- 1920 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd #211, West Palm Beach, FL 33409
- Telehealth: Serving clients throughout Florida
Skip to content Do you experience emotions so intensely that they feel overwhelming — like a wave that crashes over you before you have any chance to respond thoughtfully? Do you find yourself reacting in ways you later regret — saying things you do not mean, pushing people away, or engaging in behaviors that you know are harmful but cannot seem to stop in the moment?
Perhaps you struggle with a persistent sense of emptiness, an unstable sense of who you are, or relationships that cycle between intense closeness and painful conflict. Maybe you have tried other forms of therapy and found that while you understood your patterns intellectually, you still could not change them in the heat of the moment.
If this resonates with you, Dialectical Behavior Therapy — known as DBT — may be exactly the approach you have been looking for.
DBT is a highly structured, skills-based therapy that was specifically developed for people who experience emotions intensely and struggle to regulate them effectively. It combines acceptance and change in a unique and powerful way — validating the reality and legitimacy of your emotional experience while simultaneously teaching concrete, practical skills for managing it more effectively.
At Whole Health Psychological Center, our team of licensed therapists provides DBT for teenagers and adults in West Palm Beach and throughout Florida. We offer in-person sessions at our West Palm Beach office and telehealth sessions for clients throughout Florida.
DBT was developed in the late 1980s by psychologist Dr. Marsha Linehan, who created it originally as a treatment for individuals with borderline personality disorder and chronic suicidality. Since its development DBT has been extensively researched and its applications have expanded significantly — it is now recognized as one of the most effective treatments available for a wide range of conditions involving emotional dysregulation.
The word “dialectical” refers to the core tension at the heart of DBT — the balance between acceptance and change. DBT holds two seemingly opposite truths simultaneously: you are doing the best you can given your history and circumstances, and you need to change in order to build a life worth living. This balance of validation and challenge is one of the things that makes DBT uniquely effective for people who have often felt misunderstood or invalidated by others.
DBT is built around four core skill modules, each addressing a different aspect of emotional and behavioral functioning.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the foundation of all DBT skills. It involves developing the ability to observe your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the present moment — with awareness and without judgment. Mindfulness skills help you slow down the automatic reactions that drive impulsive or destructive behavior and create a space between stimulus and response where choice becomes possible.
Distress Tolerance
Distress tolerance skills are designed for crisis moments — those times when emotions are at their most intense and the risk of destructive behavior is highest. Rather than trying to solve the problem or change the emotion in the moment, distress tolerance skills help you survive the crisis without making things worse. Techniques include radical acceptance, self-soothing, distraction, and improving the moment.
Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation skills address the emotional experience itself — helping you understand your emotions, reduce your vulnerability to emotional dysregulation, decrease the intensity of painful emotions, and increase positive emotional experiences. This module is particularly valuable for people who feel at the mercy of their emotions and want to develop greater agency over their emotional lives.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Interpersonal effectiveness skills focus on relationships — helping you ask for what you need, say no to what you do not want, navigate conflict, and maintain relationships that are important to you while also maintaining your self-respect. These skills are particularly valuable for people whose intense emotions create difficulties in their relationships with others.
DBT has the strongest evidence base for emotional dysregulation and has been shown to be highly effective for a wide range of conditions including:
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) for which DBT was originally developed and remains the gold standard treatment.
Self-harm and suicidal ideation addressed with compassion, safety planning, and the distress tolerance and crisis survival skills that make up a core part of DBT.
Depression particularly treatment-resistant depression and depression accompanied by intense emotional swings.
Anxiety particularly when anxiety drives avoidance, panic, or behavioral patterns that are difficult to interrupt in the moment.
PTSD particularly when trauma has resulted in significant emotional dysregulation or dissociation.
Bipolar disorder where DBT skills support mood stability and reduce impulsive behavior during mood episodes.
ADHD where emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and interpersonal difficulties are prominent features.
Relationship difficulties characterized by intense conflict, fear of abandonment, or cycles of idealization and devaluation.
Teenagers struggling with emotional dysregulation or behavioral difficulties. See our teen therapy page for more on how we work with adolescents.
DBT is more structured than many other forms of therapy. In our setting at Whole Health Psychological Center we provide individual DBT therapy that incorporates comprehensive skills training — working through all four skill modules systematically within the individual therapy context.
Individual Therapy Sessions
Your individual DBT therapist provides personalized support, helps you apply DBT skills to the specific challenges and situations in your life, and addresses the underlying emotional and behavioral patterns driving your difficulties. Individual sessions are 55 minutes and occur weekly.
Skills Training
DBT skills are taught systematically and practiced both within sessions and between sessions through homework assignments. Your therapist will introduce skills from each of the four modules, help you understand how they apply to your specific challenges, and support you in practicing them in real-world situations.
Between-Session Support
A hallmark of DBT is its emphasis on between-session practice. Your therapist will work with you to identify specific skills to practice between sessions and will track your progress using diary cards — brief daily records of your emotional experiences, urges, and skill use. This between-session work is one of the key factors that makes DBT so effective.
DBT tends to be the right fit for clients whose emotions have always felt like they came in at higher volume than other people’s — the ones who have been told they are “too sensitive” or “too intense” their whole lives, and who have watched relationships, jobs, and stability repeatedly get swept up in emotional storms. That pattern shows up across Palm Beach County in every demographic — the high-achieving professional whose explosive reactions have started to cost them at work, the teenager whose self-harm started as a way to cope with feelings they could not name, the adult whose intense fear of abandonment keeps sabotaging the relationships they want most, the person in early recovery whose emotional regulation skills never got the chance to develop because substances were doing that job for decades.
Our DBT therapists work with clients from throughout West Palm Beach — including Northwood, Flamingo Park, El Cid, Southend, Grandview Heights, and Downtown — as well as from Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Wellington, Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, and Delray Beach. DBT is a substantial commitment — months of consistent work — and the results are worth it. Most clients describe the experience as fundamentally changing their relationship with their own emotions, not just managing the symptoms.
Your First Session
Your first session is focused on understanding you — your history, your current struggles, and your goals for therapy. Your therapist will explain the DBT model, discuss the structure of treatment, and begin to identify the specific patterns and challenges that will be the focus of your work together.
Building Your Treatment Plan
Your therapist will work with you to develop a clear treatment plan with specific, measurable goals. DBT is a goal-oriented therapy and progress is tracked systematically throughout treatment.
How Long Does DBT Take?
A full course of DBT is typically 6 to 12 months, reflecting the depth and breadth of skill-building involved. Some clients benefit from shorter-term DBT-informed therapy focused on specific skills or concerns. Your therapist will discuss the appropriate scope and timeline for your individual situation.
We offer in-person DBT sessions at our West Palm Beach office at 1920 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd #211, West Palm Beach, FL 33409. Telehealth sessions are available for clients throughout Florida via secure, HIPAA-compliant video. Research supports the effectiveness of telehealth DBT delivery.
We accept most major insurance plans for DBT therapy, including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield / Florida Blue, Cigna / Evernorth, United Health Care, Tricare East, and Medicare Part B.
Not sure if your plan covers DBT? Call our office at (561) 721-6400 and our team will verify your benefits before your first appointment.
How is DBT different from CBT?
CBT and DBT share common roots — DBT was developed from CBT — but they differ in important ways. CBT focuses primarily on identifying and changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors. DBT places equal emphasis on acceptance and validation alongside change, incorporates a broader range of skills particularly around distress tolerance and interpersonal effectiveness, and was specifically designed for people with more severe emotional dysregulation. Many people who have not found sufficient relief from CBT alone find DBT to be more effective.
Do I need a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder to benefit from DBT?
Absolutely not. While DBT was originally developed for BPD it is now widely used for anyone who struggles with emotional dysregulation, impulsive behavior, or relationship difficulties — regardless of diagnosis. Many people who benefit most from DBT do not have a BPD diagnosis.
Is DBT appropriate for teenagers?
Yes. DBT has been extensively adapted for adolescents and is one of the most effective treatments available for teenagers struggling with emotional dysregulation and behavioral difficulties. Adolescent DBT typically involves parents in the skills training component, helping the whole family system support the teenager’s progress.
What if I have already tried DBT and it did not help?
DBT requires significant commitment and active practice both within and between sessions. If a previous experience with DBT was not helpful it is worth exploring whether the treatment was delivered with full fidelity to the model, whether the therapeutic relationship was a good fit, and whether you were at a stage of readiness to engage with the work. We are happy to discuss your previous experience and help you determine whether another course of DBT might be beneficial.
Can DBT be combined with medication?
Yes. For many conditions DBT and medication work well together. Our team includes both licensed therapists and a psychiatric nurse practitioner, allowing us to coordinate therapy and medication management when appropriate.
DBT was built around a simple but profound idea — that people who struggle with overwhelming emotions deserve both compassionate acceptance and effective tools for change. You are not broken. You are not beyond help. You are a person with an intensely sensitive emotional system who has not yet been given the right tools for managing it.
DBT provides those tools. And our team of licensed therapists at Whole Health Psychological Center is here to help you learn and apply them in the context of a supportive, validating therapeutic relationship.
We serve clients in person in West Palm Beach and via telehealth throughout Florida. Call us today at (561) 721-6400 or schedule online to take the first step. New client appointments are typically available within one week. Evening and weekend sessions are available.
Call us at (561) 721-6400, email us at info@wholehealthpsych.com, or visit us in person at 1920 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd #211, West Palm Beach, FL 33409. Telehealth is available throughout Florida.
We provide DBT therapy and dialectical behavior therapy in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Wellington, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Jupiter, Delray Beach, and throughout Florida via telehealth.
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