Inside The Dorm’s Parent DBT Skills Group

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or DBT, is a robust and empirically supported orientation of psychotherapy, and is considered to be one of the gold standards in mental health treatment. Originally developed for individuals with severe suicidal ideation and borderline personality disorder (BPD), DBT has also shown to be effective in the treatment of depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and overall clinical symptom reduction. 

At The Dorm, DBT is a cornerstone of our programming, and we extend this support to families through our Parent DBT Skills group, a key component of our family services. This popular group provides families with essential DBT skills that foster better communication and deeper understanding. Families who engage in programs like these report over 20% higher satisfaction with The Dorm’s services compared to those who don’t. In this interview, Nancy Tobias, LMSW, Senior Therapist and DBT Skills group facilitator, shares how this group is structured and offers insights into the crucial role it plays in supporting overall care.

“After receiving feedback from clients on the challenges of communicating with their families, we created the Parent DBT Skills group so families can also learn and use these skills alongside their young adults, acting as a model for their behavior.” 

Nancy Tobias, LMSW, Senior Therapist

The Dorm: Hi Nancy, thank you so much for speaking with us. Our first question for you is, what is the Parent DBT Skills Group, and how is it organized?

Nancy Tobias: The Parent DBT Skills group meets every Monday at 6:00pm through an online video call and it’s a combination of psychoeducation and skills-based work. When new parents join, I often introduce them to the four main modules of DBT—mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation. I explain why it’s important for all of us to have these skills and how they can serve us, then delve deeper into the skills themselves.

The Dorm: What does a typical session look like?

Nancy: It is run very similarly to the Intensive DBT group we offer to our clients at The Dorm who are deepening their application and learning of DBT skills. We start off with a brief mindfulness exercise, then a check in of how we’re doing, and finally a skill of the day that falls under one of the four modules. 

An example of the skill of the day could be dialectics, which is part of the interpersonal effectiveness module. Dialectics encourages individuals to find the common ground between two extremes, where in many cases, things that may seem like opposites can both be true simultaneously. 

Applying this skill in a real-life context could look like replacing the words “but” with “and,” serving the purpose of offering a spectrum to all-or-nothing thinking. For example, “I love you, but I am disappointed in you” can be rephrased into “I love you AND I am disappointed in you,” speaking to the truth of both sides. Nothing is ever “all good” or “all bad,” and dialectics can help us learn to express this gray area. 

Especially in the realm of recovery and mental health treatment, embracing dialectics and DBT skills can empower both parents and young adult clients to navigate complex emotions and conflicting perspectives. By learning how to hold space for opposing feelings—such as hope and frustration—while maintaining a balanced approach, we foster healthier communication, improve emotional regulation, and create a shared language of understanding. 

The Dorm: Who do you think could benefit from this group, and when would you recommend this group to them?

Nancy: We recommend this group to all parents or family members who want to learn DBT. Even if they don’t yet have a strong personal motivation yet, I always think it’s important that parents or family members give it a try. We especially encourage family members of young adults in our Intensive DBT group to engage in this group, so that they can learn these skills tangentially and grow alongside one another.

The Dorm: Why do you think it is important for family members to learn these skills alongside their loved one?

Nancy: Firstly, it’s helpful for family members to know these skills for their own emotional health. Additionally, it’s helpful to use these skills in their conversations with their young adult. We’ve received a lot of feedback from clients in the past expressing difficulty in being skillful with people who don’t necessarily have knowledge of DBT. We created this group so that families can use these skills with their young adults and act as a model for their behavior. 

In an emotionally intense situation, for example, a parent could use the STOP skill to prevent the situation from escalating further, then return to the conversation at a later point in time. Seeing a parent or family member use DBT skills can invite the young adult to practice it as well. 

The Dorm: How does this group differ from the other family groups we offer?

Nancy: This group is strictly focused on DBT skills, so it mostly consists of psychoeducation and skills-based work, as opposed to others that may be more therapeutic or discussion-based. We’ll occasionally have conversations around challenges such as personal circumstances that may make it difficult to use these skills alongside their young adult, but all conversations still revolve around the overarching goal of this group—learning and using DBT skills. 

The Dorm: What is your role as facilitator?

Nancy: My role is to provide a space for parents and family members of clients to understand what DBT is. Though there is definitely room for discussion, more often I am actively teaching what the skills are, and how and when to use them. 

I also remind parents that these skills are for us all to use daily. I’ll sometimes have people come in thinking that they are learning these skills just for their young adult. And though it was originally created for borderline personality disorder, DBT has been studied extensively and is proven to help all people learn how to create a life worth living. 

I’ve noticed that some parents will like to take notes during the session. I’ll also send out the materials we’ve covered during our time together as a sort of homework activity for them to continue the learning and application at home. 

The Dorm: Could you give us an example of what some homework examples might look like?

Nancy: It really depends on what skill we went over that day in session, but if we were doing a DEARMAN, for example—which is an acronym under the interpersonal effectiveness module about how to more effectively communicate your needs—for homework I’ll provide a worksheet and ask them to write out a DEARMAN for a conversation they have in mind. It could be a past conversation where they may think, in retrospect, that using a DEARMAN may have been a more effective way to ask for what they needed. We’ll then go over it during the next session, which is extremely valuable because parents can get ideas from one another and hear feedback.

The Dorm: Have there been any common themes you’ve seen during your time as facilitator?

Nancy: Something that comes up frequently is the issue of problem solving versus validation. A lot of parents tend to problem solve as their first instinct when their young adult comes to them with a heightened sense of anxiety or depression. But our clients, in many cases, are looking for emotional support and validation rather than solutions. 

In this group, we explore the natural tendency for people to want to solve problems, acknowledging that this comes from a place of care and good intentions. We work on shifting those intentions toward asking their loved one directly what kind of support would be helpful in that moment. This approach encourages the young adult to reflect on why they’re seeking support from their family and to communicate how they can best be helped. Many parents have shared that this shift has led to smoother interactions with their young adults and provided a sense of relief—they no longer feel the pressure to “read minds” but can still offer support in a way their loved one is ready to accept.

Another common theme I’ve seen is one I shared earlier, where newcomers don’t realize that the skills we cover aren’t just for their young adult but for them to use as they learn to navigate their own emotions. It is so difficult to not only have a loved one struggling with mental health but also to relinquish some level of control to treatment providers. This is where this group can help family members better manage their own fear and anxiety around having a loved one seeking care, providing them with the skills to contend with these challenges.

Thank you Nancy for providing us with these insights into the Parent DBT Skills Group, which equips individuals with the tools necessary to understand and communicate with loved ones in treatment, and for reminding us of the importance of family support in overall care. 

For more information on how we integrate family in the treatment process, visit our Family Therapy page, or read about our other family groups such as the Parent Process Group and the Parent Collective.