DBT for Codependency
Codependency traits are relatively common, especially in those who have a mental health diagnosis.
DBT is an effective approach for treating codependency and related issues such as emotion regulation.
Is DBT effective for this diagnosis?
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) can be effective for treating Codependency. Codependent traits are often present in those with Borderline Personality Disorder and other mental health diagnoses. DBT can help you cope with the strong emotions codependency can bring up. We, at the DBT Center of Marin, offer both Standard and Informed DBT. Informed DBT integrates other evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral interventions into DBT to create a multidimensional treatment to best address your codependency.
What is Codependency?
Codependency is a set of learned behaviors that affect your ability to have a balanced, mutually-satisfying relationship. Characteristics include low self-esteem, working hard to please others, fear of abandonment, over-dependence on a relationship, rigidity, and issues with boundaries, among others. Codependency is learned from watching others who experience it and is treatable. Codependency can be mild or debilitating and can negatively impact your quality of life.
How does DBT support this diagnosis?
DBT can help replace Codependency with a more balanced approach to relationships. Through Mindfulness, DBT instructs you in methods of grounding to stay in the present moment. Emotion regulation and distress tolerance DBT skills can help manage the upset you feel when things in your relationship don’t go as planned. Interpersonal Effectiveness skills can help you interact with others efficaciously. Support for these symptoms extends beyond the therapy session through phone coaching as a crisis intervention tool in addition to individual weekly psychotherapy and skills groups. DBT provides clients with guidance on how to apply therapeutic skills to the unique situations in their lives.
Which specific modules are most relevant?
Learn how to manage your codependency through the 4 components of DBT: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.
Mindfulness: Learn how to be truly present.
Mindfulness skills teach you how to focus on your current situation, stopping rumination on painful past experiences or future uncertainty. These skills can help you calm panic when you’re obsessing over your relationship. Regular mindfulness practice can help keep you grounded and increase your mental stability. This makes you better able to recognize your ineffective behaviors and vacillating emotions and to cope ahead for future stressors.
Emotion Regulation: Learn to manage, change, and accept the different emotions, so that your emotions don’t control you.
Dysregulated emotions can be a result of other codependency traits. DBT teaches Emotion Regulation skills to stop unwanted emotions from starting in the first place, regulate or change such emotions once they start, and learn to accept and become comfortable with unavoidable emotions. DBT prioritizes taking care of your body to stabilize your mind, helping effective behaviors become a habit.
Distress Tolerance: Learn to tolerate painful emotions and situations that seem unbearable, and avoid behavior that can make things worse.
Being unsure of the state of your relationship can cause a lot of distress. Distress Tolerance offers tangible skills to use in place of ineffective behaviors that can make things worse. These techniques range from guided self-soothing skills to easy-to-use methods that activate the parasympathetic nervous system, using your own body’s chemistry to reduce distress.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Learn to communicate with others in respectful ways while maintaining healthy boundaries and upholding positive self-respect.
Codependency often includes ineffective interpersonal behaviors. DBT guides you in both being a good friend or partner and getting your needs met. Interpersonal effectiveness skills provide clear instruction on how to maintain relationships with others, ask for what you want, and uphold your self-respect. Interpersonal Effectiveness skills also provide tools to head off problems and resolve conflicts before they become overwhelming.