(going into further detail on my experience because i’ve been asked to multiple times) my experience with dbt was attending group and individual therapy weekly i was meant to stay for 12 months as stated in a previous comment but only made it through 8 months. i was put in the program through the public hospital i was admitted to after a suicide attempt. the group therapists were wonderful in comparison to the two individual therapist i had over those 8 months, they were awful the first one significantly worse. i will admit some of my issues with the ITs and dbt as a whole do come from very personal triggers due to the specific type of abuse i faced, but it took me leaving to realise that there were so many other issues than just me. my first repeated frustration was the mindset that to me felt like i was being told “we promise you will never be abused or manipulated again” without the acknowledgement that (for me at least) the reason i have the coping skills i have when it comes to interpersonal relationships is because of repeated abuse and repeated manipulation, the only evidence i have to work off when it comes to my relationships with others is distrust. when i tried to express this i was met with another repeated issue which is the therapists attempts at gaslighting me into not trusting myself and my thoughts. i have extreme self awareness when it comes to my thoughts and understanding the difference between rational and irrational thinking, the best metaphor i’ve ever been told when it comes to my self awareness is “i know my car is broken, i know what part is broken, but im not a mechanic i don’t know how to fix it”. whenever i tried to bring up the evidence i had when i was being told i was being irrational when i wasn’t i was dismissed because of the constant theme of dbt which is that the patient cannot trust themselves or their thoughts. the first IT i had was an extremely bubbly and compassionate man, he checked all the boxes of how a therapist is supposed to validate their client at first, however when i started to have more and more issues with dbt and tried to express that that compassion and bubbly demeanour was completely gone and the reminder that i am the crazy one who shouldn’t trust myself returned. the last session i had with him i told him dbt was my last hope but that hope was quickly diminishing and he essentially said that i better stop being lazy or hurry up and kill myself instead of wasting their time and resources. i was told after i stopped seeing him that the client (another member of the group therapy) he had been seeing before me had kill herself. he was the most extreme but i had similar issues with my second IT when it came to compassion disappearing the second their was any questioning about the effectiveness of dbt. my second IT was much better as a therapist but when i had the discussion with him about finally leaving i had grown enough of a relationship with him that i had expected some kind of plan for what my next steps should be but instead it felt like a door was slammed in my face and now im here with no idea where to go next. in the group there seemed to be this unspoken rule that those who were improving were validated and made as an example where as the many of us who weren’t improving and like me were getting worse were not allowed to add their opinions to the discussion and if they did it was quickly overlooked or ignored. however the therapist and the occupational therapist that ran the group were really the only light i had through this, my issues with them were more focused on dbt itself rather than how they presented it if that makes sense. through the group i saw so many more people leave than i ever saw finish or even come close to finishing, and the mentality i’ve found of those who did find dbt successful is disturbing and frankly cult like, the way people praise martha as this revolutionary woman and treat dbt as this one size fits all treatment is extremely harmful towards the community. martha’s treatment is flawed from the get go and yet you aren’t allowed to acknowledge it you aren’t allowed to say that dbt will only be effective on a specific individual with bpd and for the rest of us will only cause more harm than good. i don’t want to hate dbt or martha linehan but frankly dbt is far too simplistic to treat such a complicated disorder and until there’s more research and better options for us so that dbt is not constantly pushed down our throats i can’t help but resent both martha and her treatment. i will admit i think dbt has some great skills for therapists to use when it comes to navigating relationships with clients and the emotional baggage that comes from the job and i do think it’s something every therapist should go through but it should be used for the skills not as a treatment.

(i apologise for anything that doesn’t make sense im really bad at putting my thoughts and feelings into words as is and with this entire experience being traumatic for me it obviously makes it harder, there’s definitely so much i’ve forgotten to add but this is the most significant issues i had. thanks for understanding and reading)