For those interested I said I'd do a post about DBT.
I was lucky enough to be offered a full programme of DBT ( Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) which is the gold standard treatment for EUPD. But it does take a lot of commitment as you do it as an inpatient. You complete 2 cycles which take 6 months each. Prior to that you are assessed for 3 months, you do a 4 week introductory course and you do relapse prevention at the end so you're looking at 19 months minimum. I was in for 2 years as my psychologist recommended a course of CBT after I did the DBT and COVID interfered too. I started by going home Friday afternoon to see my DC and going back Sunday afternoon. This increased as time went on.
After breakfast in the morning there would be a meeting. Everyone gets checked in on and can make any requests, the activities for the day would be read out and then we did a mindfulness exercise, like a breathing exercise or a game like girls name going through the alphabet. The funniest was making up a story where one person starts, then the next person continues etc. all the staff would join in and it was hilarious.
Once assessed you started a 4 week course that introduced you to DBT and explained how it worked and what the programme would entail.
Then you'd start the main programme. Once a week you would have your DBT group. The first thing we would do is go over our homework from the previous week and our diary cards. During the week you would mark numbers as to how much you felt a particular emotion like 'happy' or 'anxious', you would also mark which DBT skills you had used. Each person had to explain an emotion they were feeling and which skill they'd used and how it helped. Then we did a mindful activity - it could be colouring, a guided meditation, grounding using the senses - all sorts . Then we'd do learning. You cover 4 different areas - Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation and Interpersonal Effectiveness (6 weeks each for 1 cycle.) We would learn different skills and how to relate them to real life. There would be 2 psychologists running the group one would lead and the other was there so if anyone was struggling they could step in and take them out if necessary for a chat. This meant the group didn't get derailed. We'd get homework every week which would involve practicing a skill and noting down if it helped us with an emotion for example my anxiety was an 8, after using the skill it was a 4.
Once a week you had a 1:1 session with your psychologist. You wouldn't talk about the past but about your current situation and look at skills that could help. You could get more guidance on how to use the skills or what skills to use based on your experiences that week. If you got distressed your psychologist would support you to calm down using skills. I'll always remember the first time I managed to calm down on my own.
Once a week there was a Skills group which covered different skills and was open to anyone so those who had finished their main DBT could continue to practice the skills. There was also a mindfulness session which would involve a selection of mindfulness meditations and mindfulness activities. We also had another session that was run by our consultant psychiatrist which was all about the practice of mindfulness meditation - teaching the theory mainly and ending with a short meditation. Our consultant was really good - he also ran another group about medication where he taught us about all the different medications we were on and we could ask any questions we had.
We could ask to see our psychologist for extra support sessions and there were also 'coaches' on the ward that would step in to help us apply our skills during life on the ward and they could help with homework too.
When we finished 2 cycles of the main programme we'd do relapse prevention for 4 weeks.
After dinner there would be a 'debrief'. We could talk about anything that had happened that day and everyone was checked in and told the group if they had used any skills.
I think that's pretty much it.