Calming Anxiety with DBT Skills
Calming Anxiety with DBT Skills: Practical Tools You Can Use Anytime
Anxiety can show up suddenly, quietly, or as a constant background hum. While it’s a normal human experience, unmanaged anxiety can make everyday life feel heavier than it needs to be. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers a set of proven, practical skills that help you manage anxiety by strengthening your ability to cope with distress, regulate emotions, stay present, and communicate effectively. DBT isn’t about eliminating discomfort — it’s about building a toolkit so you can respond skillfully instead of reacting impulsively.
DBT organizes its skills into four core areas: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. Each one offers actionable techniques that help calm anxiety and build emotional resilience.
1. Mindfulness: Anchor Yourself in the Present
Mindfulness is the foundation of DBT skills. It teaches you how to notice your thoughts, sensations, and emotions without judgment or immediate reaction. When you’re anxious, your mind often jumps ahead, imagining worst-case scenarios or replaying uncomfortable moments. Mindfulness brings you back to what’s actually happening right now.
Try this:
Observe your breath — notice the inhale and exhale without trying to change it.
Describe what you’re feeling (“I feel tense in my shoulders”).
Participate fully in one task (e.g., noticing sounds around you while you wash dishes).
This simple practice reduces impulsive reactions and helps calm the nervous system so anxiety feels more manageable.
2. Distress Tolerance: Get Through Intense Moments Without Making Things Worse
Distress tolerance skills are about surviving high-stress or crisis situations without turning to unhealthy coping like avoidance, self-criticism, or escape behaviors. These tools help you sit with discomfort long enough to let it pass or calm enough to think more clearly.
Try these techniques:
STOP: Stop, Take a step back, Observe, Proceed mindfully. This gives you space between your feelings and your reaction.
Self-soothing: Use your senses — listen to a calming song, notice the texture of a blanket, smell a soothing scent.
Pros and cons: Briefly list the benefits and costs of acting on anxiety versus using a coping strategy.
These aren’t about ignoring problems — they help you ride out the intense feelings without harm so you can choose a skill next.
3. Emotion Regulation: Understand and Shift Your Emotional Experience
Anxiety isn’t just a mental experience — it shows up in your body and in your habits. DBT’s emotion regulation skills help you understand, name, and respond to emotions in ways that reduce overwhelming intensity.
Practical steps include:
Label your feelings (“I’m feeling nervous” or “My heart feels tight”). Naming emotions helps your brain move from alarm mode to problem-solving mode.
Reduce vulnerability: Prioritize basic self-care such as balanced sleep, nutrition, and activity — your physical state influences emotional stability.
Opposite action: When anxiety tells you to avoid something, gently do the opposite (e.g., approach a manageable social situation instead of avoiding it) to build confidence and shift your emotional response.
Over time, these practices help you respond rather than retreat when anxiety spikes.
4. Interpersonal Effectiveness: Communicate Clearly in Stressful Moments
Anxiety often spikes in social situations, especially when you’re unsure how to express needs or set limits. DBT’s interpersonal effectiveness skills support assertive communication, clear boundaries, and healthier connections with others.
Some practical tools include:
DEAR MAN for assertiveness: Describe the situation, Express your feelings, Assert your needs, Reinforce the positive outcome, Mindful focus, Appear confident, Negotiate options.
GIVE for maintaining relationships with warmth and respect: Gentle - speak calmly and respectfully, Interested - show genuine interest by listening, making eye contact, and avoiding interruptions, Validate - acknowledge the other person’s feelings or perspective, even if you don’t agree, Easy Manner - Use a relaxed tone, light humor, and openness.
FAST to preserve your values and self-respect in interactions: Fair - Be fair to both yourself and the other person, (no) Apologies - Don’t apologize for having feelings, needs or boundaries, Stick to values - Act in ways that align with your beliefs and principles, Truthful - Be honest and avoid exaggeration, excuses, or minimizing yourself to avoid conflict.
These strategies help reduce anxiety tied to conflict, uncertainty, or unmet needs by giving you a clear, respectful way to show up for yourself and others.
Putting It All Together
Managing anxiety is not about quick fixes — it’s about learning skills you can use again and again. DBT gives you tools to stay present, tolerate distress, regulate emotions, and communicate effectively so anxiety has less control over your thoughts and behavior. These skills don’t remove anxiety completely, but they help you move through it with calm and intentional action.
If anxiety feels overwhelming or persistent, working with a therapist trained in DBT can support you in practicing and integrating these skills into your life in a structured, supportive way.