Calming the Emotional Storm: Essential Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills for Emotionally Dysregulated Clients
DBT has a reputation problem. It was developed with clients who had borderline personality disorder, and a great deal of the training still assumes that is who you are treating. Sheri Van Dijk’s position, built across a career and seven books, is that this is the wrong way round. What DBT actually teaches is emotion regulation, and the clients who cannot regulate emotions are on every caseload in the country.
That includes the mood and anxiety disorders, eating disorders, addictions and personality disorders, and it also includes the people who do not have a diagnosis at all and are struggling with anger, shame, low self-esteem or a grief that will not resolve. Her own practice is severe mental illness, mostly bipolar disorder, in clients aged sixteen and up. She is also open that she uses the skills herself and thinks of them as life skills rather than clinical technique.
Eight hours, and it is the full structure rather than a survey. An introduction to the theory, including the invalidating environment and what it does to a child’s ability to know what they think and feel. Then each of the four skills modules in turn: core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. Behavioural analysis gets proper attention, because the detail a client gives you in ordinary conversation is not the detail you need, and she shows how to collect it. She also spends time on what to do when interventions are not moving a client, which is the part most skills training leaves out.
You’ll walk away with
- DBT understood as emotion regulation training rather than a BPD protocol, and who that opens it up to
- The invalidating environment, and why some clients arrive with no reliable sense of what they think or feel
- Behavioural analysis run properly: what detail to collect, how many chains you need, and how to build a treatment plan from them
- Core mindfulness taught as a clinical skill, including wise mind, reasoning mind and emotion mind
- Distress tolerance, and helping a client get through a crisis without making it worse
- Radical acceptance, and the distinction between pain and suffering that makes it usable with a client
- Mindfulness of current emotion, and why a client experiencing the past and future at once is feeling three times the pain
- Opposite to emotion action, nonjudgmental stance and self-validation, with how to teach each one
- Interpersonal effectiveness, including self-respect, over-apologising and holding a value under pressure
- What to do when a client is not moving, using skills training, behaviour theory and dialectical strategies
- Where DBT in individual therapy works and where it runs into trouble
- The skills applied to your own working life, which she treats as part of the clinical skill rather than as an aside
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CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This course is included with your Tatra Training membership, along with every other course in the library.
Where this sits: the full DBT skills training and the longest of Sheri Van Dijk’s five courses. Principles of Mindfulness goes deeper into the module that underpins all the others, and DBT-Informed Treatment of Bipolar Affective Disorder applies the skills to one population.
Please note: her clinical work is with clients aged sixteen and older. DBT is used with younger children, but that is outside what she covers here.
Course Duration: 8 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records. Your certificates are yours to keep.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Revisit Anytime: Come back to the course as often as you like while your membership is active, whenever you want a refresher for practice.
CPD Eligibility: This program may be suitable for CPD for professionals such as:
- Psychologists
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Social Workers
- Community Workers
- Mental Health Nurses
- General Practitioners (GPs)
- Occupational Therapists
CPD requirements vary between professional bodies, so please check with your association or credentialing body to confirm you can claim CPD hours/OPD points for this program and what evidence they require.
Course Content
Meet Your Instructor
Individuals struggling with complex trauma, emotion dysregulation, and treatment-resistant mental health conditions - and the practitioners working with clients whose symptoms don't respond to traditional approaches - may need more than standard therapy to address the deep neurological patterns that drive emotional instability. Sheri Van Dijk has spent over 25 years mastering the integration of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) with EMDR and cutting-edge trauma treatments, becoming one of the world's leading experts in helping clients develop the emotion regulation skills essential for lasting recovery.
As a bestselling author with New Harbinger Publications and EMDRIA-Approved Consultant, Van Dijk brings exceptional expertise that bridges evidence-based therapy with practical accessibility. Her award-winning book The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook and The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for C-PTSD (2025) demonstrate her unique ability to make complex therapeutic concepts immediately usable for both clients and practitioners. Her R.O. Jones Award from the Canadian Psychiatric Association for research on using DBT skills with bipolar disorder reflects her innovative work in expanding DBT applications beyond borderline personality disorder to help diverse populations develop emotional stability.
Van Dijk's expertise spans Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Complex PTSD treatment, trauma therapy, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and what she calls helping clients move from emotional chaos to emotional mastery. Her approach recognises that many clients struggle not because they lack motivation, but because they've never been taught the specific skills needed to regulate intense emotions effectively. She specialises in working with individuals who experience emotional overwhelm, those with complex trauma histories, clients with bipolar disorder or personality disorders, and practitioners wanting to develop expertise in evidence-based emotion regulation interventions.
What sets her training apart is practical skill-building combined with trauma-informed wisdom. Van Dijk doesn't just teach DBT theory - she shows practitioners exactly how to help clients develop the concrete skills they need to manage crisis situations, regulate intense emotions, and build the distress tolerance that makes recovery possible. Her integration of EMDR with DBT creates comprehensive approaches that address both trauma processing and skill development simultaneously.
For your practice, expect to gain specific DBT techniques for different diagnostic presentations, tools for integrating trauma processing with emotion regulation skills, and frameworks for making evidence-based therapies accessible to clients across various mental health conditions. Her approach particularly benefits clinicians working with emotion dysregulation, those treating complex trauma presentations, or practitioners wanting to develop expertise in DBT and EMDR integration.
Quick Win: Van Dijk's "TIPP" technique (Temperature change, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Progressive muscle relaxation) helps clients regulate crisis-level emotions - to prevent self-harm or impulsive behaviors while building confidence in their ability to manage intense feelings.
Qualifications
- MSW, Social Work, University of Toronto, Canada, 2003–2004
- BSW, Social Work, York University, Canada, 2001–2003
- B.A., Sociology and Criminology, University of Toronto, Canada, 1993–1997
- Registered Social Worker (RSW), College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers
- EMDR-trained and EMDRIA-Approved Consultant
- Advanced training: Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), Neurofeedback, Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP)
- 25+ years experience in mental health field
Authored Books
- The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for C-PTSD (2025, New Harbinger Publications)
- Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens (bestseller, New Harbinger Publications)
- DBT Made Simple (2013, New Harbinger Publications)
- The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder (2009, New Harbinger Publications)
- Calming the Emotional Storm (New Harbinger Publications)
- The DBT Workbook for Emotional Relief (New Harbinger Publications)
- The Bipolar Workbook for Teens (co-author, New Harbinger Publications)
Professional Experience
- Psychotherapist, Private Practice, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, December 2003–present (21+ years)
- EMDR Consultant, EMDRIA-Approved
- International Trainer and Consultant, DBT and EMDR
- Mental Health Therapist, Southlake Regional Health Centre, Outpatient Mental Health Clinic, March 2004–July 2018 (14+ years)
- Founder, Ananda Mental Health Workshops, Barrie, Ontario, January 2017–April 2020
Treatment Populations
- Individuals aged 16 and older
- Complex trauma survivors and C-PTSD presentations
- Clients with bipolar disorder and mood disorders
- Borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation
- Anxiety disorders, depression, and PTSD
- Eating disorders and substance use disorders (secondary to mental health issues)
Ready to help clients develop genuine emotion regulation skills while processing complex trauma? Discover how Sheri Van Dijk's integrated DBT and EMDR methods can transform your ability to help clients move from emotional chaos to emotional mastery through evidence-based skills designed to work in crisis situations.
Feedback & Reviews
This course includes:
- Lessons 1
- Topics 6
- Duration 8 hours
- Quizzes 1
- Language English