Mental Health Awareness
Mental health awareness in practice: articles from Dr. Jesse Finkelstein with DBT and CBT skills for stress, anxiety, and difficult emotions.
Learn the three DBT What skills, observe, describe, and participate, with a guided video and step by step practice from Axis Psychological Services.
Mindfulness of Current Emotions is a DBT emotion regulation skill for allowing feelings without avoiding or amplifying them. Video and practice steps.
Tip the temperature, the T in DBT's TIPP skills: how cold water on the face triggers the dive reflex and calms intense emotion fast. Steps, safety, video.
Learn the DBT TIP skills: temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation to bring extreme emotions down fast. With video.
Learn the DBT Describe skill: put words to your experience with facts, not judgments. Guided video and practice steps from Axis Psychological Services.
A step-by-step guide to loving-kindness meditation for self-compassion, with a guided video. Learn the traditional phrases and how to adapt them.
A DBT card game by Dr. Jesse Finkelstein: conflict cards, skill cards, and a 96-page pocket guide. What is in the box and how it plays.
A friendly ear is supportive talk therapy, and it is a real treatment. DBT is something else: specific goals, skills practice, and acceptance with change.
Why clearing every obstacle for your child backfires, and how DBT balances natural consequences with preparation. Dr. Jesse Finkelstein, NYC.
Thinking about the future is a DBT skill, not a worry loop. How to imagine a meaningful future without catastrophizing or leaving the present.
Multifamily group, separate parent and teen groups, or teen only. The three ways families learn DBT skills, and why parent practice makes them stick.
Validation lives in tone, not wording. How curiosity and compassion change what the other person hears, and why they may not know the answer either.
Much of our suffering comes from feeling separate and defective. How validation addresses that layer, and why analyzing someone is not the same as helping.
Validation is not agreement. It is telling someone their reaction makes sense, which you can do while still thinking they are wrong.
Pain, illness and loss are not avoidable. Values are what preserve resilience and a sense of direction through suffering, and how to find yours.
You do not have to choose between warmth and limits. The DBT middle path skill for parents, why and beats but, and why calm consequences work better.
Life worth living goals come from Marsha Linehan's work with people in acute pain. What they are, why the question generalizes, and how to find yours.
High arousal pushes you into fast thinking at the worst moment. How the DBT STOP skill puts the brakes on before you say something you regret.
Shame says hide. DBT asks whether the emotion fits the facts, and if it does not, to act opposite. Dr. Jesse Finkelstein on pride as opposite action.
Who DBT is for: it was developed for emotion dysregulation and now has evidence across many conditions. Why the skills are useful outside crisis.
A crisis in DBT is not only life or death. Three elements define one, and the skills for it are meant to get you through, not to solve the problem.
Some DBT skills will not connect with you, and that is by design. How to test a skill fairly and build a shortlist you can actually reach for.
ERP therapy for OCD explained: what exposure and response prevention involves, why it works, and what the first weeks of treatment actually look like.
CBT vs DBT without the jargon: what each treatment targets, where they overlap, and the question that actually decides which one fits your situation.
CBT for anxiety explained: what the sessions involve, why exposure does most of the work, and how long a course usually takes.
Emotion dysregulation explained: why intensity arrives before judgment, what it is not, and which treatments target it directly.
PTSD treatment without the vagueness: what prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy involve, how long they take, and how to choose.
Panic attack treatment explained: why calming techniques can backfire, what interoceptive exposure involves, and how short a course usually is.
What a first therapy session actually involves: what gets asked, what you do not have to disclose, and how to tell whether the fit is right.
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