As a behavioral treatment, DBT operates under the skills deficit model. This model suggests that problem behaviors arise from a lack of crucial skills such as mindfulness or the ability to tolerate distress. Using this model, DBT pushes skills like they’re candy at a grocery store checkout aisle. A skills training group is designed to teach members skills, give them opportunities to practice, and encourage them to use skills in everyday life. Phone coaching is meant to provide additional support to use skills in critical moments outside of sessions. Individual therapists have diary cards that track skill usage and help clients troubleshoot skills that aren’t working for them. DBT therapists participate in a weekly consultation team so WE can learn how to be more skillful. In DBT, all roads lead to skills.
To aid in teaching skills, DBT therapists often use behaviorist languages such as shaping and reinforcement. Using this language helps determine what is causing a problem behavior to continue or what is preventing an effective behavior from occurring. Because our goal is for you to become your own DBT therapist, I want to equip you with our lingo so I’ve compiled a list of behaviorist terms to help you learn how to speak behaviorism.
Reinforcement:
This is probably the most common term DBT therapists use. A reinforcer is something that increases the likelihood that a behavior will occur again. Your dog sits, you give them a treat. You just reinforced their sitting behavior. You study for a test and get an A; your professor is reinforcing your studying behavior. Practicing mindfulness allows you to appreciate the people around you which is reinforcing your mindfulness.
Positive reinforcement occurs when something is added to increase a behavior such as giving a dog a treat. Research indicates that positive reinforcement is the most effective way to teach a new behavior. So if you want to learn how to meditate or shoot a free throw, give yourself positive reinforcement each time you engage in that behavior. If you want people to text you more often, reinforce them for doing so.
A few important notes on reinforcement:
- The reinforcement must come immediately after the target behavior. Not five minutes later, not two hours later. Immediately.
- Figure out what is reinforcing for the person/animal. For example, my cats find cat treats reinforcing. I do not.
Punishment: Punishment, in behavioral terms, is when something decreases the likelihood that someone will engage in a behavior. For example, spraying a cat with squirt bottle whenever they get on the counters decreases the likelihood that they will get on the counters. Criticizing your own art will decrease the likelihood that you will create art.
Punishment is very rarely effective because it essentially teaches the person/animal to avoid getting caught and hurts relati onships. If you use a squirt bottle to teach your cat to stay off the counter, you’re actually just making your cat angry and teaching them to only get on counters while you’re away.
Shaping: Shaping consists of steadily increasing the difficulty of the target behavior. For example, a person who wants to be less shy might reinforce themselves for even thinking about talking with someone else. Then, they would reinforce themselves for saying hi to someone. Next, the person might increase the difficulty to having a 3 minute conversation and so on until they are having heartfelt conversations and standing up for themselves. The key is to selectively reinforce the behavior that is occurring, not only looking for the end goal behavior.
In DBT, we teach skills that can be very complex at times. Because we recognize this complexity and know the principles of shaping, we are like a dog with two tails whenever we see skillful behavior!
If someone uses phone coaching for the first time, that’s so exciting! Thank you for being so skillful and effective!
If someone has been trying to stop a problem behavior and resists it for two hours, way to go!! That’s two hours of skillful behavior! That’s what we want to see! Whatever you did for that two hours, do it more!
The cool thing about behaviorism is that it works even if you don’t believe in it, which is what makes psychology a science and not a religion. Because behaviorism works universally, keep an eye out for reinforcers and punishers in your daily life that impact your or others’ behavior. Consider reinforcing yourself or others for engaging in effective behavior and see what happens.
If you want to learn more about behaviorism and how to be more skillful, consider scheduling a session with one of our clinicians at CCDBT.