DBT emotion regulation skills

DBT emotion regulation skills help you understand your emotions, reduce their intensity, and change unwanted emotions over time. Where distress tolerance helps you survive a crisis, emotion regulation works over the longer term to make emotional storms less frequent and less overwhelming.

Understanding and naming emotions

Regulation starts with awareness. These skills help you see an emotion clearly before deciding what to do with it:

• Naming the emotion — accurately labeling what you feel, which itself lowers reactivity.
• Checking the facts — asking whether the emotion fits the actual situation, or a story about it.
• Understanding the function — recognizing what the emotion is trying to do for you.

Changing emotional responses

• Opposite action — acting opposite to an unhelpful emotion’s urge (approach what you fear, engage when depression says withdraw).
• Problem solving — when the emotion fits the facts, changing the situation that causes it.

Reducing vulnerability

• PLEASE skills — treat PhysicaL illness, balanced Eating, Avoid mood-altering substances, balanced Sleep, Exercise. Caring for the body that carries your emotions.
• Accumulating positive emotions — building pleasant experiences in the short term and a life worth living in the long term.
• Building mastery — small, repeated successes that build confidence.
• Coping ahead — rehearsing a difficult situation in advance so you're ready to use your skills.

Where emotion regulation fits

Emotion regulation is one of the four DBT modules, alongside mindfulness, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. Not sure where to start? See what DBT skills are.

Learn emotion regulation in a live class

Our Introduction to DBT Skills course teaches emotion regulation and all four modules live over Zoom, with practice and feedback from a group.

Common questions

What are the DBT emotion regulation skills?

DBT emotion regulation skills help you understand, reduce, and change intense emotions. Core skills include checking the facts, opposite action, problem solving, the PLEASE skills for reducing vulnerability, accumulating positive emotions, building mastery, and coping ahead.

What is the PLEASE skill in DBT?

PLEASE is a DBT emotion regulation skill for reducing your vulnerability to intense emotions by caring for your body: treat PhysicaL illness, balanced Eating, Avoid mood-altering substances, balanced Sleep, and Exercise. A regulated body makes a regulated mind more possible.

What is opposite action in DBT?

Opposite action means acting opposite to an emotion’s urge when the emotion does not fit the facts or is not helpful — for example, approaching something you fear instead of avoiding it, or being kind when anger urges attack. Done fully and repeatedly, it changes the emotion.