Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT is a four step process that deals with almost every sort of emotional issue as well as develops a person's social skills and interactions. This type of therapy has been known to help individuals develop a person's sense of self and alleviate the empty feelings that people often feel. The process is quite a depth into one's soul and changes a person's outlook on life and how they process feelings. The steps are as follows and how they work is quite interesting.
Mindfulness
This process deals with a person's emotions and how to effectively manage them. This is the core process on which DBT's other 3 processes are managed. By putting emotions and their cause into perspective and being effective in dealing with them makes a person whole in nature and reduces negative effects on outlook and life in general. This process involves meditation which allows a person to calm their mind and emotions. By using meditation to look inward and examine emotion, one can alleviate the empty feelings of being alone.
Distress Tolerance
This process of DBT puts perspective in place for the individual by making them look at themselves and their situation in a non-judgmental fashion. This takes the emotional sting out of a person's situation and allows for introduction of solutions. This process allows the patient to push away negative thoughts and situations and perform activities they enjoy or find humor in things to force their mind to dwell on something else besides the negativity of their situation. This part of the process also involves self-soothing which helps a person calm themselves in moments of anxiety or anger over a situation. This assists with a person developing a strong sense of stability and helps them understand how others may have it far worse than they do.
Emotion Regulation
This process helps the individual indentify emotions and the situations that cause them. They then identify the obstacles to changing the emotion and behavior and the apply distress tolerance techniques to overcome the emotion. They also learn the PLEASE method to master the physical body using proper sleep, diet, exercise and avoidance of drugs and alcohol. This greatly helps people who would otherwise feel alone and empty by bringing themselves into physical balance. Those who feel physically well often feel mentally and emotionally well too.
Interpersonal Effectiveness
This process deals with how we as humans should properly deal with each other in relationships and society in general. Learning how to properly ask for what you want and be willing to assert yourself positively brings confidence and self esteem to an individual as well as giving them the skills to properly deal with things they want but do not get. This skill also teaches how to be willing to not only give of yourself to others but also how to properly say no to others. Learning not to be a pushover builds a sense of self and gives strength to the individual to evaluate requests of them. The patient learns how to properly communicate with others and be fair to those they deal with. Knowing how to properly attain and maintain relationships is the final step for those looking to escape the emptiness and the loneliness they often experience.
For an updated, more in-depth look at this topic, see Increasing Distress Tolerance in Treating BPD with DBT.