Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Women in Colorado
The reaction is out before you can catch it, and an hour later you’re replaying it and wondering what happened to you. DBT is skills training for exactly that gap, the space between the feeling and what you do with it.
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The Method
What is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that teaches concrete skills for handling intense emotions. It pairs work on changing patterns with acceptance and mindfulness, which is where the word dialectical comes from. Two things hold at the same time. You are doing the best you can with what you have, and there is something different available to learn.
DBT for women is one of the approaches you’ll find among our therapy methods. It comes up most often when understanding a feeling hasn’t been enough on its own. What you need is something to do in the twenty seconds after it arrives. Marsha Linehan developed it for people whose emotions run hot and fast, and the skills have since been adapted well past that starting point. Colorado Women’s Center is a practice designed for women, so the examples your therapist reaches for will already fit the life you’re living.
Skills you practice between sessions, not only talk about inside them.
Our Promise to You
We Guarantee Our Therapist Matching
DBT is skills work, which means trying things between sessions and then reporting back on how it actually went. That takes a therapist you don’t mind being honest with about the weeks it went badly. If the first one isn’t right, tell us and we’ll match you with another at no additional cost.
What DBT Works On
What DBT for Women Helps With
DBT began as a treatment for people in serious distress, and the skills turned out to be useful much more broadly than that. These are what women bring to it at Colorado Women’s Center.
Emotional Intensity
Zero to a hundred, and then a long climb back down. DBT gives you a way to read what an emotion is doing early enough to change where it ends up, rather than only understanding it afterward.
Self-Harm
Self-harm usually starts as a way to handle pain that feels unmanageable. Cutting and self-harm therapy using DBT works on getting through those moments safely and on what the pain underneath is asking for.
Disordered Eating
Eating can become the one thing that reliably changes how you feel. Disordered eating therapy that uses DBT skills works on the emotion the behavior is managing, alongside the eating itself.
Borderline Personality Disorder
DBT was developed for BPD and that is still what it is best known for. If your emotions are intense, your relationships swing hard, and your sense of who you are moves with them, this is the approach built for it.
Anxiety and Depression
When both have been running in the background long enough, they stop feeling like symptoms and start feeling like personality. DBT skills give you something concrete to do with them on an ordinary Tuesday.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Obsessions and compulsions are usually treated with exposure work, and DBT skills often run alongside it. OCD therapy for women can draw on distress tolerance for the part where you have to sit with not doing the compulsion.
Impulsivity and Risk
Acting fast in a bad moment can feel like the only option available while it’s happening. DBT builds in a pause, and then gives you something to do with the pause once you have it.
Relationship Difficulties
High emotion in a relationship tends to end in saying far too much or saying nothing at all. DBT teaches specific ways to ask for something, turn something down, and stay in the conversation without disappearing inside it.
Post-Traumatic Stress
Trauma leaves the body braced. DBT works on tolerating that state and steadying ordinary life, which is often what has to be in place before trauma processing becomes workable.
Our Approach
How DBT Runs at Colorado Women’s Center
A skill gets taught, you try it somewhere real, and then the two of you look at what happened. Here is the order it goes in.
Start With a Match Call
You begin with a Wellness Coordinator. She asks what you’re looking for, including whether DBT is the thing you came here for. Then she matches you on that, on which office suits you, and on what a therapist actually works with.
The Four Skill Sets
DBT is organized around four groups of skills. Mindfulness trains you to notice what is happening while it is still happening. Distress tolerance is what carries you through a bad hour without doing something that costs you tomorrow. With emotion regulation, the work shifts to lowering how often those hours arrive at all. The fourth set covers asking for things and turning them down, which is where a lot of relationship damage actually starts.
Skills Inside Individual Sessions
Your therapist introduces a skill, you use it somewhere in your actual week, and the next session covers what worked and what fell apart. The part where it fell apart is usually the more useful half. Nothing here depends on you getting it right the first time.
Five Offices or Online
You can do this work at any of the five offices, in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Broomfield, or Longmont, or over secure video from anywhere in Colorado. The practice happens in your own life either way. Sessions run seven days a week, 8am to 8pm.
Methods We Offer
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- EMDR
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Gottman Method
- Somatic Therapy
- Mindfulness-Based Approaches
- Family Systems Therapy
Common Questions
DBT Questions Women Ask Us
Do I need a diagnosis to do DBT?
No. DBT was developed for people in serious distress, and the skills are used far more widely than that now. Women come to Colorado Women’s Center for DBT because of anxiety, anger that arrives faster than they would like, and moods that swing harder than feels manageable. What you can describe on the Match Call is enough to start.
Is there homework?
Yes, in the sense that DBT asks you to try things between sessions and pay attention to what happened. That might be noticing when an emotion spikes, or using one skill in one specific situation you already know is coming. It is not written assignments, and your therapist sets it with you rather than handing it down.
How is DBT different from CBT?
CBT works mainly on the thought sitting behind the feeling. DBT keeps that and adds acceptance, mindfulness, and a set of skills aimed at the moment itself. Many women end up doing some of both, often with the same therapist, and your therapist will work out with you where the emphasis belongs.
Does DBT work online?
Yes. Skills work translates well to video, because most of a session is conversation and review, and the practice itself happens in your own week either way. Sessions run over secure video anywhere in Colorado, including for women well outside the Front Range. Our online therapy page has the details.
How long does DBT take?
That is decided between you and your therapist rather than set in advance. It depends on what you are working on and how the skills land once you start using them. Your therapist builds a plan with you early and revisits it with you as things change.
Can DBT be combined with other approaches?
Yes, and it usually is. DBT skills often run alongside trauma work, and mindfulness is part of the model already. Colorado Women’s Center therapists are trained in several approaches rather than one, so the care can shift as what you need shifts. You and your therapist decide that together.
How soon can I start?
Match Calls are usually available within 48 hours, often within 24. Most clients are with a therapist within about a week, depending on their own schedule. Offices are open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm, and online sessions run the same hours. Call 720.810.2355 or use the form on this page.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in a mental health crisis right now, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It is available around the clock.
Related Methods
Approaches That Sit Close to DBT
Your therapist may bring other approaches into the same work. These two overlap with DBT most directly.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
DBT grew out of CBT and kept its focus on thoughts and behavior. If the thinking underneath is what you want to work on, start here.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) →
Mindfulness Therapy
Mindfulness is one of the four DBT skill sets, and it also stands on its own as a way of working.
Mindfulness therapy →
