Читать книгу DBT For Dummies - Gillian Galen - Страница 15

The practice of DBT relies on three central theories:

 The biosocial theory: Dr. Linehan’s biosocial theory essentially states that people who struggle in regulating their emotions do so because of an enduring interaction between that person’s biological makeup — one that makes them more emotionally sensitive, more emotionally reactive, and slower to return to their emotional baseline — and what she termed the invalidating environment.An invalidating environment is one where a child’s emotional experiences aren’t recognized as valid or tolerated by significant people in the child’s life. When this happens, and a child’s emotional experiences aren’t validated until the child has escalated emotionally and with high intensity, the child effectively learns that they have to escalate to be heard. When they get punished for expressing high emotions, the child might take their difficulties underground and try to regulate by using maladaptive behaviors such as self-injury. This, in turn, leads to even greater emotionality, as the child experiences shame and guilt. Flip to Chapter 2 for more about the biosocial theory.

 Behavioral theory: The behavioral theory seeks to explain human behavior by analyzing the antecedents of the behavior. Antecedents are the events, situations, circumstances, emotions, and thoughts that preceded the behavior — in other words, the events that were happening before the behavior occurred — and the consequences of the behavior are the actions or responses that follow the behavior. It’s in understanding the elements that are causing behaviors to manifest — and then further understanding what keeps the behaviors going — that the behavioral theory is applied in order to reduce maladaptive behaviors and increase adaptive responses.An important element to this theory is that maladaptive behaviors are maintained because a person lacks the skills for more adaptive functioning due to problems in processing emotions and thoughts, which is why there is such an emphasis on teaching helpful emotion regulation skills. We discuss regulating your emotions in Chapter 10.

 The philosophy of dialectics: Essentially, dialectical theory states that reality is the tapestry of interconnected and interwoven forces, many of which are opposing one another. It is the continuing synthesis of opposing forces, ideas, or concepts that defines dialectics. Chapter 15 has more information on dialectics.