DBT therapy, otherwise known by its full name: Dialectical Behavior Therapy, is a form of therapy designed to help people who have difficulty modulating their emotions.
You might read online that it was initially developed to treat people suffering from BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).
While that’s basically true, it can really benefit anyone who is struggling with certain problems, principally emotional overload and emotional regulation.
Being near NYC as we are, this is something we see people going through a lot.
And we have not been shocked by the rise in popularity of DBT therapy in Long Island, NY.
This particular part of the country is pretty famous (or infamous) for winding people up and driving them crazy .
So, don’t think that it’s only happening to you, but do try to follow these tips to find the best mental health practitioner for your needs.
Ask The Right Questions As you would hopefully do with any healthcare provider, procedure, medication, or anything else that involves your physical health and well-being, it’s good and responsible to ask questions.
Really, as many questions as you can think of, and then try to think of more.
Any decent healthcare professional, whether dealing with physical or mental health, should be someone you can trust.
And part of building that trust is establishing from the start that it’s ok for you to ask questions until you’re comfortable with whatever the prescription, procedure, or treatment plan is.
Especially when it comes to mental health care, if you can’t trust your provider, then you’d be better off finding a different one.
Frankly, a mental healthcare provider that you can’t trust is arguably worse than having no mental healthcare at all.
Trust is absolutely everything in healthcare.
So, cover all your bases and don’t leave any stones unturned.
Here, we even wrote a list of questions to ask back in July of last year to help get you started .
By the way, if it looks like we repeated some of the questions on that list, that’s because we did.
We repeated them on purpose to make the point that it’s ok to ask the same question twice.
The bar for whether or not it’s enough is whether or not you’re comfortable yet.
Know That DBT Might Not Ultimately Be The Thing For You There are some great options among the mental healthcare professionals who provide DBT therapy in Long Island, NY.
However, you may find out in the end that DBT isn’t the ideal approach for your situation.
It may be that you discover this after trying it and determining with your therapist that the results just aren’t as good as you’d like.
Alternatively, your therapist could make the determination after seeing you that you’d probably respond better to a different method, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Not everyone’s case is the same , and you may or may not have needs that are different.
Whatever you’ve read online or heard elsewhere, it’s good to get assessed by a therapist first before getting yourself emotionally attached to the idea of DBT.
That way, you can avoid self-diagnosing (we’ve all done it) or developing an incorrect understanding of DBT and your other therapeutic options before you ever see a therapist.
Long Island Is Bigger Than Most People Think It gets overshadowed by New York City for unsurprising reasons, but this place is actually pretty sizeable.
If you take it solely on the basis of land area, it’s similar in size to the state of Rhode Island and is aout 40% larger than the sovereign European nation of Luxembourg .
It also stretches from the east coast of New Jersey, past New York and Connecticut, all the way to Rhode Island.
So, it has a long shape that makes it far longer from east to west than it is north to south.
Because of all that, your best options for DBT therapy in Long Island, NY, will be based largely on which part of the island you’re on.
If you’re located on the eastern tip in Montauk, you’d do better to find a provider around that area because it will take around 2-3 hours for you to drive all the way to Great Neck, where we are.
There are enough providers in the region that you should be able to find a decent one within 30-60 minutes of your house/apartment.
Be Prepared to Actually Commit to a Treatment Program Whichever therapy method you and your therapist agree on, long-term success will depend upon consistency.
That’s a big reason why we were so insistent upon asking questions and building trust at the beginning of this article.
If you want to experience the long-term benefits of therapy, you’ll need to make the long-term efforts to get them.
As with any other method of treatment, a qualified therapist can provide you with DBT therapy in Long Island, NY, but you’ll need to go into it with a ready mindset.
What we mean by that is that your therapist can lead you to the door and even hold your hand as you walk through it together, but there is no version of a success story that doesn’t include you going through that door and staying on the other side of it.
So whatever the treatment plan is, decide that you’re ready to stick to it and see it through before agreeing to it with your therapist.
Even a suboptimal plan that’s done to completion is superior to an ideal plan that you quit 2 months after starting .
There’s Always Hope We know it’s clichéd to say this, but try to keep your chin up!
The fact that you’re reading this article and that you’ve made it all the way through it means that you’re taking the first step.
That step is recognizing that there is an issue you’re struggling with and that you’re ok with asking for help with it.
No matter who you are, we all eventually experience things that we might not be ready and willing to process and overcome all by ourselves.
If everyone were like that, humans never would have created societies.
Like everyone else, you need help sometimes, and you probably don’t want to live your whole life and do everything all alone.
That doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human.
