Your cart is currently empty!
Developing Healthy Relationships using DBT Skills
Your Dialectical Behavior Therapy‑informed Healthy Relationships curriculum is organized around four progressive objectives. Each objective names the specific capacity you are invited to develop, then spells out—in narrative form—the lessons, multimodal teaching activities, daily practice exercises, reflective journaling prompts, digital supports, and outcome measures that will let you and your clinician verify your progress.
Objective 1: Cultivate mindful awareness of the feelings, thoughts, bodily sensations, and automatic behaviors that arise whenever you interact with people who matter to you, so that you can recognize patterns that either nurture or erode connection.
During two individual sessions your therapist will guide you through a compassionate review of your relationship history, invite you to watch a short clinician‑recorded video that explains how mindfulness serves as the “platform skill” for all DBT interpersonal work, and assign a companion video lecture by Dr. Marsha Linehan on observing and describing without judgment. You will receive an audio meditation that leads you through a daily “relationship body‑scan,” a one‑page handout titled “Mindfulness of Current Relationships,” and a worksheet that helps you clarify the values you want your relationships to embody. Inside Quenza you will complete the interactive “Mindful Relationship Log” pathway, which sends you a brief check‑in each evening and graphs your answers over time, while your Therapy Portal will hold a fillable “Relationship Snapshot” form that you and your therapist will review at the start of every week. Your progress will be monitored with the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale–Interpersonal Short Form administered at baseline and every two weeks, and with weekly journal reflections in which you note at least one moment of mindful presence you experienced with another person.
Objective 2: Strengthen assertive communication so that you can ask for what you need, say no when you must, and negotiate solutions while preserving self‑respect and the relationship itself.
In a dedicated skills session your therapist will teach you the DEAR MAN strategy—Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, stay Mindful, Appear confident, and Negotiate—and model it in a role‑play that you will later repeat. A clinician‑produced micro‑lecture breaks each step into plain‑language examples drawn from everyday life, and an expert video from the DBT‑RU program at Rutgers University demonstrates the skill in action. You will rehearse DEAR MAN scripts with a peer or trusted support, record your attempts on a practice log, and upload the log through a Therapy Portal form that prompts you to rate confidence, effectiveness, and emotional intensity. Quenza delivers an adaptive pathway that branches according to the challenges you report—offering extra reinforcement videos or coping‑ahead visualizations when needed. Your reflective journal prompt asks you to describe what you felt before, during, and after each assertive interaction and to identify one thing you would keep and one thing you would change next time. Outcome data come from weekly therapist ratings of your in‑session role‑plays and from the Self‑Assertion Inventory administered at the beginning and end of this module.
Objective 3: Deepen your ability to maintain and enrich relationships through the GIVE and FAST skills—being Gentle, showing genuine Interest, validating with a non‑verbal Vulnerable posture, using an Easy manner, while also remaining Fair, avoiding unnecessary Apologies, Sticking to your values, and staying Truthful.
Your therapist will devote one session to modeling these skills in common relational hotspots such as household chores, friendship boundaries, or romantic misunderstandings. A clinician video illustrates GIVE in a supportive conversation, followed by an invited expert video that dissects FAST in a difficult feedback scenario. You will practice during the week by completing a “GIVE‑FAST Self‑Check” worksheet after real‑life interactions, listen to a loving‑kindness meditation that primes gentle attention before anticipated conflicts, and consult a concise handout that summarizes the acronyms. Quenza will nudge you with the “Relationship Micro‑Acts of Kindness” activity, encouraging daily small gestures aligned with GIVE, while a Therapy Portal feedback form captures the recipient’s reaction when possible. Change will be tracked with the seven‑item Relationship Assessment Scale administered pre‑ and post‑module, alongside your qualitative journal reflections on how GIVE and FAST felt in your body and mind.
Objective 4: Enhance your capacity to tolerate relational distress and think dialectically when conflicts emerge, allowing you to hold both your perspective and the other person’s without resorting to rigid extremes or emotional withdrawal.
Two sessions will introduce the DBT principles of validation and dialectical synthesis; a clinician video demonstrates real‑time validation, while an external expert explains how accepting reality as it is can coexist with working for change. You will practice “opposite action” breathing exercises through an audio file designed to down‑shift physiological arousal during arguments, complete a worksheet that walks you through six levels of validation, and engage in a “dialectical journal” where you write two apparently opposing statements about a current conflict and then craft a synthesis. Quenza’s “Conflict Crisis Plan” pathway helps you create, rehearse, and store a step‑by‑step script for moments when emotions spike, and your Therapy Portal houses a fillable crisis‑management form that you and your therapist will update after each significant relational incident. Progress indicators include weekly counts of conflict episodes, scores on the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems‑32, and narrative journal entries reflecting on any new dialectical insights you discovered.
Summary
Across all four objectives you will be encouraged to weave these skills into daily life, to view outcome data as empowering feedback rather than judgment, and to remember that healthy relationships are living systems that thrive on mindful presence, respectful communication, compassionate maintenance, and flexible, reality‑based thinking. Your therapist will review the quantitative measures with you every month, celebrate your gains, and collaboratively refine your treatment plan whenever new interpersonal challenges arise. By engaging fully with each lesson, activity, and reflection, you are expected not merely to learn discrete techniques but to embody a relational stance that honors both your own dignity and the inherent worth of others.