Group Session Plan: DBT Skills Group Structure
A facilitator's guide to the structure of a standard DBT skills training group as described by Linehan: purpose, format, group rules, the shape of each session, the four skills modules and their sequence, and the challenges skills trainers most often face.
About this resource
Skills training is one of the four modes of standard dialectical behaviour therapy, alongside individual therapy, between-session phone coaching and the therapist consultation team. Its job is narrow and specific: to teach the behavioural skills that clients with severe emotion dysregulation lack, so that the individual therapist can help them apply those skills to the problems in their lives. Linehan's skills manual sets out the curriculum in four modules, core mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness, and specifies the group format in detail, including the session structure, the leader and co-leader roles and the rules that keep the group workable.
This resource is a structural plan rather than a lesson-by-lesson script, because the curriculum itself is fully documented in the published manual and handouts, which any programme running DBT skills should own. It describes how the group is organised: who it is for, the standard cycle length and how it repeats, the fixed shape of a session, what each module contains and in what order, and the between-session expectations. It is written so that a team setting up a skills group, or a clinician joining one as co-leader, understands the architecture before they start.
The professional version includes the standard DBT skills group agreements, a description of the leader and co-leader roles during each part of a session, an outline of the content of each module using Linehan's skill names, and a section on common challenges specific to skills groups, including how to handle crisis behaviour in the room without turning the group into process therapy.
How to use it
- Use this plan when establishing a DBT skills group or orienting a new co-leader. Read it alongside Linehan's DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.) and the companion handouts and worksheets; the teaching content for each session comes from those, not from this document.
- Decide the programme structure first: whether the group is part of comprehensive DBT with individual therapy and phone coaching, or a standalone skills group. Standard DBT requires every skills group member to have an individual therapist, and the skills trainers do not take on individual crisis work.
- Hold an individual pre-group orientation with each member covering the biosocial model, the purpose of skills training, the rules, the commitment to complete at least one full cycle, and the expectation of weekly homework.
- Run every session to the same structure. The predictability is part of the treatment for clients whose lives are chaotic, and it protects teaching time from being consumed by crises.
- Attend a weekly consultation team. Skills trainers need the same support as individual DBT therapists, and the team is where decisions about members who are struggling in the group are made.
- Track homework completion and attendance each week and review both in team. Members who miss four consecutive sessions have, under Linehan's rule, dropped out of the group for that cycle.
References
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.
