Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for DID--The Workbook: System-Affirming Skills, Mindfulness Practices, and Emotional Regulation Exercises for People with Dissociative Identities

by Johanna Knyn

An affirming, stigma-free workbook for systems and readers with dissociative identities—for readers of Dissociation Made Simple and The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Workbook

Empowering DBT skills for grounding, emotional regulation, values-guided action, and interpersonal effectiveness

The DBT Workbook for Dissociation is an empowering guide and an invitation to explore what living well with dissociative identities means to you—at your own pace, and on your own terms.

Unlike other resources written for readers with DID, this workbook honors all your parts—and embraces your multiplicity. Its goal isn’t to deny or stifle your it welcomes you as you are, teaching you to trust your internal community and build radical acceptance. This workbook is designed to support your journey toward wellness, however you define that for yourselves. 

The workbook includes 4  

Grounding Skills offers foundational tools to help you connect with the present moment, mindfully relate to body-based experiences like pain and illness, and honor your internal experience with radical acceptance.
Emotional Regulation Skills includes exercises to help you understand your emotions and make sense of your feelings.
Values-Guided Action Skills helps you identify your values and take committed action in alignment with those values.
Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills gives you tools for communicating with others, setting boundaries, and developing your internal relationships.

With gentle check-ins, mindful activity breaks, and bonus exercises like Why Am I Behaving This Way? and the Difficult Emotions Decision Tree, this workbook is grounded in care, compassion, and consent. It offers overviews of key concepts like the Window of Tolerance and “Safe-Enough versus Safe”, inviting you to build supportive containers for building your DBT skills. It also provides guidance and checklists to help you create a comfortable environment that accommodates different sensory needs as you embark on this workbook.

Genres: Self Help, Psychology, Mental Health

280 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2025

Reviews

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good beginner workbook for people with DID who want to implement DBT practices. It’s difficult to really cover DBT well in a workbook of this size since it is such a lot of material and typically takes two years of group meetings to fully cover it, plus this is adding the additional subject matter of DID. Not all people with DID will resonate with how she addresses it, the terms she uses, or her perspective of what it is like (she is a practitioner who specializes in it but she does not have DID). She is accepting and affirming though. This will give a tiny bit of access to DBT skills, but it will probably still be very helpful for many.

I read a temporary digital copy of this book for review.

[Kira K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. I found that having a “how to use your workbook” as well as an “Orientation and key concepts” was great for making sure readers go into this book prepared. It explains the psychology terms well in the orientation such as a window of tolerance and I liked setting intentions at the beginning. The book is broken up well with the sections and chapters and has pretty illustrations too. The book is full of great exercises with something for everyone and many exercises can be useful for those who don’t have DID as well. The mandalas at the end of each chapter are a nice touch and can be used to colour in for a little decompression activity at the end of some potentially difficult work.

[Stephanie Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having a workbook like this specifically designed for systems is a game changer! Having the system specific tips scattered throughout makes it relatable and the language used to honour and validate functional multiplicity is really affirming.
Standard DBT has often missed the mark for systems as it hasn’t accounted for the multiple experiences that can be happening simultaneously, but with this workbook, Johanna has adapted the same theories and practices and made them relatable, achievable and safe! This is something we will go back to again and again as I feel the exercises can be adapted and experienced differently over time and as healing occurs.
Thank you for this Johanna!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got a copy of this book through NetGalley and was interested to read it to learn more about coping strategies that can be used for DID and might be useful to my clients. I found it to be written in a simple and affirming manner and I think anyone with DID could find some help here. The activities appear simple but I feel they would need to be repeated again and again which makes this more of a workbook for life than a one off activity.

[Regina Romblad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book!! The graphics are beautiful, well organized, and is so needed for this population. It normalizes the ability to feel "safe enough" and creates a tangible way to teach needed skills for emotional regulation, grounding, system communication and crisis with specific attention to comorbidity with dissociation. Can't wait to use this with my clients!