HSMC’s Psychology Department is excited to offer a new group program for our clients experiencing chronic emotional dysregulation (i.e., unstable moods, impulsive behavior, relationship difficulties, unstable sense of self) or other psychological difficulties that make it difficult for them to manage their emotions, behaviors, and relationships.

This group class will teach emotion regulation skills using the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) approach, an evidence-based treatment that has been shown to be effective with adults, teens and schoolchildren in many countries.

Decades of clinical research has shown the DBT approach to be helpful for people experiencing painful emotions, relationship difficulties and impulsive or unstable behaviors by teaching more adaptive ways of coping with their distress. DBT assumes that the person is doing their best but needs coaching and practice to learn to better manage their emotions and, in so doing, to build a life worth living.

Unlike a typical group therapy program, the DBT Emotion Regulation group will not ask you to talk about your problems in detail, instead focusing on teaching new skills and helping you to apply them to your daily life through regular practice.

• You experience painful, intense emotions that you feel unable to tolerate
• You have repeated, sudden shifts in mood
• You become overwhelmed when there is a difficult situation and you don’t know how to calm yourself down
• You feel suicidal, feel like hurting yourself, or feel like doing something dangerous or risky when you feel distressed
• You overreact to criticism or worry about others leaving or rejecting you
• You find that it’s difficult to keep your relationships free of drama and going well
• You are prone to irritability or frequent episodes of anger directed at yourself and/or others.

Each module teaches a specific set of skills designed to address the underlying problems that make managing your emotions difficult. At the start of each module, we will teach and review Core Mindfulness skills, which will help you learn how to focus your mind and attention, and to become more aware of and able to tolerate your feelings, thoughts and physical sensations.

Emotion Regulation – skills designed to help you understand and manage your emotions in more helpful ways, while reducing your emotional reactivity. This will increase your resiliency to unwanted emotions and help you to keep your emotional state under better control.

Distress Tolerance – skills to help you deal more effectively with episodes of emotional distress and crises without engaging in impulsive, avoidant, self-harming or other problematic behaviors.

Interpersonal Effectiveness – skills and strategies for dealing with people and relationships. How to get what you want, set boundaries when needed, make and keep friends, and cope with interpersonal conflicts without burning bridges.

Module 1 (Emotion Regulation):

• 9 weeks (7th February 2025 – 11th April 2025)
• Cost 4000 AED

Module 2 (Distress Tolerance):

• 8 weeks (TBD)
• Cost 3500 AED

Module 3 (Interpersonal Effectiveness):

• 7 weeks (TBD)
• Cost 3000 AED

• Class Timings: Fridays 2:30 – 4:30 pm. Class will start promptly on time.
• Class Size: Limited Seats.
• Location and Facilities: Hybrid attendance. In-person at HSMC Psychology Department and online using Microsoft Teams app.

Prerequisites: Clients must be active patients at HSMC with weekly psychotherapy appointments. Referrals from external sources will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and will be dependent on regular attendance with a psychotherapist with DBT training.

• • Clients will be expected to commit to one complete module at a time by buying the group package.
  • Final payment is due two days prior to 1st class of each module.

Note: group dates may be modified as needed by the clinic.