Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based therapy that balances acceptance and change. DBT helps individuals to examine problem behaviors. Then, work to develop new more effective skills to manage painful emotions and decrease relationship conflicts. DBT specifically focuses on teaching individuals skills in the four key areas of mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance, leading to increased healthy coping.

Bowen family systems theory is a theory of human behavior that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems thinking to describe the unit’s complex interactions. It is the nature of a family that its members are intensely connected emotionally. Often people feel distant or disconnected from their families, but this is more feeling than fact. Families so profoundly affect their members’ thoughts, feelings, and actions that it often seems as if people are living under the same “emotional skin.” People solicit each other’s attention, approval, and support, and they react to each other’s needs, expectations, and upsets. This connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members interdependent. A change in one person’s functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. Families differ somewhat in their degree of interdependence, but it is always present to some degree. Credit: Bowen Center