Calming the Emotional Storm: Essential Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills for Emotionally Dysregulated Clients
In this engaging seminar recording, Sheri Van Dijk, (MSW, RSW) will guide you through a set of techniques you will be able to use with your clients to help them cope with difficult emotions calmly and responsibly by using powerful skills from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). By teaching your clients these skills, you can help them stop needless emotional suffering and develop the inner resilience that will help them to weather any emotional storm and respond to a stressful situation with calm. The DBT approach offers suggestions on how to help clients to activate areas of their brain that have been under activated and how to quiet down those areas that have been over activated so that clients can enjoy life without being plagued by difficult emotions. In DBT, distress tolerance is promoted with parasympathetic activation and clients are asked to experience emotions like waves and ride through them.
You will learn how to help your clients:
- Establish a balanced life for an everyday sense of well-being
- Let go of unwanted worries and fears
- Become better at accepting yourself and others
- Work through a crisis without letting emotions take over
Emotion Dysregulation is typically a component of mood and anxiety disorders, addictions, eating disorders, and BPD and other personality disorders; and can also appear in individuals without a specific diagnosis, but who are struggling with difficulties such as anger management problems, low self-esteem or shame, and complicated grief. This workshop will provide clinicians with real-life day-to-day tools you will be able to teach to clients struggling with mental health issues and other emotional and relational problems. You will be able to help your clients find order and peace in their lives again, and to make changes that are long-lasting!
DBT is a treatment originally designed to treat clients with BPD, but is increasingly being used to help clients with general problems in regulating emotions. Whether related to a mental illness or addiction, or simply to difficulties managing emotions, this inability to regulate oneself can lead to problems with anger, shame, relationships, and low self-esteem, resulting in chaos and misery.
In this one-day seminar recording, which you can watch in the intervals and at your convenience, you will delve deeply into some of the DBT skills, broadening your understanding of and ability to teach some of the most important skills to help clients manage emotions
You will learn how you can assist your clients to integrate their current coping skills with new and effective DBT skills and techniques for living well with mood and anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addictions, as well as with other problems such as managing anger, chronic shame, low self-esteem, and grief.
These DBT skills will help your clients manage the emotional ups and downs and minimize the frequency and intensity of depressive and manic episodes or panic attacks. By using these techniques in conjunction with medication and professional care, your clients will soon experience relief from symptoms and come to enjoy the calm and confident feeling of being more in control.
- Teach your clients mindfulness and acceptance skills to help reduce intense emotions
- Help your clients reduce problematic behaviours and cope with emotions in healthier ways
- Equip your client with tools to manage intense emotions and impulsive urges
- Teach skills to help clients create and maintain healthy, satisfying relationships with friends and family members
- Help clients more effectively manage their own health and state of mind
Learning Objectives:
- Learn the DBT theory of how problems managing emotions develop, and how to help your clients be more accepting of their difficulties
- Practice applying behavioural theory concepts to clinical situations
- Learn about neuroplasticity and how this concept can be used in treatment to move clients in healthier directions
- Examine the connection between neuroplasticity and DBT skills, and learn how practicing DBT skills helps to create lasting changes in the brain that help to regulate emotions more effectively
- Practice some of the core DBT skills – such as radical acceptance, nonjudgmental stance, opposite to emotion action, and self-validation – and learn more about how to teach these skills to clients in the context of their specific emotional and behavioural difficulties
- Learn how the DBT skills help us to live healthier, more balanced lives and reduce the feelings of ineffectiveness and burnout we often experience as clinicians
- Consider some of the benefits and pitfalls to doing DBT in individual therapy
- Discuss what to do when interventions don’t seem to be moving clients forward, with a focus on skills training, behaviour theory, and dialectical strategies
- Delve further into treatment planning from a DBT perspective, and learn how to decide which DBT interventions will best suit clients’ needs
- Build confidence in providing DBT-informed therapy in your practice
CPD Information For Mental Health Professionals
Enjoy complete flexibility with 100% self-paced learning you can access anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Pay once for lifetime access.
Course Duration: 8 learning hours
Certificate and CPD hours: On completion you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion to support your CPD records.
Assessment: Complete a short quiz at the end (80% pass mark), which you can resit as many times as needed.
Lifetime Access: Your access to the course does not expire, so you can revisit key concepts anytime 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