DBT-C on YouTube
The following featured videos are just the tip of the iceberg of what can be found on Dr. Perepletchikova’s YouTube channel for DBT-C
A 4-part series on Core Problem Analysis (CPA)
1. How to improve relationship with Self: Introduction to Core Problem Analysis
2. The importance of connecting to Self-Love
3. The importance of developing a healthy Sense of Safety
4. The importance of developing a healthy Sense of Belonging
Can DBT-C help autistic children?
Description: Although empirical research is needed to evaluate DBT-C’s efficacy with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, clinical observations support its use with autistic, subtly autistic, and sub-autistic neurotype children and their families. Clinical application of DBT-C to autistic children necessitated further adaptations to the model to better serve specific needs of this population, with the main goals of fostering emotional resilience and family connection. Dr. Perepletchikova’s interview with Sam Steinberg, LCSW-C from Capital Youth Services in Bethesda, Maryland, covers how DBT-C, when informed by neurodivergent-affirming practices and grounded in compassion, has the potential to transform not just behavior, but relationships, self-understanding, and resilience.
Teaching self-reinforcement to a child (An example from our role play library in the DBT-C Resource Library Subscription)
Role plays are an integral part of clinical training. They help transition the learning from acquiring didactic information about the strategies and procedures to understanding how these techniques are applied with clients via demonstrations of DBT-C experts, followed by detailed debriefs. With the goal of providing more demonstrations than can be conducted in either a live or asynchronous training, the DBT-C Resource Library includes all angles of the DBT-C model: clinician-parent, clinician-child, and parent-child interactions and the role plays are conducted by clinicians playing the different roles as well as with parent and child actors.
For more information on the background of DBT-C, please enjoy this 6-segment interview of Dr. Perepletchikova by BritishIsles DBT clinician, trainer and author Dr. Christine Dunkley.
1. Dr. Perepletchikova tells the story of what led her to develop the DBT-C model.
Excerpt: “When I emigrated to the U.S., I studied child psychology at Yale, and during a guest lecture, a future mentor introduced me to the standard adult-focused Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) model. I only knew about dialectics from having to study Marx and Engels in the Soviet Union! Seeing both sides of an issue in working with adults and adolescents, I thought: I want to do this for children too!”
2. Don’t let the “C” in DBT-C confuse you
Excerpt: “DBT-C has no cutoff date – if you’re 90 and your child is 70, you still need to know how to form a healthy relationship with your child! It can be learned even before you have children because you’re going to first learn how to improve the relationship with yourself… As the forever protector of your child, you need to know what to do, have the capacity to do it, and cannot be afraid of your child and you cannot make your child afraid of you. This is what we are teaching.”
3. “Every dysfunction has a function.” CPA identifies the unconscious functions behind a behavior.
Excerpt: “90% of our responses are driven by processes that are not on the level of our conscious awareness. This is one reason we keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. To (re)act differently, we must first bring these unconscious processes to the level of awareness (or “go fishing” as Francheska calls it). This is the purpose of CPA. Then we can override the maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. Yes, even 5 year olds have gone fishing successfully!”
4. Emotional sensitivity is not something to correct.
Excerpt: “Supersenser children can get easily overwhelmed and go from 0 to 100 in a second with an emotional tsunami, yet in between outbursts they can be some of the most compassionate people, because they know what pain is and can sense it in other people. Also, emotional sensitivity is linked to creativity. Not all Supersensers are emotionally dysregulated – it comes from being in an environment that cannot meet their needs. This is where Superparenting comes in.”
5. How Core Problem Analysis bubbled up through years of functional analysis with clients, and using it as a guide to heal relationship with Self – for anyone – in therapy or not.
Excerpt: “I’m always looking for patterns. Doing functional analysis with clients, asking questions “what does it mean, what does it do for you, why is it a problem”. No matter where I started, we would end at identifying one or a combination of three core vulnerabilities: Sense of Self-Love, Sense of Safety, Sense of Belonging. I have not found a fourth one in 30 years! This was bottom up, empirically derived. And then I started to figure out, how do you heal those vulnerabilities.”
6. Being effective in life comes back to upholding the dialectics with Self, with others…and in parenting.
Excerpt: “We have two types of relationships – relationship with Self, and relationship with others. My relationship with Self: I just am, an entity – neither good nor bad – and I succeed or fail, people like me or they don’t, etc. But we are programmed to be one-sided and think that everything is conditional – if I succeed I am good, and if I fail I am bad. That’s misery. What we’re here to do, and with CPA in particular, is to understand these dialectics and separate the two sides, to connect to Self as just an entity, which in turn gives you the capacity to manage the fluctuations of life, including the parenting relationship.”