Psychodynamic therapy is an evidence-based treatment that explores more than teaches. This type of treatment helps you discover implicit (unconscious) patterns affecting your life, like relationship patterns, or what emotions you tend to focus on or avoid. It also helps understand how things became the way they are. With enough insight, you can either accept things as they are, or change them.

DBT is an evidence-based treatment best known for helping with strong emotions (anger, fear, shame, sadness, etc.) and behaviours associated with them. It is more structured, and focused on doing things differently. The main skills domains in DBT are mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance (not making things worse when upset), and interpersonal effectiveness.

DBT skills coaching (DBC) is individual work focused on helping people integrate DBT skills into their lives. It is not intended for people with psychological disorders. In DBC, the goal is to learn how to do something different consistently. You might learn the skills from the group training, or you might decide to just start with the skills coaching. The skills are mindfulness (based in Zen), distress tolerance (how not to make things worse when upset), emotion regulation (understanding and managing emotions), and interpersonal effectiveness (assertiveness, relationship management, and self-esteem management).

These are group sessions, usually online, with up to 10 people per group. Half-day sessions focus on the shorter skills domains (mindfulness, distress tolerance) and full day workshops focus on either emotion regulation or interpersonal effectiveness. You may want to follow up the training with skills coaching. Dr. Sheppard’s DBT group skills training is not intended for people with psychological disorders. More comprehensive DBT will be available, hopefully in mid-to late 2026.