Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Book Recommendations

[digger]

I've seen a lot of people talking about DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) and books/workbooks they are using. Can anyone give me some recommendations of specific books to look at please?

 

[Hashi]

Hi digger,

I think the one most people have is:

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

It's a good introductory book, except I found it not very good on radical acceptance (one of the four skills).

I also have The Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder by Marsha Linehan (you may know that she was the creator of DBT and it was originally for BPD but now used more widely). However, that's written for therapists and not very easy to read or use.

I'd be interested to know if people can recommend any other books. Really, I'd like something in between these two - a bit more than the very basic skills, but not actually therapist-level.

There's a good website www.dbtselfhelp.com but I think a lot of it's currently unavailable because of a rewrite.

 

[Leah123]

I also use the DBT workbook Hashi mentioned, purchased here: Dead Link Removed and find it very helpful, and cheap. :)

 

[Abstract]

Same as the ones the others mention here. With the addition of Dead Link Removed. You may be past getting much out of this one. It helped me enormously when I was still attempting to connect to my emotions and deal with them healthily.

I also have this one: Dead Link Removed. Not sure why but I couldn't engage with it very well. Maybe because I had already done a lot of work on this.

I have another that is aimed at eating disorders and I have found the DBT self help site Hashi mentioned helpful.

 

[Hashi]

@digger, you may know that mindfulness is fundamental to DBT so I hope you don't think this is going off topic to talk about more general mindfulness books?

Dead Link Removed way through depression.

I didn't get on with this book either - could hardly browse through it. I don't like Jon Kabat-Zinn's style in particular, I find it far more off-putting than helpful. I think it's hard for me to relate culturally on two counts - I find it both very North American and at the same time a particular sort of Buddhist approach. Maybe "North American Buddhist"? Other people might not see it like this, and whatever they see it as it might suit them very well, but it doesn't suit me at all.

Please know I see nothing wrong in being North American, it's just that I'm not, so often I can't relate to things that seem to me to be very much of that culture. I'm also aware that if I was North American I would probably be saying something much more specific, like it's very Californian or something, but I don't know the country/culture well enough to pin it down.

I'm British by the way, but I'm also influenced by having lived in South East Asia and knowing a bit about Buddhism and other principles as practised there, in the context of those cultures. I just don't get on with a certain way of presenting mindfulness in the West and what I've come across of Jon Kabat Zinn's work is it.

I do like the following book for learning/practising mindfulness.

Dead Link Removed

I realise many people may feel the complete opposite about both books. It's just my personal reaction.

 

[Abstract]

Funny you say that @Hashi. It was a long time ago now when I tried it and I have sometimes thought I need to give it another bash as I saw quite a lot of others finding it helpful. I managed to read maybe a chapter all in all at the most so usually feel bad for critiquing it. It's very possible it may be the same things at play that put me off. Another book I could not do which is off topic is Townsends book on Boundaries. https://www.myptsd.com/threads/dialectical-behaviour-therapy-book-recommendations.39684/#post-645154 It annoyed me so much I couldn't read it at all.

 

[Abstract]

Anyone have any books they would recommend which specifically are about Radical Acceptance? Hope @digger1 doesn't mind me asking as it is such a helpful topic and part of DBT. Radical Acceptance is the best concept ever digger.