DBT worksheets and resources
dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT)
DBT brings acceptance and change together: recognising an experience as it is while considering a different response. Its skills include mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. These offer ways to notice what is happening, stay with difficult moments, understand emotions and communicate needs. The therapist and client can consider which skills fit the situation.
13 resources. Open a resource to preview it and see how to use it.
All DBT resources
Showing 13 of 13 resources
Personality & Schema Work
Chain Analysis Worksheet
Trace a problem behaviour back through the chain of vulnerability factors, events, thoughts, emotions, and actions that led to it — then identify intervention points.
Personality & Schema Work
RO-DBT Values, Goals and Social Connection
An RO-DBT worksheet for people whose difficulties come from maladaptive overcontrol (rigid, perfectionistic, risk-averse, distant) rather than undercontrol. It clarifies values and valued directions, sets goals centred on signalling openness and deepening social connection, and builds practices of receptivity, self-enquiry, and willingness to tolerate uncertainty and feared identities. Grounded in Thomas Lynch's social-signalling deficit hypothesis: overcontrol inhibits open emotional expression, which blocks the social connectedness people need to thrive.
General CBT Skills
Emotion Regulation Skills
A practical CBT skills worksheet for working with strong emotions, drawing on DBT-style strategies. It follows three steps - identify the emotion, understand what is driving it, and choose a skill to help it settle - so that you can respond to difficult feelings on purpose rather than being swept along by them.
General CBT Skills
Willingness and Acceptance Practice
A DBT and ACT informed worksheet for practising willingness (rather than willfulness) and acceptance. It clarifies that acceptance is not approval, resignation, or giving up; helps you notice what you are currently struggling against; guides acceptance of difficult thoughts, feelings and sensations through turning the mind, willing hands, and letting the wave rise and fall; and links acceptance to your values so that allowing discomfort is purposeful, in the service of what matters, rather than passive.
Psychoeducation
STOPP: making space to choose a response
Practise STOPP with a manageable situation: pause, breathe, notice your reaction, consider another view and choose an action that serves what matters to you.
Psychoeducation
TIPP: responding to intense distress through the body
Explore four TIPP options for moments when distress makes thinking difficult. Choose safe ways to work with temperature, movement, breathing and muscle tension.
Psychoeducation
ACCEPTS: choosing a temporary distraction
Plan safe distractions using ACCEPTS when distress is strong and the problem needs to wait. Choose an activity, then review what helped you get through the moment.
Psychoeducation
Self-Soothe With Your Five Senses
A gentle DBT skill for comforting yourself kindly when you are distressed, using your five senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch - plus soothing movement. Build your own self-soothe kit so comfort is ready when you need it.
Psychoeducation
IMPROVE the moment
Use IMPROVE to plan small sources of support during a painful moment. Explore imagery, meaning, prayer, relaxation, attention, a brief break and encouragement.
Psychoeducation
Wise Mind
A DBT skill card. Wise Mind is the calm, grounded place where your feelings and your logic come together, plus a quiet inner knowing. Learn what it is, when to use it, and how to find it.
Psychoeducation
Radical Acceptance
A DBT skill card. Radical Acceptance means fully accepting reality as it is, right now, so you stop adding extra suffering on top of pain. Learn what it is, what it is not, and how to practise turning your mind toward it.
Psychoeducation
Opposite Action
A DBT skill card. When an emotion does not fit the facts - or acting on it would not help - you can change how you feel by doing the OPPOSITE of what the emotion urges, all the way. Learn how to check the facts first, then act opposite.
Psychoeducation
DEAR MAN: planning a request or refusal
Prepare words for a conversation using DEAR MAN. Practise explaining a need, making a clear request or refusal, and considering what you can negotiate.
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