The four modules of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) can be essential parts of your treatment for addiction and recovery. A decline in mental health can often lead to mental health disorders, which can coincide and coexist with addiction. 

Many individuals seeking treatment are aware that there are various therapies that are offered in treatment. However, sifting through the information provided by programs and support persons can be a lot. It can feel impossible to know exactly what you need and how each therapy works. 

With our in-depth, comprehensive evaluation, we work with clients to determine their specific needs for treatment at Laguna Shores Recovery Center. We help you see right where you are and determine a treatment plan. When dialectical behavior therapy is a part of your treatment plan, we make sure you understand what it is and how it works so that you can make the most out of it. 

What Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy?

DBT works as a fully comprehensive approach to therapy that fully addresses the state of your mental health and the actions it may produce. This therapy can help you improve your overall health by reducing emotional suffering and damage. It can help you manage your anxiety and strategically navigate and replace certain unhealthy behaviors and emotions. 

DBT helps treat and manage many disorders. Some of the disorders it helps to treat are:

• bipolar disorder
• emotional distress
• substance use disorders 
• depression
• borderline personality disorder
• anxiety

When individuals have a co-occurring disorder, such as suffering from an addiction or a mental disorder, DBT works to treat them both simultaneously. Treating both allows you to heal internally, which determines your external (surroundings and actions) responses to life. It is an alternative problem-solving form of therapy that helps you find new ways to navigate conflict and the inevitable. 

What Are the Four Modules of DBT?

Four different modules of DBT make it work. The four modules of dialectical behavior therapy include mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation. 

The first of the four modules is mindfulness. In this module, you get to go deep and acknowledge your thoughts. Sometimes as human beings in a working world, we do not pause and take time to think through our thoughts. With all that goes on in a day you are responsible for, sometimes your mental space is the least of your responsibilities. 

Interpersonal effectiveness is the second module. In this module, DBT works to help you to improve relationships by strengthening your interpersonal skills. The isolation that can take place in experiencing mental health disorders or addiction can negatively affect your relationships.  

Distress tolerance allows you to understand better and acknowledge feelings of distress. This helps you to see distress for what it is without judgment. So in acknowledging your thoughts and how you think, you can look through clearer lenses when faced with distress.

Emotional regulation works to acknowledge and address your emotions. When mental health issues derive from or result in mismanaged or unacknowledged emotions, you can feel emotionally out of whack. So this last module helps you to regulate your emotions and healthily process them.

How the Four Modules of DBT Aid Addiction Recovery

Addiction recovery requires a sound and clear mind. When in addiction, your drug of choice is usually used to quiet your mind from all of the stress, pains, and frustrations you would otherwise feel. These four modules work in tandem to treat your addiction, encourage abstinence, and reduce any possibility of relapse.

When you are intentional in your thoughts, you have space to be mindful. Allowing your mind to have the capacity to be present offers you a level of emotional intelligence to trust yourself to build and reaffirm relationships. You will have the ability to work through your emotions properly. Through the four modules, DBT helps you navigate life from the inside out instead of numbing yourself to it. 

Maybe DBT at Laguna Shores Recovery Center Is the Path for You

Here at Laguna Shores Recovery Center, we understand how each of these modules is crucial to the success of DBT in a client’s treatment plan—most individuals suffering from addiction experience emotional and mental disarray. A huge foundational piece of recovering from addiction is putting the pieces of your thoughts and feelings together and permitting yourself to process them. 

With our dialectical behavior therapy, we walk you through your treatment process. We help you focus on yourself and address the origin of your addiction. Regardless of the road addiction may have taken you down, you can travel the road of recovery knowing that you can live a life where it is safe to feel, think, and be. Your road can begin here.

There are so many different forms of therapy options available in treatment for addiction. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is one that focuses on the mind and how the mind affects all of you. The four modules of DBT, mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation work in tandem to tackle the root of your addiction. DBT allows you to heal from past wounds that may have gone unnoticed. Sometimes things happen to us in life and we unknowingly carry them from that moment on until we are forced to face it and do the work to heal. In addiction recovery, DBT can help you do just that. Call Laguna Shores Recovery today for more information at 954-688-5806.