5 DBT Skills for Mood Swings

Kat Schultz
6 hours ago
3 min read

Two eggs with distressed faces drawn on the shells sit in an open carton

Many folks who come to DBT experience shifting moods that can be rapid and destabilizing. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has skills intended to help improve emotion regulation and bring balance to your life.

DBT is a synthesis of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Zen Buddhism. It incorporates the foundation of CBT with mindfulness skills. It's used to treat emotion dysregulation and self-destructive behaviors, among other mental health struggles.

There are more than 5 DBT skills that may help with mood swings but here are 5 to try first:

PLEASE

The PLEASE acronym is an Emotion Regulation skill that encourages you to take care of your body in order to build a stable emotional foundation. PL stands for manage any PhysicaL symptoms you have. For example, take a painkiller if you have a headache or cold or allergy medicine if you're congested. E stands for balance your Eating. Eat what feels good to your body and soul. A stands for Avoid non-prescribed substances as these can affect your mood. S stands for get balanced Sleep, get the amount that feels good to you. And the second E stands for get balanced body movEment. Move your body in ways that feel good to you. These all build together to reduce physical vulnerability that can lead to shifting emotions. It's a great place to start if you're having mood swings.

Opposite Action

Opposite to Emotion Action (the full name for the skill known colloquially as Opposite Action) is another Emotion Regulation skill. Every emotion comes with an action urge, a behavior that the emotion encourages us to do. This skill is about finding the opposite behavior to the urge and doing that instead. So when you're experiencing an intense mood and perhaps want to act in a way that wouldn't be the best for you, find the opposite action to do. For example, the urge associated with fear is to run, and if that doesn't make sense for the situation or isn't what you want to do, find the opposite. For fear that would be to approach.

Wise Mind

Wise Mind is a Mindfulness skill that helps you synthesize emotion and logic to find the best place to make decisions from. Some people conceptualize Wise Mind as their conscience, a higher power, or their intuition. Finding Wise Mind can help you find the dialectical perspective, so you can hold opposing truths at the same time and resist black-and-white thinking. Mood swings often encourage black-and-white thinking within us as our emotions shift from one extreme to another. Wise Mind can help us find that middle path.

Mindfulness Skills

Other Mindfulness skills such as the What and How skills can help us slow down our emotional processes so we have time to intervene with skills and consider our next move from Wise Mind. They take practice, but once your mindfulness muscle is strengthened, you'll notice a difference. The idea is to focus entirely on observing and describing your internal and external happenings in a nonjudgmental way and then to participate in your present moment as effectively as you can.

STOP

STOP is a Distress Tolerance skill. When our mood starts to intensify, STOP can help us take a moment before reacting. The first step is literally to Stop what you're doing and freeze yourself before you react. Then Take a step back either literally or emotionally from the situation, maybe take a breath. Observe what is happening within and around you. When you're ready, Proceed mindfully. Return to the situation and act in alignment with your goals and values.

Try these DBT skills when you find yourself caught in the tide of shifting moods in order to ground yourself and also reduce the likelihood of more mood swings in the future.

We teach these exercises as part of our DBT trainings for mental health providers and you can learn them for yourself in our self-paced DBT skills course.