Mt. Diablo Psychological Services provides Evidenced Based Therapies in Contra Costa County
DBT skills training groups meet weekly for 1.5 hours and focus on four main subject areas or modules, as described below. Four to six weekly sessions are devoted to each module.
All Groups Are Currently Virtual
Adult DBT Groups
1. When: Wednesday, 5:30 – 7:00 PM
Where: 91 Gregory Ln, Ste 19, Pleasant Hill, CA
Group Leaders: Elizabeth Rauch Leftik, Psy.D. and Caroline Bryan, AMFT/APCC
Contact: Dr. Leftik (925) 314-6354
2. When: Thursday, 4:30- 6:00 PM
Where: 171 Front Street, Suite 201; Danville, CA
Group Leaders: Beth Christensen, LMFT and Stacey Hill Lee, LMFT
Contact: Beth Christensen, LMFT (925) 699-3476
Adolescent/Multi-Family DBT Groups
1. When: Tuesday, 5:00 – 6:30 PM
Where: 171 Front Street, Suite 201, Danville, CA
Group Leaders: Beth Christensen, MFT and Caroline Bryan, AMFT/APCC
Contact: Beth Christensen, LMFT (925) 699-3476
Four Main Subject Areas
1) Mindfulness
Mindfulness teaches people to consciously pay attention to their thoughts and feelings without placing any judgments upon them. The goal is to increase awareness and attention on purpose to the present moment. Mindful awareness is the first step needed for effective change.
In the Mindfulness module, you learn to reduce suffering, increase happiness, gain control of your mind, and experience reality as it is.
2) Distress Tolerance
Distress Tolerance is divided into two segments: Crisis Survival Skills and Acceptance Skills. The Crisis Survival Skills module focuses on helping clients get through the “crisis,” or most difficult moments, as effectively as possible without engaging in behaviors that might make things worse in the long run. The Acceptance Skills module focuses on building a way of handling life that does not involve fighting against what is unchangeable like the past.
3) Emotional Regulation
The Emotion Regulation Module teaches you to examine and delineate different parts of the emotional response, to understand how changing one’s habitual response can increase effectiveness and to learn ways of decreasing emotional reactivity.
In this module, we teach skills for understanding and changing emotional responses, reducing vulnerability, problem-solving and opposite action.
4) Interpersonal Effectiveness
In the Interpersonal Effectiveness Module, you learn a set of skills for the skillful management of conflict in your life.
Techniques to improve relationships include viewing any interpersonal exchange as complex and dynamic. To effectively cope in relationships, it is best to accept principles like: 1) the behavior of others makes sense to them on some level, 2) we are all doing the best that we can given all of the life experiences and biological factors that each of us are influenced by, and 3) with the necessary skill and practice, we can generally discuss and resolve conflicts when they arise.
