Four skill areas
Mindfulness (attention and awareness), distress tolerance (surviving crisis), emotion regulation (changing the intensity), and interpersonal effectiveness (asking, refusing, holding a relationship).
Therapy at Jasper Grove
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, skills for the feelings that feel like too much
Dialectical behavior therapy was built for people whose emotions arrive fast and hard, and it teaches concrete skills for surviving those moments without making them worse. For anyone who has used to get through an unbearable feeling, that is exactly the gap it fills.
What it helps with
Where this does its work.
Emotions that escalate faster than you can manage them
Getting through a crisis without using
Self-harm and suicidal thinking
Relationships that swing between too close and cut off
Impulsivity and acting before thinking
Chronic emptiness or instability in how you see yourself
Borderline personality disorder and related patterns
Tolerating distress that cannot be immediately fixed
What to expect
How the work actually goes.
No jargon, no mystery. Here's what this looks like as part of your care at Jasper Grove.
Skills you practise, not theory
DBT is taught. You learn specific techniques with names, practise them, and report back on what happened when you used them.
Both-and, not either-or
The 'dialectical' part means holding two true things at once: you are doing the best you can, and you need to do things differently. Neither cancels the other, and that stance is the method.
Distress tolerance first
Early work focuses on getting through the moments that have historically ended in use, because everything else depends on surviving those.
Individual and group
Skills are usually taught in group and applied to your own situations in individual sessions.
Ready to start the work?
Admissions answers 24/7. One call starts your plan and checks your coverage.
Call (317) 527-4529 Where it fits
About residential treatment One part of a bigger plan, under one roof.
Therapy isn't a separate program you sign up for — it's woven through residential treatment at Jasper Grove, alongside medical care and the other work of recovery. It's accepted through Indiana Medicaid and most major insurance, and we verify your exact cost up front before you commit to anything.
Common questions
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, answered.
How is DBT different from CBT?
CBT focuses on changing the thoughts behind behavior. DBT adds skills for managing intense emotions and staying steady in a crisis. They complement each other, and at Jasper Grove you may work with both.
Who does DBT help most?
DBT is especially useful when overwhelming emotions or self-destructive patterns are part of the picture — common when addiction and mental health conditions occur together.
What is DBT and how does it help with addiction?
Dialectical behavior therapy teaches four skill sets — mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. It helps with addiction because it directly addresses the moment where an unbearable feeling has historically been solved with a substance, and gives you something else to do there.
How is DBT different from CBT?
DBT grew out of CBT and keeps its structure, but adds an explicit focus on accepting distress rather than only changing thoughts, and on emotional intensity and relationships. CBT tends to fit thought-pattern work; DBT fits emotional volatility, impulsivity, and crisis. They're often used together.
What is distress tolerance?
A set of techniques for surviving an intense moment without making it worse — including physical interventions like cold water on the face, deliberate distraction, and self-soothing. It isn't about fixing the situation. It's about getting through the twenty minutes where the urge is at its peak.
Is DBT only for borderline personality disorder?
It was developed for BPD, but it's now widely used for substance use disorders, self-harm, eating disorders, and emotional dysregulation generally. You don't need a BPD diagnosis to benefit from the skills.
More therapy
Part of a fuller range of care.
The right therapy is different for each person — your plan draws on the ones that fit you. Explore the rest:
Take the next step
The right therapy is part of the right plan.
You don't have to sort out which approach you need — that's our job. Admissions answers 24/7. Call and we'll help you find the right starting point, and verify your coverage first.