Explaining Dialectics
DBT Skills for Adolescents and FamiliesSo Jill and I started doing DBT years ago and realized that dialectics and dialectical thinking, while a theoretical and philosophical underpinning of the treatment, was never formally taught to the patients. And when we were working with teens and families and seeing how they got polarized individually in their own thinking, black and white, and get polarized with one another in relation to one another? We said, wow. This is the time to teach them about this construct of dialectics and polarization, and how do we move towards a synthesis in the middle path? And how can we create some skills to help them do that? I want kids to understand I could do poorly on a test and still be a smart intellectual kid at the same time.
Because when they get upset, and they get dysregulated. They get very black and white. I'm either smart or I'm stupid. And that, my friends, is very problematic non-dialectical thinking.