Skill Issues - Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Its Discontents
Source: thedriftmag.com
- Marsha Linehan created dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) after her own teenage suicide attempt failed despite heavy treatment.
- She saw her crisis as a skills deficit, not deep emotional wounds, so DBT teaches practical coping tools over endless talk therapy.
- DBT works wonders for borderline personality disorder but leaves many questioning if it turns life into just another checklist.
The piece traces how psychologist Marsha Linehan turned her brutal teenage breakdown into DBT, a therapy that prioritizes hands-on skills for surviving emotions over digging into the past. It unpacks DBT's huge success with suicidal patients and its spread into everyday self-help, while poking at its limits. This matters because therapy shapes how we handle feeling too much in a world that demands constant emotional control.