Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Anxiety: How DBT Skills Can Help
What if managing anxiety isn’t about silencing your fears—but learning to work with them? For many, anxiety feels like a runaway train: overwhelming and hard to stop once it starts. DBT offers a practical way to slow it down. Originally developed for borderline personality disorder, DBT has proven effective for anxiety by teaching skills like mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. Instead of overanalyzing worries, DBT helps you calm your body, ground your mind, and respond with balance. In this guide, we’ll explore how DBT can help you build emotional resilience and regain control, one skill at a time.
Jump to the topics:
Overview of DBT for Anxiety
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a skills-focused psychotherapy originally developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan to treat borderline personality disorder, but it has since been adapted to a wide range of conditions, including anxiety disorders. Unlike some forms of talk therapy, DBT emphasizes practical coping skills and a balance between accepting emotions and changing unhealthy behaviors. This skills-based, often psychoeducational, approach can be especially beneficial for people with anxiety, who may feel overwhelmed by intense worry or panic and need concrete strategies to find relief.
Why consider DBT for anxiety? Anxiety disorders are characterized by excessive fear, stress, and difficulty regulating emotions. DBT directly targets these issues by teaching mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness skills. These skill sets can empower individuals to manage anxious feelings in healthier ways. In fact, research shows DBT can be effective for problems beyond its original scope – for example, studies have found that DBT-based interventions can reduce symptoms of PTSD, depression and anxiety in diverse populations. Below are some key reasons DBT is a helpful framework for coping with anxiety:
- Skill-based coping: DBT provides concrete tools for managing anxiety in the moment. For example, distress tolerance techniques like TIP (Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Progressive relaxation) can quickly lower the body’s stress arousal during panic attacks. These skills give you something active to do when anxiety surges, rather than just being overwhelmed by it.
- Emotion regulation: DBT improves your ability to understand and modulate emotions over the long term. By practicing DBT’s emotion regulation skills, people become less reactive and more balanced, which reduces the overall intensity of anxiety they experience. In other words, DBT helps “turn down the volume” on emotional responses so that worries feel more manageable.
- Mindfulness to counter worry: Mindfulness, a core component of DBT, trains you to stay present and non-judgmentally aware of your thoughts and feelings. This is powerful for anxiety, which often involves racing thoughts about the future or ruminating on worst-case scenarios. By grounding yourself in the here-and-now, mindfulness interrupts the cycle of worry and promotes a sense of calm.
- Facing fears (Opposite Action): DBT teaches a technique called Opposite Action, which encourages gently confronting the things you fear instead of avoiding them when your fear is unwarranted. This approach aligns with exposure therapy principles and can break the avoidance-anxiety cycle. For example, if anxiety urges you to cancel a social plan, the opposite action would be to go anyway and engage with others. By gradually facing feared situations, your brain learns that you can handle them, and the anxiety diminishes over time.
- Stress tolerance and acceptance: DBT increases your distress tolerance – the ability to endure and accept discomfort without panicking. Many people with anxiety struggle with an “intolerance” of feeling anxious, which can actually intensify panic (for instance, becoming anxious about being anxious). DBT skills teach you to ride out waves of anxiety more comfortably. Techniques like paced breathing, grounding yourself in the present, or using cold water (yes, literally splashing your face with cold water!) trigger your body’s calming reflexes and signal to your brain that the crisis is passing. This means anxious episodes can end sooner and feel less overwhelming.
In summary, DBT approaches anxiety both in the moment (through crisis survival tools) and by building long-term emotional resilience. Now, let’s delve deeper into some of these DBT skills and how exactly they help with anxiety.
How DBT Skills Address Anxiety
DBT is organized around four modules of skills training: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. Each module targets different challenges that people with anxiety often face, from racing thoughts to relationship stress. Below, we explore each of these DBT skill domains in the context of anxiety, with examples of techniques and the rationale for why they work.
Mindfulness: Breaking the Cycle of Worry
Mindfulness is about living in the present moment with full awareness and acceptance. For someone with anxiety, this skill can be life-changing. Anxiety thrives on worrying about the future or stewing over the past. By anchoring your attention to right now, mindfulness helps interrupt anxious thought spirals before they escalate. Essentially, you learn to observe your thoughts and feelings like passing clouds instead of getting carried away by them. Give it a try with the mindfulness exercise below.
In DBT, mindfulness is taught through practices like breathing exercises, observing sensations, and descriptive meditation. Over time, these practices strengthen your “attention muscle,” making it easier to refocus when anxiety pulls your mind into a whirl of what-ifs. According to one mental health guide, mindfulness skills not only help you stay calm in the moment but also prevent automatic negative thought patterns that fuel anxiety. By regularly practicing mindfulness, many people find that the volume of their anxious thoughts turns down. They spend less time caught in worry, and when anxious thoughts do arise, they feel more distance from them – as if “That’s just my anxiety talking, it’s not an actual catastrophe happening.”
TheraHive’s own blog emphasizes the power of mindfulness for anxiety as well. As noted in our article “Who Is DBT For?”, learning to be present can reduce anxiety and increase your enjoyment of the moment. For example, instead of being at a family dinner while your mind is worrying about tomorrow’s work deadline, mindfulness skills help you gently return your focus to the conversation and the taste of the food. This not only curbs the worry; it often makes your day-to-day experiences more positive (which further disempowers anxiety). Over time, mindfulness builds a sort of inner calm – a steady center you can return to when anxiety tries to pull you off balance.
Distress Tolerance: Riding Out Panic and High Anxiety
When a surge of acute anxiety or a panic attack hits, distress tolerance skills come to the forefront. Distress tolerance in DBT is about surviving intense emotions without making things worse – basically, how to get through a crisis moment in one piece. For anxiety, these skills are akin to emergency tools to weather the storm of sudden fear or panic. They don’t necessarily solve the underlying problem, but they keep you safe and grounded until the intense wave passes.
One of the hallmark distress tolerance techniques for anxiety is the TIPP skill, which stands for Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, and Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Each component is designed to have quick physiological effects that oppose the fight-or-flight response:
- Temperature (Tipping the Temperature) – This technique involves using cold temperatures to induce the “dive response.” For example, you can hold ice in your palms or dunk your face in a bowl of cold water for 30 seconds. The shock of cold triggers the mammalian dive reflex, which slows your heart rate, redirects blood flow to your brain and heart, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system – essentially telling your body to calm down. It’s like hitting a “reset” button on extreme anxiety. People often find that after doing this, their feelings of panic drop dramatically for a short period, giving them a window of clarity to use other coping skills. (If you’ve ever splashed cold water on your face when anxious, now you know why it helps!)
- Intense Exercise – Doing something physical, even briefly, can burn off excess adrenaline. Sprinting in place, doing jumping jacks, or any vigorous exercise for a minute or two signals to your body that if you were in danger, you’ve escaped it (because you “ran”). This can reduce the jittery sensations of anxiety. It also releases endorphins that naturally improve your sense of control.
- Paced Breathing – Anxiety often comes with rapid, shallow breathing, which can make dizziness and panic worse. Paced breathing means slowing your breath deliberately – for example, inhaling for a count of 4, exhaling for a count of 6 or 8. This longer exhale activates the calming side of your nervous system. It’s physiologically impossible to stay in full panic mode when you’re breathing slowly and deeply; your body starts to shift toward relaxation.
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) – Anxiety can cause muscle tension (tight shoulders, clenched fists, etc.), and in a vicious cycle, that physical tension feeds back into a feeling of stress. PMR is the practice of systematically tensing and then releasing each major muscle group. By doing so, you send signals of relaxation to your brain. It also refocuses your mind on a task (tensing/releasing), which can distract from racing thoughts. After a round of PMR, people tend to feel more grounded and less physically keyed up.
TheraHive’s expert clinicians have highlighted how effective these distress tolerance methods can be for anxiety. In a recent TheraHive panel discussion, Dr. Kiki Fehling (a DBT expert) noted that distress tolerance skills – especially the TIP skills – are “highly effective for the physiological agitation” common in anxiety and panic. By quickly lowering the “emotional temperature,” these techniques help stop spiraling rumination and worry in their tracks. They are even useful as a foundation for exposure therapy, because once you know you can calm your body’s panic response, it’s easier to deliberately face feared situations as part of overcoming anxiety.
It’s important to remember that distress tolerance skills are short-term strategies. They don’t eliminate the causes of anxiety; rather, they prevent you from doing something unhelpful (like running out of the room or self-medicating with alcohol) when panic hits. Think of them as the emotional equivalent of having a first-aid kit. If you regularly struggle with panic attacks or intense bursts of anxiety, assembling a “toolkit” of distress tolerance skills can give you confidence that you can handle it. Many people find that just knowing “I have ways to cope if anxiety strikes” reduces the fear of the fear itself.
Emotion Regulation: Reducing Vulnerability to Anxiety
Beyond handling acute episodes, DBT dedicates a whole module to Emotion Regulation – building habits that keep your overall emotional life more stable and positive. For those with chronic anxiety, this is crucial. Emotion regulation skills in DBT help you prevent extreme moods and respond to feelings in healthier ways, so that anxiety doesn’t get as much fuel to begin with.
Some core emotion regulation strategies taught in DBT include:
- Identifying and labeling emotions: Often, just clearly recognizing “I am feeling anxious right now” (rather than a vague sense of doom) can be the first step to managing it. DBT encourages tracking and naming emotions, which increases self-awareness. With anxiety, you might learn to catch the early signs – like noticing, “I’m feeling a tightness in my chest and racing thoughts; this is anxiety building.” Early recognition allows for earlier intervention with skills.
- Check the facts: Anxious minds tend to jump to conclusions or catastrophize (e.g. “My boss emailed ‘see me’ – I’m going to get fired!”). DBT teaches you to challenge these interpretations by checking evidence. Maybe your boss often has quick check-ins, and nothing bad has happened. By re-examining the situation, you often find a less alarming explanation, which can significantly dial down anxiety.
- Opposite Action for unjustified fear: If an emotion doesn’t fit the facts or is unhelpfully intense, DBT suggests doing the opposite of what that emotion pushes you to do. For fear and anxiety, the urge is usually to escape or avoid. The Opposite Action is, as mentioned, to approach or face the fear (in a safe, controlled way). This technique is essentially a form of exposure – one of the most evidence-based treatments for phobias and anxiety. By gradual exposure to what you fear, your anxiety response habituates and decreases over time. For example, if you have social anxiety and feel like hiding at home, Opposite Action would be to maybe attend a small gathering or say hello to a coworker, even though you feel nervous. Repeating these opposite actions teaches your body and brain that the situation is not truly dangerous – and the fear begins to subside. As our TheraHive blog post “Doing the Hard Thing: Embracing Challenges with DBT Skills” explains, using Opposite Action in the face of anxiety can break the cycle of avoidance and build confidence. You start proving to yourself, one step at a time, that you can handle the things anxiety told you that you couldn’t.
By practicing these kinds of emotion regulation skills, people with anxiety become less vulnerable to extreme highs and lows of fear. They can catch anxious feelings early and respond more thoughtfully, and they build an emotional resilience that makes everyday stressors less likely to trigger a spiral. In fact, emerging research supports that strengthening emotion regulation directly correlates with reduced anxiety. A 2025 study found that improving emotion regulation skills led to lower anxiety severity, in part by increasing psychological resilience. In other words, as you get better at managing your emotions in general, anxiety has a smaller foothold in your life. You’re training your brain to stay calmer and more balanced, so it’s harder for anxious feelings to run away with you.
- Accumulating positive experiences: Anxiety can make life feel restricted and grim. DBT encourages deliberately scheduling enjoyable or meaningful activities into your life as a way to buffer against negative emotions. This might seem indirect, but it’s powerful – positive experiences, even small ones like spending time on a hobby or with supportive friends, help balance out stress. Over time, having a life that contains joy, connection, and mastery can lower baseline anxiety. It’s harder for anxiety to dominate when you regularly experience accomplishment or fun. Think of it as strengthening your emotional “immune system” so that worries have less impact.
- PLEASE skills (Physical health): DBT reminds us that Emotion Regulation is also about taking care of our body, because our physical vulnerability affects our emotional susceptibility. The PLEASE acronym covers things like Treating PhysicaL illness, balanced Eating, Avoiding mood-altering substances, getting good Sleep, and Exercise. Each of these factors can play a role in anxiety. (For instance, caffeine or lack of sleep can drastically heighten anxiety symptoms in many people.) By maintaining your physical wellness, you reduce unnecessary spikes in anxiety that come from the body being out of balance.
Interpersonal Effectiveness: Easing Anxiety in Relationships
At first glance, interpersonal effectiveness – the DBT module that teaches communication and relationship skills – might not seem directly related to anxiety. It’s true that this set of skills was primarily designed to help people improve assertiveness, set boundaries, and navigate conflict without damaging relationships. However, interpersonal stress is a major trigger or amplifier for anxiety in many individuals. Social anxieties, fears of rejection, or constant worry about others’ opinions can all feed into an anxiety problem. This is where interpersonal effectiveness tools can make a difference.
Using DBT interpersonal skills, individuals learn how to ask for what they need, say no when necessary, and handle conflicts in a healthy, self-respecting way. As a result, relationships often become more stable and supportive, rather than chaotic or tense. This reliably translates into reduced anxiety. When you know you have the skills to deal with a tricky situation with your boss, or to have an honest conversation with a friend who hurt your feelings, those scenarios lose a lot of their scariness. You no longer spend as much time anxiously overthinking social interactions, because you feel more equipped to manage them.
For example, one interpersonal skill is DEAR MAN (from the DBT acronym for Describe, Express, Assert, Reinforce, Mindful, Appear confident, Negotiate), used for effective assertive communication. If someone with anxiety is upset with a coworker but is terrified of confrontation, they might normally stay silent and ruminate about it for weeks – fueling anxiety about going to work. With DBT, they could use DEAR MAN to plan out a respectful conversation to address the issue, reducing the ongoing stress. Better communication can preempt a lot of anxieties that arise from misunderstandings or unspoken issues.
TheraHive’s blog points out that interpersonal effectiveness skills can make relationships less stressful – which in turn helps ease anxiety. Being able to clearly express your needs without starting an argument or apologizing profusely can be empowering. “Imagine being able to express your needs clearly without conflict or misunderstanding, making your relationships more fulfilling and less stressful,” our Who Is DBT For? article explains. By improving your interactions and reducing unnecessary drama or guilt, these skills take a load off your mind. For someone prone to social anxiety, even small wins like confidently declining an invite when you’re overbooked, or asking a friend for support when you’re struggling, can chip away at the power anxiety holds. Over time, you build a sense of competence in dealing with people – and since humans are a major source of both joy and stress, this competence can significantly lower background anxiety.
It’s worth noting that interpersonal effectiveness skills might be more or less relevant depending on the nature of one’s anxiety. For example, social anxiety disorder is an obvious area where these skills help by building social confidence. But even for other anxiety issues (generalized anxiety, panic disorder, etc.), having a strong support network and communicating well with loved ones and healthcare providers is beneficial. By reducing conflict and increasing support, you create an environment that is less conducive to constant anxiety.
Is There Evidence That DBT Works for Anxiety?
DBT is well-established as an evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder and related issues, but what about its efficacy specifically for anxiety? Research in recent years indicates that DBT can indeed help reduce anxiety, though often it’s studied as an adjunct or in transdiagnostic populations (people with mixed diagnoses). Here’s a look at what the science says:
- Improvement in Anxiety Symptoms: Many studies have reported that when people learn DBT skills, their anxiety levels go down. For instance, a comprehensive review in Psychiatric Times notes that DBT skills training has been found more effective than other treatments in reducing anxiety severity among individuals with high emotion dysregulation (like those with borderline personality disorder or childhood trauma histories). In one analysis, treatments that included DBT skills (group training) were significantly better at lowering anxiety than the same treatments without the skills component. This suggests it’s truly the skills – mindfulness, regulation techniques, etc. – that contribute to anxiety relief. Even though these studies weren’t on “anxiety disorder” patients per se, the findings are important: they show DBT skills have a general anxiety-reducing effect across different populations.
- DBT vs. Traditional Therapy for Anxiety: A recent randomized controlled trial in 2023 directly compared DBT to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Both therapies were given over 16 sessions. The results showed that both CBT and DBT significantly reduced anxiety and depression symptoms in GAD patients by the end of treatment. Neither was clearly superior in symptom reduction – which is actually encouraging for DBT, given that CBT is the gold-standard for GAD. Interestingly, the study found DBT had an additional benefit: it led to improved executive functioning (cognitive abilities like planning and impulse control) more than CBT did. The researchers interpreted this as DBT’s focus on emotion regulation possibly enhancing cognitive clarity. What this means in practical terms is that DBT can hold its own as a viable approach for anxiety disorders like GAD, and it might offer some unique advantages (like helping you think more clearly under stress). It’s one study, but it adds to the evidence that DBT is a legitimate option for treating anxiety, not just borderline personality disorder.
- Stand-alone DBT Skills Groups: One of the exciting developments is research on DBT skills groups or classes for people with anxiety and depression. These are typically shorter programs (say 8–12 weeks) focused only on teaching DBT coping skills, without the full individual therapy component of standard DBT. For example, a pilot RCT by Andrada Neacsiu and colleagues at Duke and U.W. tested a 16-week DBT skills group for adults with high emotion dysregulation who had anxiety and/or depression (but not borderline personality). The results were quite impressive: the DBT skills group significantly decreased participants’ anxiety levels compared to a support group control, with a large effect size (d = 1.37). Participants also improved in emotion regulation (not surprisingly) and in using the DBT skills. In fact, the more people practiced the skills, the more their anxiety went down – suggesting that skills use was a key mediator of improvement. The authors concluded that DBT skills training is a promising treatment for emotionally dysregulated anxious and depressed adults. This kind of evidence is directly relevant to psychoeducational programs like TheraHive, which offer stand-alone DBT skills training. It shows that even without intensive one-on-one therapy, learning DBT skills in a class format can yield real reductions in anxiety. Subsequent studies (including an upcoming 2024 trial) are continuing to explore online DBT skills groups for anxiety and depression, with initial reports finding them feasible and helpful.
- Distress Tolerance and Anxiety Disorders: As discussed earlier, low distress tolerance is linked with anxiety pathology – many anxiety disorders persist because the person struggles to tolerate the feeling of anxiety itself, leading to avoidance (which then reinforces the anxiety). Research in clinical psychology has observed that individuals with anxiety often have poorer distress tolerance, and this is a maintaining factor in disorders like panic disorder and GAD. The good news is, DBT specifically targets distress tolerance. Multiple studies suggest that interventions to improve distress tolerance can be effective in treating generalized anxiety disorder and depression. By learning DBT crisis survival skills, patients become less afraid of their own anxiety sensations. This allows them to engage more fully in other therapies (like doing exposures in CBT) and to live their lives without anxiety shutting them down. So while distress tolerance isn’t a complete treatment on its own, it’s a critical piece of the puzzle that DBT adds, backed by research.
- Broader Outcomes: Some studies look at functional improvements – not just symptom checklists. For example, after DBT training, patients often report better quality of life and social functioning, which tie into anxiety outcomes. The Verywell Mind review of DBT notes that beyond diagnoses, DBT tends to help people of all ages learn to handle strong emotions and stress successfully. And when you can cope with stress better, you naturally feel less anxiety in challenging situations. Another interesting line of research is in populations like people with medical conditions (e.g. chronic pain) who have anxiety – DBT skills have been adapted in those settings with positive results on anxiety and distress levels.
Overall, the research base, while still growing, supports the idea that DBT’s skill-focused approach can reduce anxiety and improve anxiety-related coping. It may be used on its own in some cases or as a complement to other treatments. For instance, some therapists integrate DBT skills training into treatment plans for anxious patients even if they’re primarily doing CBT or medication management. The skills are tools that patients can use between sessions, empowering them to handle anxiety in real time.
Psychoeducation and Self-Empowerment: DBT as an Educational Approach to Anxiety
One aspect of DBT that aligns perfectly with anxiety care (and with TheraHive’s mission) is that DBT is very much a psychoeducational model. Marsha Linehan herself often described DBT skills training classes as similar to taking a course – you learn theory, you get homework, you practice skills, and you build competence over time. For adults seeking help with anxiety, this is a refreshing alternative or supplement to traditional therapy. It frames coping as a set of learnable skills rather than something innate you either have or don’t have.
Why is psychoeducation important for anxiety? Research shows that when people understand what’s happening in their bodies and minds during anxiety, and when they have a clear toolkit of strategies, their sense of helplessness decreases. Psychoeducation literally means “education for the psyche,” and in anxiety it can include learning about the physiology of the stress response, learning that panic symptoms (like a pounding heart or dizziness) are not dangerous but a natural bodily reaction, and learning exactly what techniques can modulate those responses.
DBT fits this because it is very skills-oriented and manualized – there are specific modules and handouts, and clients are often given worksheets and exercises to learn and practice. In a DBT skills group (such as those TheraHive offers), you might learn about the science of the vagus nerve in one session (to understand why paced breathing works), practice the breathing in class, get assigned to use it during the week when anxiety comes up, and then report back. This approach treats anxiety management as a set of skills you can get better at, rather than a mysterious affliction.
For many adults and families, that perspective is empowering. It emphasizes self-efficacy: you can do things to help yourself feel better. Each skill learned is one more tool in your coping toolbox. Over time, as your toolbox fills, anxiety loses its dominance because you have multiple ways to respond to it. Indeed, in the DBT skills group trial mentioned earlier, participants who improved noted that knowing what to do when they felt anxious made them less fearful of the anxiety itself.
Another advantage of a psychoeducational DBT approach is accessibility. Not everyone needs or wants long-term therapy for anxiety, especially if their anxiety is moderate or situational. Some may not have access to a therapist readily, or they may be on a waiting list. A structured course in DBT skills (whether in-person or online) can provide immediate, practical benefits and can be taken by anyone motivated to learn. It can also complement therapy – for example, some therapists refer clients to DBT skills classes to bolster their coping abilities between sessions.
TheraHive focuses on providing these kinds of educational DBT programs. We are not a therapy clinic; rather, we equip individuals with evidence-based DBT strategies through courses and coaching. This aligns with findings that web-based and group-based DBT interventions can be effective. A study in Psychiatric Services noted that a web-based DBT skills training intervention led to improved emotion regulation and reduced anxiety and depression symptoms in participants with mood disorders. Similarly, a pilot of an online DBT skills group for college students with anxiety showed high acceptability – students reported feeling more in control of their anxiety after learning the skills, and they liked the convenience of an online class. These kinds of outcomes highlight that delivering DBT in a class/workshop format is feasible and helpful. It’s essentially taking the psychoeducation component of therapy and turning it into a standalone resource.
For adult individuals or family members looking to help an anxious loved one, a psychoeducational DBT course can also serve as a starting point. It provides a strong foundation of coping techniques and emotional insights. With that foundation, one can then decide if further therapy is needed. Many people find that after mastering DBT basics – mindfulness, using opposite action, balancing acceptance/change – they feel significantly more equipped to handle anxiety on their own. Others might still pursue therapy for deeper issues, but even then they can bring their DBT skills into those therapy sessions (making progress faster, since they already have tools to regulate distress during difficult therapeutic work).
Lastly, psychoeducation normalizes the experience. In a DBT skills group, you’re learning alongside others, which can reduce the shame or isolation that sometimes accompanies chronic anxiety. You realize you’re not alone and that anxiety is a common, treatable human experience. The focus on education and skills fosters a collaborative, proactive mindset: “We’re all here to learn how to suffer less and live more fully.” For anxious individuals who often feel at the mercy of their nerves, this atmosphere can be incredibly validating and motivating.
Conclusion
In conclusion, DBT offers a multifaceted, evidence-backed toolkit for managing anxiety. By teaching mindfulness to ground yourself, distress tolerance to survive the tough moments, emotion regulation to build long-term resilience, and interpersonal skills to ease relationship stress, DBT addresses anxiety from every angle – thoughts, emotions, body, and environment. It’s a framework that emphasizes skills over symptoms, giving you active ways to cope rather than just talking about worries.
While DBT is not a traditional first-line therapy for anxiety in the way CBT is, it complements and in some cases enhances standard anxiety treatments. Its effectiveness is supported by research findings of reduced anxiety severity and improved coping in various groups. More importantly, the personal experiences of many using DBT skills reflect feeling calmer, more in control, and less fearful of fear itself.
For adults with anxiety (and their families), exploring DBT skills can be a empowering step. It’s about learning to be your own coach through anxious times – using breathing to calm down, using opposite action to face what scares you, using mindfulness to keep perspective, and using relationship skills to draw support from others. DBT is ultimately often described as teaching a “life worth living,” and for someone with anxiety, a life worth living is one where anxiety no longer calls all the shots. The skills of DBT can help you reclaim your life from anxiety, one mindful step at a time.
If you’re interested in learning these techniques, consider checking out resources like TheraHive’s blog and courses, where we delve into topics such as using the SUDS scale to track anxiety, the STOP skill for overwhelming emotions, and balancing acceptance and change in everyday life. By investing time in psychoeducation and practice, you can transform your relationship with anxiety – moving from feeling victimized by it to skilled at managing it. With DBT, anxiety relief is not a vague promise but a set of skills you can see yourself getting better at week by week, empowering you to move forward with greater confidence and peace of mind.
References
- TheraHive Blog – Who Is DBT For? (Mindfulness reducing anxiety)
- TheraHive Blog – Doing the Hard Thing: Embracing Challenges with DBT Skills (Opposite Action and facing fears)
- TheraHive Blog – Panel: The Power of DBT for Distress Tolerance (TIP skills for anxiety/panic)
- Psychology Today – “Ice and Anxiety” (Mammalian Dive Reflex explanation)
- Psychiatric Times – Miller AL et al., 2018 (DBT skills reduce anxiety and mediate outcomes)
- PubMed – Neacsiu et al., 2014 (DBT skills training RCT: reduced anxiety in depressed/anxious adults)
- PubMed – 2023 RCT in GAD (DBT vs CBT: both reduced anxiety; DBT improved executive function)
- Wikipedia – Distress Tolerance (low distress tolerance linked to anxiety; building it aids GAD/depression treatment)
- Springer – Do et al., 2025 (Emotion regulation skills correlate with lower anxiety; resilience mediates effect)
.png){kind=icon}