The Benefits of Actually Doing Your DBT Diary Card

Kat Schultz
11 minutes ago
2 min read

A hand holds a pen against an open notebook

Speaking from personal experience, diary cards are kind of a pain in the butt. You're ideally supposed to fill it out every day. Doing so means you have to actually think about how you feel and admit to having certain urges and doing certain behaviors. It can be an annoying and tiring task.

Diary cards are a core homework assignment in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT is a synthesis of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Zen Buddhism. It incorporates mindfulness skills into the foundation of CBT. It's used to treat emotion dysregulation and self-destructive behaviors, among other mental health struggles. Diary cards traditionally track emotions, urges, and behaviors on one side and then DBT skills you used on the other side.

So if diary cards are so annoying and tiring, why should we bother doing them? Well, there are a lot of reasons diary cards are an important component of DBT. Here are some of the benefits of doing your diary card.

Practicing Mindfulness

Filling out your diary card requires you to reflect on the emotions you've experienced that day. That's one main section of the card. From 0-5 how intense was your anger, sadness, joy, anxiety, etc. You really have to take a moment and think, "yea, how was my anxiety today?" You can even check in with yourself in the present and notice where you're at now. That's Observing and Describing, two DBT Mindfulness skills. So you can check that off your diary card skills list when you fill it out!

Noticing Patterns

Filling out what emotions, urges, and behaviors you experiences and what DBT skills you used every day can help you notice patterns over time. Maybe you're always really anxious on Tuesdays, or only use one skill on Wednesdays. Why is that? What's the pattern there that explains it? And how can you modify your schedule or environment or give yourself support so change can occur? This is one of the benefits of diary cards I found most useful.

Jogging Your Memory

Diary cards are a record of your week, in DBT lingo. You typically review them with your individual therapist, which can be really helpful because a lot of us show up to therapy after a week away and when asked "how was your week?" we answer "I don't know." But if you fill out your diary card, you'll always have something to jog your memory. Maybe you didn't write down exactly why you were so angry on Friday but remembering you were angry at all is half the battle sometimes. So it's a handy dandy cheat sheet to remembering what came up over the week.