DBT Consultation Team

DBT Center of Orange County is what is referred to as an “adherent” DBT program. What this means is that we provide all of the aspects of treatment that Marsha Linehan, who created DBT in the 1990s, specified are required to be providing DBT according to its principles and protocols. These four aspects are; group skills training, individual therapy, phone coaching and DBT consultation team. In this blog, we will briefly explore the DBT consultation team.

Marsha Linehan realized that clinicians treating high risk, and often multi diagnosed clients, need support. More specifically, they need support in order to stay motivated when things get challenging and to continue to provide the treatment (DBT) in alignment with the way it is meant to be conducted.

Importantly, a DBT consultation team is considered to be a community of therapists treating a community of clients. We are all invested in each of our clients and in one another and in providing effective DBT. In their book, DBT Teams: Development and Practice, authors Marsha Linehan and Jennifer Sayers write, “This means that if a provider is struggling to provide effective care due to burnout, frustration, or life events, the team moves in and helps in some manner, because their teammate and the team’s client is struggling”.

In an adherent DBT program, consultation teams are required to meet regularly. Here at DBT Center of Orange County we meet every week. Attendance is pretty much mandatory with reasonable accommodation for the occasional necessary miss. 

DBT consultation teams are conducted within the core principles of DBT. First, and foremost, all DBT providers live, eat and breathe DBT themselves. All of the therapists at DBTOC are either intensively or foundationally trained in DBT. We all use DBT skills in both our professional and our personal lives. During our team meetings, we treat each other with the same respect, care and alignment with dialectics, behaviorism and the skills of DBT as we do our clients.