Professor Michaela Swales - a consultant clinical psychologist, author, and DBT trainer, who has trained more than 1,000 professionals in the approach. There are few people on the planet who know as much about DBT as Michaela, so it was a real delight to have this conversation with her, in which we cover:

— How DBT combines the best of Eastern and Western Philosophy into one modality, and what Michaela learned from training under Marsha Linehan

— Why everything (including thoughts and emotions) can be thought of as behaviours and the therapeutic benefits of this perspective

— The 4 core elements of DBT, including how the therapy is structural, and why DBT requires a team or community of therapists

And more…

You can learn more about DBT training by going to www.dbt-training.co.uk, and pick up a copy of Michaela’s book here: https://amzn.to/3QU3ZeN.

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Michaela Swales, PhD, is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with BCUHB and Reader in Clinical Psychology on the North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme at Bangor University. She trained in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Seattle in 1994 and 1995 with Marsha Linehan and for twenty years ran a clinical programme for suicidal young people in an inpatient service.

After completing specialist supervision in DBT, she became one of the founder members of the UK DBT Training Team in 1997 and Director of the Training Team in 2002. She has trained more than a thousand professionals in DBT, seeding over 400 programmes, in both the UK and further afield. She is the co-author of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy: Distinctive Features, which had its second edition published by Routledge in 2016 and Changing Behavior in DBT: Problem-Solving in Action, published by Guilford in 2015.

Interview Links:

— www.dbt-training.co.uk

— Marsha Linehan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_M._Linehan

3 Books Prof. Swales Recommends Every Therapist Should Read:

— Regulating Emotion the DBT Way - Christine Dunkley: https://amzn.to/3LnAEso

— DBT: Distinctive Features - Michaela Swales & Heidi Heard: https://amzn.to/3QU3ZeN

— Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir - Marsha Linehan: https://amzn.to/3QNfdly