond. Learn to use simple yet powerful strategies that can defuse crises, establish better boundaries, and radically transform your relationship. Empathic, hopeful, and science based, this is the first book for family and friends grounded in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).


Books for Therapists

DBT® Skills Training Manual, Second Edition by Marsha M. Linehan PhD ABPP.

From Marsha M. Linehan–the developer of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)–this comprehensive resource provides vital tools for implementing DBT skills training. The teaching notes and reproducible handouts and worksheets used for over two decades by hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been significantly revised and expanded to reflect important research and clinical advances. The book gives complete instructions for orienting individuals with a wide range of problems to DBT and teaching them mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance skills.

Doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A Practical Guide (Guides to Individualized Evidence-Based Treatment) by Kelly Koerner.

Filled with vivid clinical vignettes and step-by-step descriptions, this book demonstrates the nuts and bolts of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). DBT is expressly designed for–and shown to be effective with–clients with serious, multiple problems and a history of treatment failure. The book provides an accessible introduction to DBT while enabling therapists of any orientation to integrate elements of this evidence-based approach into their work with emotionally dysregulated clients.

Don’t Shoot the Dog – revised edition by Karen Pryor.

Karen Pryor’s clear and entertaining explanation of behavioral training methods made Don’t Shoot the Dog! a bestselling classic. Now this revised edition presents more of her insights into animal—and human—behavior.  A groundbreaking behavioral scientist and dynamic animal trainer, Karen Pryor is a powerful proponent of the principles and practical uses of positive reinforcement in teaching new behaviors. Here are the secrets of changing behavior in pets, kids—even yourself—without yelling, threats, force, punishment, guilt trips…or shooting the dog.

Phone Coaching in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Guilford DBT Practice Series) 1st Edition by Alexander L. Chapman.

This is the first comprehensive guide to phone coaching in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)–an integral part of treatment that many clinicians find challenging. What are the principles and goals of phone coaching? What limits should be set? How can a therapist manage suicide risk during a brief call? DBT expert Alexander Chapman addresses these and other critical practical questions in this accessible book. He provides guidelines for coaching core DBT distress tolerance and emotion regulation skills; coaching “dos and don’ts”; and tips for structuring each call’s beginning, middle, and end. Featuring many concrete examples, strategies, and model dialogues, the book includes a key chapter on suicide crisis calls.