Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills for Helping Teens Manage Mood Swings, Control Angry Outbursts, an

Instant Help Book for Teens

by Sheri Van Dijk

Let's face life gives you plenty of reasons to get angry, sad, scared, and frustrated-and those feelings are okay. But sometimes it can feel like your emotions are taking over, spinning out of control with a mind of their own. To make matters worse, these overwhelming emotions might be interfering with school, causing trouble in your relationships, and preventing you from living a happier life. Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens is a workbook that can help. In this book, you'll find new ways of managing your feelings so that you'll be ready to handle anything life sends your way. Based in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a type of therapy designed to help people who have a hard time handling their intense emotions, this workbook helps you learn the skills you need to ride the ups and downs of life with grace and confidence.

This book offers easy techniques to help •Stay calm and mindful in difficult situations
•Effectively manage out-of-control emotions
•Reduce the pain of intense emotions
•Get along with family and friends

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Parenting, Self Help, Counselling, Emotion

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

I am a psychotherapist working at Southlake Regional Health Centre and in private practice. I have a Master's degree in social work, and specialize in treating psychiatric disorders using dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness practice.

I have written several books that help readers use DBT skills to treat emotional problems, including The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder, The Bipolar Workbook for Teens (co-author), Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens, and Calming the Emotional Storm; and am the author of DBT Made Simple, a book that aims to teach clinicians how to use DBT with their clients diagnosed with a variety of emotional problems.

I'm just putting the finishing touches on my sixth book, which teaches teens DBT skills to help them be more effective in their relationships; look for this book to be published early in 2015.

In 2010 I won the R.O. Jones Award at the Canadian Psychiatric Association Annual Conference for my research on using DBT skills in a bipolar disorder group, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders in March, 2013.

Visit me at www.sherivandijk.com.

Reviews

[Nata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foarte fain subiectul acestei cărți. Despre terapia comportamentală dialectică în concordanță cu practicarea mindfulness (sănătatea mintală).

Cartea se adresează adolescenților. Cum să își gestioneze emoțiile, cum să și le accepte și cel mai important, să vorbească despre ceea ce simt, fie mamei, fie tatălui, unui prieten, oricărei persoane în care are încredere și nu va fi judecat, pentru că noi și așa ne autojudecăm suficient.

O găsesc foarte utilă, după fiecare capitol citit, autorea oferă studii de caz și în același timp, soluții și diferite practici, exerciții pe care un adolescent le-ar putea practica întru găsirea echilibrului emoțional. Cartea aceasta trebuie citită și de către părinți, așa veți ști cum să abordați anumite situații și comportamente. Tare mi-a plăcut cartea, practică și ușor de citit.

[Michelle Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this with Kati during our school time each day.

There were a LOT of helpful tips in here. But like they say in AA, "It works if you work it".

That's gonna be the crutch of this workbook. The child in mind is going ot have to work hard at it.

There are some tips that are useful to parents to provide the help, whether the child cares to "work it" or not. For example, they make a list of things that help calm them down when they get angry. So whenever my teen starts getting angry, I tell her to review her list and find something that calms her. This almost ALWAYS works.

Another thing is that I remind her of her goals. If your goal is to get along with sister, are you getting closer or further away from that goal with what you are doing right now? At which point, I might remind her to go read her calming list...or do something from her list of things she likes doing.

I think reviewing this book in another year will be really helpful to us both. We'll be able to see the growth and she can feel proud of herself.

Next we are reading The Anxiety Workbook for Teens: Activities to Help You Deal with Anxiety and Worry. I think the two will tie in nicely together.

For safety's sake, I read this TO my daughter. We are a very sheltered family and some of themes DO NOT apply to us. In that case, I would change the words to fit our lifestyle better.

[Tara D'Orazio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I marked about 1/3 of the activities for using in my therapy practice. Simple explanations and decent activities. Might feel too simple if you're well emotionally developed, but for teens who are just starting to learn conscious emotional regulation, it's a good fit. I especially enjoyed all of Chapter 4 on nonjudgmental communication and self validation.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very clear and concise exercises to apply DBT. I have found these exercises helpful when working with clients. DBT can get so wordy and philosophically confusing, but this workbook helps explain it in a simple way.

[lunarlibrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great workbook with fantastic tools for emotional regulation. I was hesitant to add a workbook to my high school library, since it's not exactly library-style to have a book people will potentially write-in. But honestly? If a student borrowed this and wrote it in, I totally support it and consider it library budget well spent.

This book works through many stages and variations of emotional dysregulation and how to get back into a regulated state (in both the short-term and long-term sense). Examples are appropriate for teenagers. The format was set-up just like a good teacher does in a classroom: Explanations that are brief but thorough, incorporating questions and space for readers to respond to during the explanation, following by a worksheet for teens to apply what they just learned. (I read through the questions and thought about my answers sometimes, and found even that half-assed approach to be a powerful tool-building experience.)

Personal Takes:
I am a very emotive person - my emotions are strong and my emotions *must be expressed*. It is one of my biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses. (I've learned that some people are like... NOT in touch with how they feel about anything at any given moment. Repressed emotions still do their damage, regardless, and so I am finding it quite a superpower to be a more emotional person. I certainly feel like it helps me live life to the fullest sometimes, though the risk of a dysregulated outbursts can be high.)

Identifying your Emotions: This book says that the first building block is the ability to identify your emotions. When I taught in elementary school, we had emoji charts for kids to point to how they were feeling. You can't really solve it until you name it. I learned this tool a couple of years ago, to identify my emotion and validate why I might feel that way. ("I'm noticing that I am feeling embarrassed again because I'm remembering that stupid thing I said to my coworker. It was definitely a stupid thing to say, and being embarrassed is a natural reaction." This allows me to face it and chuckle at my tendency towards social blunders, which is a much better alternative than grimacing and covering my head in my hands for the next several weeks/months/years.)

Emotions - Thoughts - Behaviors: This book teaches you to be emotionally literate about yourself. It talks about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors seem completely interconnected, but how they can be independent from each other. I have heard this before, but I still struggle with comprehension.

Buckets and Mindfulness: When you allow yourself to dwell on the past and ruminate, your emotional bucket fill up with a lot of drudgery -- worries, anxiety, fear, frustration, etc. When that bucket gets fill up with all that, you are more likely to overflow emotionally if something else is added to it, like a normal day-to-day frustration. This is where mindfulness comes in. If you live in the moment, not getting emotionally involved with things in the past that you can't control, your bucket still has plenty of space left. You are less likely to get overwhelmed (or dysregulated) throughout the course of the day. I've read and heard a lot about mindfulness, but this is the first time I actually feel like I *got it*.

All in all 10/10. I'm recommending to students, staff, and librarian colleagues.

[Zhuo Zhang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is clear and simple on concepts. The main problem is how to apply those skills in real life.

[Shannon Vanderhyde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of great ideas and great exercises!

[Pamela Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good information. I’m going to pass the book along to the therapists I work with.

[Weasel · Rating 1 out of 5]

waste of time. pls don’t read this.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical tips to help perfectionists

This books lists practical ways for teens to cope with perfectionism, depression, and guides to effectively cope with negative thoughts and effective communication.

[Glen Grunau · Rating 4 out of 5]

This valuable workbook taps into the essence of dialectical behavior therapy skills and strategies in a simple, relevant, and highly practical format.

I've been on the lookout for a self-help book for teens that offers these valuable skills and I think I may have found it.

[BCPL Youth Services Librarian]

Click to see book in BCPL's online catalog

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book in the series. Easy to follow, well written, easy to understand and practical to use. I will be using this with my clients in the future!