Since entering the field of social work, I have been exposed to many disorders, therapies, frameworks, and strategies in my studies. My worldview for much of my life was that I would never need to use any treatment or skill, because I was not "broken" or "too disadvantaged" to have acquired the necessary education to “know better”. But as my studies progressed, I realized that everyone is constantly learning and using the skills they learn to function better in everyday life. For my part, I found that the skills of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) treatment best addressed the areas that I was lacking. DBT was originally developed to focus on people suffering from borderline personality disorder (BD). As described by the National Institute of Mental Health, the criteria a person must meet to receive a diagnosis of BPD include: extreme emotional reactions, a pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, an image of self or a distorted and unstable sense of self. impulsive and dangerous behaviors, recurrent suicidal/self-harming behaviors, intense and highly changeable moods, chronic feelings of emptiness/boredom, inappropriate and intense anger, stress-related paranoid thoughts, or severe dissociative symptoms (nd). To address the needs of these complex symptoms, a four-module training group was developed, called "DBT skills", 1) mindfulness, 2) interpersonal effectiveness, 3) emotion regulation, and 4) distress tolerance (Feigenbaum , 2008). The DBT model assumes that individuals with BPD lack interpersonal skills, self-regulation, and distress tolerance, and recognizes that an individual's personal and environmental factors are influential.... middle of paper. ... .e personally. As I mentioned previously, I always had a difficult relationship with my mother. I felt like nothing I did was good enough and that the things I had accomplished were being dismissed to the point where I felt like my life no longer mattered. Why I was so obsessed with my mother's approval will be discussed in another article, but depending on these social contingencies, the child oscillates between emotional inhibition and extreme emotional reactivity. In support of these propositions, research has shown that parental punishment or minimization of emotional expression is correlated with children's propensity for frequent or intense negative emotions (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). and low social-emotional competence (e.g., Jones, Eisenberg, Fabes, & MacKinnon, 2002).