Dialectical Behavior Therapy San Antonio


For those of you who may be struggling with poor mental health, dialectical behavior therapy can help provide you with the resources to address it directly.  This treatment option can give you the opportunity to work through the complexities of whatever is on your mind, putting you back on track toward a stronger, happier, and much healthier outlook overall.


What is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)?

Dialectical behavior therapy (also known as DBT) is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy. For a dialectical behavior therapy definition, it is important to understand the primary focus of the therapy. The main focus of DBT is for people who struggle with regulating intense emotional reactions, although in recent years, DBT has expanded to help many people. Dialectical behavior therapy uses mindfulness techniques to live more presently, cope better with stress, regulate emotions, and improve relationships with the people in their lives.

What Does Dialectical Behavior Therapy Do?

Using talk therapy and mindfulness techniques, dialectical behavior therapy examples are of teaching individuals to understand and accept difficult feelings without reacting to them in extreme ways. Secondary benefits include helping you understand more about who you are as a person and why you have the reactions you do. This has the opportunity to provide a wealth of healing for individuals who never learned how to identify, control, and handle their emotions in appropriate ways.

What Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Can Help With

DBT was originally created for people who are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), DBT is now being used in a much wider arena to treat anyone who struggles with controlling and identifying overwhelming emotions. Sometimes DBT is used to help people who have not been diagnosed with a mental illness but who still have difficulty regulating their emotions and therefore have problems maintaining close interpersonal relationships. The list of mental illnesses in which DBT may help continues to grow and includes depression, ADHD, eating disorders, PTSD, and many more.

How DBT Can Help with Addiction Treatment & Recovery

Many people who struggle with addiction issues often have large emotions that they are using a substance to escape from. DBT foundations such as mindfulness and acceptance can help anyone struggling with addiction issues to understand more about why they make the choices that they do, and how to overcome those overwhelming feelings that may encourage them to make bad choices. Dialectical behavior therapy focuses on understanding and changing behaviors that directly affect how an individual reacts to their own thoughts and feelings as well as their outside world.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Techniques

Dialectical behavior therapy techniques focus on being present and aware of your actions and emotions and gaining control of them before they overtake you. This includes a huge focus on emotional regulation, which involves being able to identify overwhelming emotions and learning to take opposite actions to those emotions. Other DBT techniques include stress and distress tolerance, which help individuals learn how to handle stressful life situations that may arise, incorporating mindfulness into everyday life.

Benefits of Dialectical Behavior Therapy

The benefits of dialectical behavior therapy are widespread and will help with everyday life, not just with specific situations and mindsets. One of the biggest benefits for an individual successfully working through DBT will be improved interpersonal relationships. Strong emotions and reactions often happen around people who are not aware of how to deal with these emotions and reactions, and situations like this can easily drive away the people that we love and who care for us. Electing to undergo DBT therapy in San Antonio also has a high potential of improving the overall quality of an individual's life by helping them to be more aware of their own behaviors and how they affect others.

Success Rate of DBT Therapy

While it is difficult to put a number on how much this treatment helps individuals with emotional issues, many publications report a DBT success rate of 77%. This means that 77% of the people who underwent a program of dialectical behavior therapy reported a lessening of their symptoms and better control over their behaviors after a year of treatment. For dialectical behavior therapy treatment, San Antonio, Texas, has New Day Recovery Services.

Is DBT for Me?

Dialectical behavior therapy can benefit anyone who is struggling to maintain their behaviors and emotions throughout normal or stressful life situations. If you are prone to bouts of anger or irrational reactions to situations such as yelling, crying, or causing physical harm to yourself, your environment, or others, getting DBT in San Antonio may be a big help for you. However, it is important to know that a DBT treatment should be overseen by a licensed professional, and dialectical behavior therapy techniques should be practiced with someone who is trained in this type of therapy. Try DBT therapy at San Antonio’s New Day Recovery Services as part of your healing path.

Additional Treatment Options at New Day Recovery Services

As a center for dialectical behavior therapy treatment, Texas has a great center in New Day Recovery Services. In addition to dialectical behavior therapy, San Antonio has an extensive treatment facility that utilizes both inpatient and outpatient group therapy sessions, individual therapy sessions, and even experiential treatment services for recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and living a sober life. Offering both inpatient and outpatient rehab in San Antonio, New Day Recovery Services has helped many people work through their complications and emerge on the other side happier and healthier.

Get Started with Dialectical Behavior Therapy in San Antonio

Whether you’ve practiced DBT with a therapist before or this is your first exposure to it, this treatment can help provide significant mental health benefits to you. To learn more about how to get started at our Dialectical Behavior Center for dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapies in San Antonio, Texas, please reach out to our team of knowledgeable and compassionate mental health professionals today.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy San Antonio FAQs


  • The biggest, and arguably most difficult step in recovery is admitting to yourself that you have a problem and need help overcoming that problem. The fact that you are here and looking into information about therapy is a huge step in itself, and you should be congratulated for it! Additional steps include finding support, guidance, and continuing services that will help you along the way. New Day Recovery Services has a wonderful program that covers all of these bases.

  • A rehab center is a location specifically equipped for handling individuals who have addiction issues and are strong enough to admit that they need help and cannot break this terrible cycle on their own. These centers include the types of personnel and facilities necessary for helping individuals overcome addictions.

  • Usually, rehab centers offer both inpatient and outpatient services. Inpatient services are for people who do not have an amazing support system and may need more help managing their sobriety, and outpatient services are for those who do have an extensive external support system. In either case, a treatment plan will be created and followed for the individual each step of the way.

  • Our process for dialectical behavior therapy in San Antonio Texas consists of four main components, each of which is focused on during the course of treatment to help the patient live a better overall life. These components are:

    Mindfulness. Mindfulness is taught to help a person live and exist more in the present, understanding that there are moments in life that cannot be controlled and can only be handled in the best way possible. The future cannot be predicted and the past cannot be changed, and it is important for happiness to understand this.

    Emotion Regulation. Many individuals who have mental illnesses or who struggle through life often also struggle to regulate their emotional reactions to certain situations. This can lead to inappropriate outbursts that drive away the people in our lives who could be helping us. DBT helps an individual to understand these emotions and control the outbursts.

    Interpersonal Effectiveness. The ability to say ‘no’ when it is appropriate can be difficult for individuals for many reasons. Whether it is focusing on asserting themselves in conversation or learning to ask for what they need from different types of relationships, interpersonal effectiveness is important for maintaining healthy and happy relationships of all sorts in everyday life.

    Distress Tolerance. Life is full of unexpected situations and happenings that can throw a wrench into even our best-laid plans. Some individuals may have a more difficult time dealing with these unexpected situations than others. DBT helps teach individuals how to overcome stressful situations and handle them in more healthy and calm ways.

  • You do not have to have a mental illness to benefit from dialectical behavior therapy in San Antonio. Anyone who has difficulty regulating emotions, problems with relationships, or trouble overcoming stressful situations they have been through or anticipate going through can benefit from DBT. A licensed professional will be able to help you determine if DBT is right for you.

  • Many DBT sessions are done in a group setting. Taking part in DBT group therapy in San Antonio allows people to role-play and practice skills such as mindfulness and distress tolerance among others who understand their situations and the problems that arise and also provides a friendly and closed setting. There are workbooks to work through, homework assignments, and skills to practice that all help an individual towards healing and living a more calm and present life. While some emotions are certain to come up in DBT sessions, there is always at least one trained professional to help guide the session and control outbursts. For DBT group therapy, San Antonio’s New Day Recovery Services is here to serve you.

  • In many instances, DBT is covered by insurance companies. Check with your insurance provider to be sure.

  • While there are DBT workbooks available for purchase and there is a lot you can learn online, doing DBT by yourself should not be undertaken initially. A licensed professional will help you understand which parts of DBT will be better for you to focus on, and how specific instances in your life can tie to specific parts of dialectical behavior therapy. Also, having the objective opinion of someone outside yourself or your close circle is very important for understanding your own behaviors and healing from past traumas.

  • DBT may help in many areas outside of immediate mental issues or emotional problems. However, like with any therapy, beginning dialectical behavior therapy and discussing your issues and experiences can be difficult. It is necessary for healing to disclose personal trials each individual has gone through, and sometimes this may be done in a group setting. But it is important to understand that therapy is not a quick fix and while it will likely be uncomfortable in the beginning, the long-term results will help prevent future uncomfortable situations and provide each individual with better coping skills.

  • DBT is often set up in courses, as it is a class to learn skills just like you would take a class to learn how to garden or fix a car. A DBT course normally lasts for 6 months with specific focuses being changed throughout the class. This is why you may find that you have to wait for a certain date to begin a DBT course and can not just jump into a DBT course that is already progressing.

  • While DBT therapy in itself is not harmful, it is important to work with a licensed professional to understand if DBT is a good fit for your particular situation. People who have suffered large amounts of trauma or difficult situations may find DBT is not a great fit and may only serve to put their trauma more in the forefront of their minds.