DBT Therapy: Managing Emotional Intensity After Grief
Grieving is a complex and deeply personal experience. The famous five stages; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, rarely unfold in a neat, linear order. You might find yourself moving back and forth between stages, feeling okay one day and overwhelmed the next. That’s completely normal.
Still, coping with the emotional intensity that comes with grief can feel exhausting, especially when life keeps moving around you. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can help you manage these powerful emotions, find balance, and move toward healing at your own pace.
If your grief feels like it’s interfering with your daily life or if you’ve noticed unhealthy patterns developing, DBT therapy offers tools to help you process emotions in a healthier way while continuing to live fully.
Unhealthy Ways of Coping with Emotional Intensity of Grief
Everyone grieves differently, but sometimes, the ways we cope can make things harder instead of better. Some common unhelpful coping patterns include:
Using substances to numb emotions.
Overworking, excessive scrolling, gambling, or other compulsive distractions.
Withdrawing from family and friends.
Engaging in risky or self-destructive behaviors, such as overeating, reckless driving, or self-harm.
DBT Therapy & How it Can Help Grieving
If you’re struggling to cope with intense emotions related to grief in a healthy way for a long period of time, it might be time to seek support. DBT Therapy is built around the concept of learning to integrate two opposing things at once: such as accepting one's circumstance, while at the same time seeking change.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is rooted in the idea that two things can be true at once. For example, you can accept your reality while still wanting to change it. This balance is at the core of healing from grief.
DBT Therapy includes 4 Coping Skills:
Mindfulness
Distress Tolerance
Emotion Regulation
Interpersonal effectiveness
The first two skills are related to accepting one’s current reality, and the second two skills are related to promoting change at the same time. DBT Therapy can help you learn to tolerate painful emotions without enacting self-destructive behaviors by replacing them with the latter four skills.
You Can Get Through this
Grieving is one of the hardest journeys anyone can take, but you don’t have to face it by yourself. If you’re struggling to cope in a healthy way, DBT therapy can help you regulate emotional intensity and rebuild your sense of balance.
If you’re ready to take the next step toward healing, contact us to book a free 15-minute consultation with one of our DBT therapists today. Let’s work together to help you learn to accept your grief while simultaneously working toward healthy change.
