Northern Star pairs highly trained therapists with individuals wanting to enhance their mental, behavioral and emotional health. Northern Star focuses on recruiting and retaining exceptional providers with varying specialties to meet diverse needs. We carefully select exceptional providers so you have an exceptional experience. We cultivate a healthy, balanced atmosphere for everyone who walks through the door.
Hosted by Susie Markus
Licensed Professional Counselor, LPC-403
Verified Verified
Group meets in Cheyenne, WY 82001
Susie is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She holds a Master's Degree in Counseling and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Wyoming. Susie has 33 years of experience as a counselor, working with adults, teens, and children. She has experience working with people experiencing grief and loss, chronic stress and burnout, life transitions, reproductive health and family planning concerns, relationship issues, and domestic violence and sexual assault. She teaches self-regulation skills to manage emotions, and works from an anti-oppressive and racial equity approach to support people toward empowerment, resilience.
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Dialectical Behavior (DBT) Support Groups
Who is DBT for?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is designed for people who experience extreme emotional suffering because they lack the skills of emotion regulation and distress tolerance. The basic affliction can underlie a wide range of conditions, from borderline and other personality disorders to PTSD and treatment-resistant anxiety and depression. The therapy is helpful to those whose emotional reactivity is so intense it is disruptive to everyday functioning and leads to frequent crises.
Why do people need DBT?
The ability to regulate emotions is a core psychological skill that enables people to function in life and pay attention to the world outside themselves; it is consistently associated with well-being. DBT is designed to help people learn how to manage and regulate their emotions. Originally developed to treat people with borderline personality disorder whose extreme emotional suffering led to self-harming behavior and suicide attempts, the therapy is now applied to other conditions involving emotion dysregulation, particularly when other treatments have failed.
What happens in DBT?
Individuals meet weekly with their therapist to discuss their experiences relating to moods, behavior, and skills. Using checklists they maintain, they review emotional experiences and positive practices they engage in. The diaries help individuals discern what led up to a specific problem encountered, this is followed by discussion of the consequences of their actions. In addition, individuals may meet in class-like small groups to learn skills such as mindfulness, emotion regulation and distress tolerance.
How long does DBT last?
Because it is intended to establish long-lasting behavioral change among those with persistent problems, DBT is designed to last six months to a year. DBT includes both weekly sessions of individual therapy and weekly skills-training sessions conducted in small groups. Studies of DBT have documented improvement within a year of treatment, particularly in controlling self-harmful behavior; nevertheless, individuals may require therapy for several years.