Emotion Regulation in DBT Family Therapy: Breaking Cycles of Invalidation

In This Post

DBT Skills for Family Therapy
DBT’s Six Levels of Validation
Validation and Respect Through DBT in Family Therapy
Conclusion
Additional Resources

DBT Skills for Family Therapy

In family therapy, building certain core skills can help clients see better results through the therapy process. DBT has a range of skills that, while not specifically designed for family therapy, can have a powerful impact in those settings.

Radical Acceptance

DBT teaches that fighting reality inevitably leads to suffering. Radical Acceptance teaches family members to acknowledge that feelings are real, whether or not they agree with them. For example, a parent might not understand why their teen feels rejected after a minor conflict, but can still accept that this is the teen’s experience. In family therapy, this skill can help undo conflicts over whether someone is having an appropriate reaction. Even when a family member feels that another is acting inappropriately, they can acknowledge the other’s feelings are real.
Mindfulness and Observing Emotion

DBT mindfulness skills provide immediate benefits and support many other skills that can be impactful in family therapy. Mindfulness trains family therapy clients to notice their own thoughts and feelings without responding. Many invalidating comments and actions come from automatic judgments or discomfort. By creating space to pause and observe, parents and partners can respond more thoughtfully instead of reflexively minimizing or countering.

Non-judgmental Stance

Mindfulness incorporates a non-judgmental stance, which encourages listening with openness rather than leaping to criticize. Relationships between family therapy clients are often heavily impacted by patterns of judgment and invalidation. Learning to listen without judgment can help interrupt this pattern.

DBT’s Six Levels of Validation

DBT describes six levels of validation. These levels create a progression from respectful listening to full validation. By breaking validation into stages, family therapy clients can work their way through them, focusing on the areas they find most challenging.

Paying Attention. The first level of validation starts by showing whoever is speaking that you are actively listening.

Reflecting Back. This level of validation uses a technique in which the listener restates or summarizes what they heard. This is especially useful in family therapy where there is a dynamic of quickly reacting or countering when a person speaks.

Reading Minds. This level of validation acknowledges that not all communication is verbal. In family therapy, teaching clients to look for non-verbal signals can be very impactful when certain family members have learned over time that their verbal communications will be shut down.

Understanding. This type of validation moves beyond attention and listening to having a family member put themselves in another person’s shoes. This can mean using the family therapy process to help clients understand why someone felt or acted the way that they did in an intense situation.

Acknowledging the Valid. This level of validation combines reflection and understanding to bring clients to the point of stating that another person’s thoughts and feelings make sense, given their context.

Showing Equality. The final level of validation shows full empathy toward another. This can be a central goal of family therapy for many clients.

Validation and Respect Through DBT in Family Therapy

While validation is a key step, and one that can be facilitated directly in family therapy sessions, clients also need interactive skills that allow them to acknowledge one another’s feelings while staying true to themselves. This acknowledgement provides a new path forward that can prevent problematic patterns from restarting. DBT’s FAST and GIVE skills can help break through cycles of invalidation, particularly those that occur during conflicts.

GIVE is an interpersonal skill that helps maintain a friendly exchange when things might otherwise be contentious. The acronym stands for Gentle, (act) Interested, Validate, Easy manner. This skill encourages clients to take a friendly approach to most situations, and to avoid blaming, name-calling and the like. In family therapy, clients can learn to interact in a respectful way by being gentle and easy-mannered, while staying present by being interested and validating. Unlearning certain behaviors can leave clients lost about what to do instead, and these skills provide a proactive path forward.

Simply learning to adopt this approach can be a major step for many clients. However, it is also important to be able to maintain a healthy self-respect, particularly during conflicts, and that is where the FAST skill can be quite useful.

FAST stands for Fair, Apologize, Stick to values, Truthful. Family therapy clients can use this as a roadmap for difficult conversations. By being fair in statements and requests, the family member acknowledges a baseline mutual respect. Apologies can be given where warranted without over-apologizing. Adhering to one’s own beliefs and values is critical to retaining self-respect, and being truthful cuts through any notion of ulterior motives.

The FAST skill connects back to radical acceptance, because both often are used to deal with hard truths and difficult situations. Learning to handle these without avoidance, manipulation, or unwarranted compromise can cut through the cycles that brought clients to seek family therapy in the first place.

Conclusion

Family therapy presents a host of unique challenges, but also the opportunity to work through issues in clients’ core relationships. DBT offers powerful skills and methods that provide structure to what can feel like nebulous and intractable problems. Integrating DBT into family therapy can help reprogram patterns of invalidation. These patterns can make family members feel unseen or unloved, and breaking through them can be key to long-term healing.

DBT skills can both set clients on a better course and regrow self-respect. When families learn these skills together, it gives them new abilities and a common vocabulary with which to solve problems and navigate conflicts. Through family therapy, they can recognize invalidation and stop it before it starts.