At PEACE, we know that ‘one size fits all’ isn’t going to cut it for our clients. Many people and their families are struggling with powerful negative emotions, impulses and behaviours. With our DBT for Me program, we help you learn the skills that are most relevant to your needs, in a way that works for you. Depending on your current challenges, your individualized treatment plan will include a combination of our DBT services, including Individual, Family and/or Group Therapy, amongst a variety of ancillary services.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is an empirically validated treatment designed to be effective with the most challenging clients. It has been adapted by many people over the years since initially developed by Marsha Linehan, and is considered a gold standard for treating problems related to emotional dysregulation like:
A lack of self-awareness,
Poor self-esteem,
Emotional suffering,
Impulsive and self-destructive behaviours, and
Interpersonal conflict.
Comprehensive DBT programs require weekly individual therapy sessions in order to break down and analyse maladaptive beliefs, emotions and behaviours and replace them with more skillful ways of responding to what life throws at us. DBT skills training group sessions are an essential element of the program. Here, 4 sets of life skills are taught:
Mindfulness Skills to develop self-awareness and insight,
Distress Tolerance Skills to get through the difficult moments without acting impulsively and against our own interests,
Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills to improve our relationships and get more of what we want out of life, and
Emotion Regulation Skills to increase the good times, reduce the bad times, and live a more balanced life.
DBT therapists are committed to “going where Angels fear to tread”. They believe that clients cannot fail in therapy, so they work hard to ensure that you are getting to the root of the problem, and learning the skills necessary to get more out of life. In order to hold themselves accountable, they are supported by a team of therapists who collaborate to help ensure you achieve your goals.
PEACE Psychotherapy is an association of independent psychotherapists committed to DBT. We believe that empathy and compassion are essential tools for living a good life. All people, no matter how hopeless they feel, have the capacity for change and the desire to live a life worth living. We understand that many people and their families are struggling with powerful negative emotions, impulses and behaviours. We will ask the difficult questions, challenge you, and support you throughout the process.
At PEACE psychotherapy, we are committed to helping people learn
to accept what they cannot change,
to change the things they can, and
develop the wisdom to determine the difference.
Depending on your current challenges, we will help you learn the skills that are most relevant to you. To accommodate the treatment needs of the individual, we provide DBT skills training in both a group and individual format.
The DBT skills treatment group provides members an opportunity to learn the 4 sets of DBT skills in a therapeutic environment. Members can explore the causes of their suffering, learn and practice new skills, disclose and problem solve challenges as they arise, and work towards achievable life goals. Group treatment can be powerful as it offers real life opportunities to interact with others in a way that transforms relationships.
Many clients do not believe they can cope well in a group setting. Together with your therapist we can determine if and when group therapy is the right fit for you.
Clients can expect a year of weekly group and individual sessions.
For some people, group therapy can be threatening or intimidating. Others might not be able to make the commitment, or simply prefer to do one-on-one therapy. For these reasons, clients who are exclusively interested in individual therapy can also benefit from the skills taught in a typical DBT course. You and your therapist will, after determining your goals and aspirations, focus on learning skills that are most relevant to the current situation. In order to compensate for the need to spend some session time on skills learning, this requires an increased focus on readings and homework in between sessions.
Individual therapy sessions can be provided as either a supplement to the DBT Skills Treatment Group, or as the primary mode of therapy. For people who choose the group, individual sessions can be used to create a therapeutic rapport so that problem behaviours and situations can be examined closely, and new behaviours can be learned and practiced. These sessions are also essential for increasing motivation, enhancing capabilities, dealing with intolerable emotions and uncovering thinking problems.
Sometimes clients have challenges that make it difficult for them to come in to the office. This can include an acute episode of depression or anxiety, a refusal to leave the home, or circumstantial challenges. PEACE Psychotherapy recognizes that this can be an obstacle to effective treatment. For this reason, we offer confidential online video services when needed, either to replace individual sessions or in-between session coaching.
Many people seek therapy to address issues not primarily related to emotional dysregulation such as Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, Eating Disorders, Mood Disorders, Trauma, and Abuse. For these clients, skills training is not a priority. However, even clients in individual therapy can benefit from the flexibility offered at PEACE Psychotherapy. While individual sessions will focus on getting to the root of the problem and working towards achieving personal goals, supplementary services like homework, telephone coaching and family sessions will also be available according to your needs.
PEACE Psychotherapy views parents as partners in the therapeutic process. This is especially true when there is lots of conflict between the adolescent and other family members, but it is also true when family members are inadvertently reinforcing or “enabling” maladaptive behaviours. Family members often find themselves: a) alternating between extremes in parenting styles b) over or under reacting to adolescent problem behaviours c) struggling with their teens’ transition from a dependant teenager to an independent young adult. In these situations family sessions become critical. The purpose of the family sessions then is to help the family resolve these dilemmas and create a space for healing and growth. At times, it may be important to have home-based sessions in order to develop a more accurate assessment of the problem and to determine appropriate interventions.
Couples therapy at PEACE Psychotherapy offers a valuable opportunity for individuals to gain deeper insights into themselves, their partners, and the dynamics of their relationship. Through this process, couples can work towards building a stronger foundation of understanding and connection.
Common Stressors Addressed:
Finances and Household Responsibilities
Sexual Intimacy
Values and Future Goals
Addressing Blame and Shame
Effective Anger Communication
Eliminating Hostility, Passive Aggression, and Resentment
Setting Objectives and Limits
Potential Outcomes
When it comes to working towards making real change in our lives, sometimes we need access to supports in-between sessions. Because your therapist knows your specific situation, they are in a unique position to be helpful. Telephone coaching is intended to be a brief intervention with the focus on addressing the issue at hand and it is not a replacement for crisis services. Your therapist will provide you with a packaged list of crisis services such as hotlines, walk-in clinics and emergency services.
All associates at PEACE Psychotherapy are dedicated to supporting their clients, including those who present with the most complex challenges. Providing this level of care often requires significant clinical consultation, and each PEACE associate has access to weekly consultation team meetings for this purpose.
In addition, clients may request a session with a Senior PEACE Therapist, a Consultation for Treatment Planning and Review, to ensure that services are as effective as possible under the circumstances. These sessions include your individual therapist, a senior PEACE therapist, and other relevant participants (e.g., parents, spouses, siblings, or other family members/service providers). They can be used for various purposes, including:
• Gathering information to develop a more comprehensive assessment of the client’s (and/or family members’) concerns and needs
• Ensuring that all family members share a common understanding of the issues being addressed in therapy
• Developing, clarifying, and/or enhancing treatment plans
• Ensuring all relevant parties are on board with the treatment plan
• Addressing issues or concerns that may interfere with effective therapy
• Eliciting support and participation from resistant family members
• Meeting any other needs identified by the therapist or the client/family members
Sometimes the weight of the problem is so heavy that it’s just too hard to leave the house, especially to talk about the problem. Outreach addresses this by meeting the person where they are at – in the home. A number of sessions can be devoted to assessing motivation, educating about therapy, and attempting to form a therapeutic rapport. However, this is a time limited service, with a goal of eliciting a more significant commitment to therapy.
Creating change in your life requires significant effort and on-going commitment to learning new skills and applying them. PEACE psychotherapy offers e-resources that are designed to help you complete take home exercises, readings, thought and behaviour records.
Sometimes clients have challenges that make it difficult for them to come in to the office. This can include an acute episode of depression or anxiety, a refusal to leave the home, or circumstantial challenges. PEACE Psychotherapy recognizes that this can be an obstacle to effective treatment. For this reason, we offer confidential video services when needed, either to replace individual sessions or in-between session coaching.
Group settings provide clients with an added level of interpersonal support, allowing individuals to create new connections, practice interpersonal skills and develop comfort in a social context. Group leaders provide a powerful environment of compassion and empathy for each individual. This also allows for interactions that challenge participants to let go of self-defeating beliefs and behaviours, replacing negative emotions with more positive ones, and ultimately achieving personal life goals.
Clients considering participation in the DBT skills treatment group are asked to attend several individual sessions prior to joining the group in order to orient them to the treatment and ensure informed consent. The DBT Skills Treatment Group is not for everyone, as participation requires a certain level of commitment. First and foremost, participants must be committed to working on personal goals, and willing to discuss their efforts, successes, and failures in a group setting. Aside from common rules such as confidentiality, participants will be asked to make other commitments designed to create a safe and supportive environment that also promotes the learning and practicing of skillful behaviour inside and outside of group sessions.
For those interested in learning the skills taught in group in a different format (i.e. individually or as a family), click here to contact us.
Sessions are held weekly. Each session is 2-hours. Sessions may be cancelled during holidays/vacation time etc., when agreed upon ahead of time. The group is structured into 4 modules: Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Interpersonal Effectiveness and Distress Tolerance. The completion of Module 4 is followed by returning to Module 1, and runs continuously. The group is an ‘open group’, which means that once a PEACE client is individually oriented and committed, the person may join the group at the beginning of the upcoming module (i.e. they do not need to start at “Module 1”).
Each module takes roughly 4-6 sessions to get through. Facilitators commit to getting through the material in a total of 20 weeks, allowing clients to plan accordingly. Clients are encouraged to participate in the group until they have developed a good grasp of the skills and have integrated them into their lives. Research suggests that attending each module at least twice allows for the best results. This structure also creates a group that includes members that are both new and more experienced with the material.
In order to solve some of life’s problems, we often have to learn new ways of doing things. Group members are trained in four primary skills areas:
If we knew how to be effective in a situation, we would be. DBT Skills are evidence-based, scientifically validated skills that are increasingly taught to people with everyday problems as well as those whose lives are spiralling out of control.
Groups are run by 2 facilitators and are capped at 8 participants.
The first hour of the group is spent checking in with clients about how the homework went and reviewing last week’s material. The second half of the group focuses on teaching new material and assigning homework. Facilitators utilize the clinical approach of experiential learning by utilizing ‘what’s in the room in the moment’ as opportunities for replacing maladaptive behaviour with more skillful behaviour. This is carefully balanced with getting through the content of each module.
Currently we’re running an Adult’s Group. The groups run on an ongoing basis, with new members able to join at the beginning of each module. If you are a young adult or youth (high school aged), please let us know in your self referral. These groups will be available soon.
An initial individual session is set up to learn about the client’s goals and to orient the client to DBT and the group format. Sometimes several individual sessions are required before the client is ready to join. Once oriented and committed to attending all four modules (i.e. 20 sessions), the client can join the group at the beginning of the upcoming module (i.e. they do not need to start at “Module 1”). Each module takes between 4-6 weeks.
PEACE understands that clients’ therapy needs are diverse, so we create an individualized treatment plan based on those needs. PEACE requires that clients have an assigned individual therapist with PEACE Psychotherapy, and have, at the very minimum, one individual therapy session per group module. These required sessions are included in the group price.
A client may choose to attend more individual sessions than just one per module. For example, many clients prefer to attend weekly or biweekly individual sessions. As clients become more skillful, they may ween down on the frequency of these sessions.
A client would be required to attend an individual session if the group facilitators deemed a client’s behaviour was disruptive (as per the ‘Disruptive Behaviour Agreement’*) during a group session. This session with their PEACE Therapist would serve for supportive processing, recommitting, and preparing to return and repair with the group.
Here are common therapy options that clients utilize while in group:
DBT believes that it is essential to focus therapeutic interventions on replacing unskillful behaviours with more skillful ones in order to achieve our goals and make the most out of our lives. In order to do this, it is essential to tolerate the negative emotions that drive the problem behaviours, rather than act in an unskillful manner in order to avoid experiencing them. All group members are encouraged to participate to a level with which they are comfortable, and to be willing to stretch their limits in order to create real change in their lives, while also setting limits effectively before acting unskillfully.
When group members exhibit behaviours that are disruptive to the therapeutic process of the group, the therapist and/or group members will respectfully observe and describe these behaviours, and they will have an opportunity to correct the behaviours and practice skills. Your therapist will make every effort to support you to remain in the group, but if the interfering behaviours continue, you will be asked to leave for the remainder of the session. You will be expected to attend a minimum of one individual session to explore solutions in order to return to the group. If you are asked to leave a second time, you may be suspended pending a team meeting. The team meeting may involve further problem solving or a decision to discharge you with referrals.
Clients must be committed to attending all four modules (i.e. 20 group sessions) and at least one individual therapy session per module (i.e. 4 Individual Therapy sessions). After completion of the 4 modules, group members may continue to stay in group, committing to one module at a time. Group participants are required to pay in advance. Clients are not refunded for missed sessions except for exceptional circumstances that must be discussed and agreed upon with the facilitator or individual therapist (i.e. vacation planned in advance, physical illness). *If client is not engaged in regular individual therapy a commitment of one individual therapy session per module is required.
There are 2 payment options:
Option 1: Clients may pay $2300 + applicable taxes ($2449.50 total including 6.5% HST) / 4 modules (20 sessions – 40 hours) to cover 20 group sessions.
Option 2: Clients may pay $575.00 + applicable taxes ($612.38 total including 6.5% HST) / ( installments every 5 weeks (5 sessions – 10 hours)
Price breakdown:
Each group session price $115.00 + applicable taxes ($122.48 total including 6.5%) per session.
one module = 5 group sessions $575.00 + applicable taxes ($612.38 total including 6.5% HST)
four modules = 20 group sessions $2300.00 + applicable taxes ($2449.50 total including 6.5% HST)
PEACE Psychotherapy provides itemized receipts for each session.
The office is close to all three subway lines: Museum Station (2 minute walk), Wellesley Station (9 minute walk) and Bay Station (9 minute walk). Street and lot parking available.
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