Dbt for Life - (Blue Lotus Press) by Diana Partington (Paperback)

About the Book

DBT for Life teaches skills that will change your internal emotions, your behavior, your relationships and help you build a meaningful life.

Book Synopsis

DBT for Life: Skills to transform the way you live is a self-help book that teaches skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Engaging and accessible, the book features full-color illustrations, graphics, and short stories illustrating how to use skills in real life.

DBT is an evidence-based therapy that is highly effective for emotionally sensitive people. DBT teaches skills in mindfulness, managing overwhelming emotions, caring for relationships, and getting through a crisis without making it worse.

Dr. Marsha Linehan created Dialectical Behavior Therapy as a cure for suicide. Based on copious research, this treatment is incredibly effective for anyone who struggles with overwhelming emotions. As a therapy, DBT is arduous and often difficult to access.

Diana hopes the book will provide a powerful way to connect with DBT skills.There are over a hundred skills in DBT. In DBT for Life, every chapter teaches one of the more significant skills. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction to the skill. Then a short story illustrates effective use of the skill. The stories are fictional composites based on emotionally sensitive clients, friends, family members, and the author's experience living as an emotionally sensitive person. Diana also provides a detailed explanation of the skill, ideas for practice, and plenty of supplemental material.

The book features a "choose your own adventure" style. You may read the book from cover to cover or read chapters out of order. You may choose stories based on the illustrations. Or select a chapter based on a skill you need at that moment. You can approach the book in whatever way is most effective for you.

"There are so many ways to engage with DBT for Life. The stories, illustrations, graphics and straightforward language offer different types of learners easy access to the complex, evidence based toolkit of skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. This is a wonderful work of heart, filled with wisdom and practical ways to enhance how our minds work and how our relationships can flourish in everyday life."

Review Quotes

DBT for Life is an intentionally inclusive book. The diversity represented in the stories and illustrations send a clear message: All are welcome here. These skills are universally helpful for all of us.

Diana Partington has written a book that is so practical, so readable, so empowering, and so effective that it stuns you just to pick it up. She really knows how to transform the way we live, and she uses the methodology DBT in a way that makes it graspable, finite, and totally implementable. Diana has done a great service for all of us in writing this practical, inspiring, and super brilliant book.

Lynne Twist, Author of Soul of Money and Living a Committed Life

Diana Partington's book is a great resource and contribution to the field of DBT! It is extraordinarily friendly and accessible, with stories and illustrations that bring the tools to life in a vivid and approachable way regardless of age. The stories are contemporarily relevant even while the tools and use of them are deeply enduring. In my work with trauma across many ages and situations, I can see myself offering this book as a guide again and again.

Gayle Karen Young, former Chief Culture and Talent officer of the Wikipedia Foundation,

Human Rights Activist and Mentor

Diana Partington has penned a meaningful - and very readable- collection of stories that teach life skills sorely missing in so many lives. Each chapter is laid out with intent and clarity, inviting the reader to learn a new skill. This book is humorous, touching and real- capturing the imaginal mind of the reader. Diana is a story-teller at heart; you'll see what I mean when you pick up a copy.

-Patti Elledge, Somatic Mentor and creator of The Relational Salon

The materials are accessible and the anecdotes are invaluable - they really help one to see the skills in action. I wish I had had DBT for Life when I started! I will be recommending it to my clients and colleagues.

-Sharla Mize, DBT Therapist and PESI Trainer