Adults, 18 and over 1-on-1 in West Hartford

DBT skills therapy in West Hartford, CT

Insight does not help much at 9 p.m. when your chest is tight, your temper is up, and you are thirty seconds away from sending a text you will regret for a month. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills are built for the moments when emotion outruns judgment. We teach them one-on-one in person at our West Hartford office.

Request an appointment See the four skill sets

Illustration of a welcoming therapy room with two sage armchairs and soft daylight

Taught individuallyPrivate 50-minute sessions rather than a group classroom

Four skill setsMindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal skills

Built for the spikeTools that work when you are too flooded to reason on paper

Shared chartCoordinated with our psychiatric prescribers when you use both

What we offer here,
and what we do not

The letters "DBT" mean different things depending on where you go. It is worth being clear upfront about what this office does so you can decide whether it fits what you need.

What we do

Individual therapy built around DBT skills

Psychologist Marsha Linehan designed Dialectical Behavior Therapy around a central tension: accepting yourself and the situation exactly as they are in this minute, while working hard to change how you respond next. At New Horizon Behavioral Health, we teach those skills one-on-one inside individual therapy. Most adults who come here want practical ways to handle emotional spikes, panic, anger, or hard conversations without sitting in a two-hour weekly classroom with strangers.

What we do not do

Full-program group DBT or 24-hour phone coaching

A comprehensive hospital or day-program DBT package includes a weekly skills group, individual therapy, a consultation team, and 24-hour phone coaching between visits. We are an outpatient clinic and we do not run group classes or 24-hour phone coaching. If your evaluation shows that weekly individual therapy is not enough to keep you safe right now, we will say so plainly and help connect you with an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) in the Hartford area.

The four parts
of DBT skills work

Two of these modules are about tolerating reality when you cannot change it immediately. The other two are about changing the pattern so you do not end up in the same crisis every Tuesday.

Distress tolerance

When an emotion hits a nine out of ten, your prefrontal cortex goes offline. Trying to do a clever cognitive worksheet in that state usually fails. Distress tolerance is a set of short-term survival tools whose only job is to get you through the next thirty minutes without making the problem worse. We practice physiological resets that bring heart rate down fast, grounding techniques, and what DBT calls "radical acceptance": dropping the exhausting fight against a fact that has already happened so you can deal with what comes next.

What it is forThe acute spike, panic waves, urges to quit, lash out, or self-destruct

Emotion regulation

Distress tolerance is the fire extinguisher; emotion regulation is fireproofing the house. You learn to tell a primary emotion apart from a secondary one, such as noticing that your rage at a partner started ten seconds earlier as embarrassment or fear of being left. We look at the physical habits that leave you raw before the day even starts (four hours of sleep, skipped meals, no movement) and practice "opposite action," doing the exact opposite of what an unhelpful emotion is ordering you to do.

What it is forMood swings, shame spirals, chronic irritability, emotional hangovers

Interpersonal effectiveness

Many people swing between two extremes in close relationships: swallowing their needs for months to keep the peace, and then exploding or cutting the other person off when resentment boils over. Interpersonal effectiveness gives you plain, repeatable scripts for three different jobs: asking for something clearly, saying no without apologizing ten times, and keeping your self-respect intact even when the other person does not give you what you want.

What it is forPeople-pleasing, boundary guilt, recurring fights at home or work

Core mindfulness

Mindfulness in DBT has nothing to do with incense or sitting cross-legged for an hour. It is attention training. If you cannot notice that your jaw is clenched and your thoughts are racing at 2 p.m., you will not remember to use a skill before you snap at 2:15 p.m. We practice observing thoughts and physical sensations as passing events in the room rather than orders you have to obey.

What it is forCatching the wave early while it is still small enough to steer

Descriptions of Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills draw on Linehan MM, DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed., Guilford Press), and the National Institute of Mental Health overview of psychotherapies.

Where we use DBT skills
most often

You do not need a textbook diagnosis to need better tools for intense emotion. These are the conditions where DBT skills show up most in our office.

High-intensity anxiety Panic attacks Depression with anger or numbness Adult ADHD emotional spikes Bipolar disorder PTSD and trauma PMDD Work stress and boundary strain

How we work together
from week to week

Handing someone a photocopy of a skill and wishing them luck does not work. We rehearse the tools in the room before you need them outside.

First session

Picking the targets

We look at what has been going sideways in your week and rank the targets in plain order: keeping you safe first, stopping habits that wreck treatment second, and fixing the patterns that make your day-to-day life miserable third.

In session

Chain analysis

When a bad Tuesday happens, we do not just say "that sounds hard." We map the chain link by link: how you slept Monday night, what set the moment off, what your body did, what you told yourself, what you did next, and what it cost you.

The practice

Rehearsing in the chair

We pick the exact link in that chain where things went off the rails and plug a specific skill into that spot. If the skill is a hard conversation, we role-play the sentences out loud until they sound like your own voice.

Between visits

Using it under pressure

You test the skill during the week and come back with what worked and what flopped. If you also see one of our prescribers for medication management, both clinicians work from the same chart.

Cost and insurance

Contact the office to verify your benefits before your first visit.

Insurance

Individual therapy using DBT skills is billed under standard outpatient psychotherapy codes and is covered by most commercial and Medicare plans, depending on your deductible, copay, and whether the clinician is in network for your plan.

Written cost check

The office checks your benefits before your first session and gives you your expected out-of-pocket cost in writing.

Self-pay

Available if you prefer not to bill insurance or if your plan is out of network.

Format

Fifty-minute individual appointments, in person at 10 Princeton St, Ste N, West Hartford, CT 06110.

Questions about
DBT skills therapy

Answers to what people ask most often before starting.

Do I have to join a group class to learn DBT skills here?

No. At this practice, DBT skills are taught one-on-one inside your individual therapy sessions. We do not run weekly group classrooms, and we do not provide 24-hour between-session phone coaching.

What are the four DBT skill sets?

Mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. The first two help you get through a bad moment without making it worse. The second two help you have fewer bad moments over time and handle hard conversations without blowing them up.

Why would I choose DBT skills over standard CBT?

CBT works well when you are calm enough to sit down and test a thought on paper. When your heart is pounding and your anger or panic is already at a nine out of ten, examining a thought rarely works. DBT skills are built for those high-heat moments first, and for the longer-term patterns underneath them second.

Do I need a specific diagnosis to use DBT skills?

No. While DBT was originally written for borderline personality disorder, the skills themselves are used across adult outpatient care: for panic spikes, emotional dysregulation in adult ADHD, mood swings, intense reactions to criticism, and chronic relationship friction.

Are sessions held in person or online?

In person only. We see adults 18 and over at our office at 10 Princeton St, Ste N in West Hartford. We do not offer telehealth.

Does insurance cover individual therapy that uses DBT skills?

Yes. Because DBT skills are taught inside standard 50-minute individual psychotherapy sessions, visits are billed the same way as any other outpatient therapy appointment and are covered under most commercial and Medicare plans when we are in network.

Related care

Most treatment blends more than one tool. Here is how the rest of the practice connects.

Start with an evaluation

One appointment to talk through what has been happening and decide whether individual DBT skills work fits your goals.

Request an appointment Call the office