DBT Diary
If progress, triggers and skill usage should be made visible over time.
Systematically document processes, triggers, behavior and skill usage so that patterns become visible and discussable over time.
When does this fit?
When a structured course over days and weeks is needed for self-observation, therapy or training.
Priority in the path
This node is more about preparation, stabilization, or later deepening around prepare for stress.
What this is about
The DBT Diary Card is the primary self-monitoring tool in DBT: a structured daily record of emotions, urges, behaviors, skill use, and treatment targets. It is filled out daily and reviewed at the start of every individual therapy session. The diary card serves multiple functions: it increases awareness of emotional patterns and their connections to behavior; it creates accountability for skill use between sessions; it provides the therapist with a current picture of what has been happening; and the act of recording itself is reactive — meaning that simply tracking a behavior tends to change it.
Target behaviors (both behaviors to increase and behaviors to decrease) are identified collaboratively and tracked on the card, making the diary card a direct link between session work and daily life.
Read the background
Explore and apply
These nodes deliberately lead into a second DBT module space when the current content must be carried across modules.
Turning the Mind
Background
When you know acceptance, but inside you keep tipping back into rejection.
Documenting crisis patterns and skill use makes patterns visible that enable crisis prevention.
Also in: Emotion Regulation · Mindfulness
Clear Mind
Background
When false security must be made visible before a relapse occurs.
Documenting crisis patterns and skill use makes patterns visible that enable crisis prevention.
Also in: Emotion Regulation
Radical Acceptance
Background
When resistance increases suffering and reality must first be acknowledged.
Documenting crisis patterns and skill use makes patterns visible that enable crisis prevention.
Also in: Emotion Regulation · Mindfulness
Missing-Links Analysis
Background
If it is not clear which effective step has been missing in a difficult situation.
Also in: Distress Tolerance · Emotion Regulation · Interpersonal Effectiveness
Observing, understanding and practising
The diary records experiences and skill use. Chain analysis examines a specific problematic sequence in greater depth; the weekly regulator helps plan ongoing practice across the week.
Chain Analysis
Background
If you want to understand a problematic pattern step by step backwards.
Also in: Distress Tolerance · Emotion Regulation · Interpersonal Effectiveness
Weekly Regulator
Background
If skill practice is to be planned and tracked in batches throughout the week.
Sources and references
Show where this node comes from and how source-near or practice-near it is.