DBT Skills for Educators

You Give Everything to Your Students. This Group Gives Something Back to You.

A skills-based group for educators who are running on empty — and ready to change that.

DBT Skills for Educators is an 8-session, 16 week, structured skills training group designed specifically for the people who keep schools running: K–12 teachers, school counselors, special education staff, paraprofessionals, and school administrators. If you work in a school building and you're exhausted in ways that a long weekend doesn't fix, this group was built for you.

The group applies Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) — one of the most evidence-based therapeutic approaches available — directly to the realities of school life. Difficult students. Overwhelming workloads. Administratively invalidating environments. Chronic compassion fatigue. The invisible emotional labor that nobody puts in your job description but that you carry home every single day.

This is not a support group where you vent and go home. This is a skills group. You will leave each session with concrete, tested tools that you can use the next morning — in your classroom, in your IEP meeting, in the parking lot after a brutal day. No fluff. No toxic positivity. Just skills that actually work.

What This Group Offers

Here's what you're signing up for — in plain language:

• 8 structured 90-minute sessions, held bi-weekly — a contained, manageable commitment with a clear beginning and end
• Skills drawn from all four DBT modules: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness — the full toolkit, not a highlight reel
• Educator-specific examples and applications for every skill — not generic therapy content retrofitted to your life; content that was built around your life from the start
• A facilitated, confidential group setting with peers who understand your world without needing it explained
• Weekly home practice that fits into a real teacher's life — not hours of journaling or elaborate rituals; realistic, practical, and actually doable on a Wednesday night
• A personalized sustainability plan developed in the final session, so you leave with something that belongs to you
• A supportive community of educators who are all showing up, doing the work, and rooting for each other to make it

Who This Group Is For

This group is designed for educators who recognize themselves in at least one of the following:

• You feel emotionally drained at the end of most school days — not just tired, but genuinely depleted
• You find yourself snapping at students, colleagues, or family — and then spending the evening feeling ashamed about it
• You've experienced compassion fatigue, but no one has ever given you an actual plan for what to do about it
• You care deeply about your students, but feel like the system is actively working against you — and you're absorbing the cost of that
• You've tried the wellness tips — the bubble baths, the journaling, the yoga — and they haven't been enough. Because they were never designed for what you're carrying
• You're a highly skilled educator who feels like you're barely keeping it together emotionally, and that gap between your competence and your internal experience is exhausting to maintain
• You want real skills — not platitudes, not a vision board, not another reminder to "practice gratitude"
• You're considering leaving the profession, and you're quietly wondering if anything could make staying feel sustainable

You don't have to be in crisis to benefit from this group. Many participants are high-functioning educators who simply know they deserve better tools — and are finally ready to get them.

What Makes This Group Different

Evidence-Based, Not Inspirational

DBT is one of the most rigorously researched therapeutic modalities in existence. This group uses real DBT skills — not watered-down wellness content with a DBT label on it. You'll be learning tools with decades of research behind them, applied by a trained clinician.

Built for Educators, Not Adapted for Them

Every skill is taught through the lens of classroom life, school politics, difficult students, and the particular emotional demands of education. Your examples won't be hypothetical. They'll be situations you've probably lived through this semester.

Skills You Can Use Tomorrow Morning

Each session ends with concrete weekly practice. By the final session, you will have a personalized toolkit — not a binder you file away, but a set of skills you've actually practiced and that you know how to reach for on your hardest days.

A Room Full of People Who Get It

This group is exclusively for educators. You won't have to explain what an IEP meeting feels like, or why the 3pm bell brings a particular kind of relief and exhaustion all at once. They know. That shared understanding changes what's possible in the room.

Professionally Led

This group is facilitated by a licensed mental health professional with specialized training in DBT and direct experience working with educators. You're in skilled hands — and you'll be able to tell.

Confidential and Non-Judgmental

What's shared in group stays in group. You are not here to be evaluated, graded, or reported on. You're here to learn and to be honest — and this is a space that can hold both.

The Structure

DBT Skills for Educators unfolds across 8 weekly sessions, each 90 minutes in length. Here's what you can expect:

1. Welcome & Orientation — Get grounded. Understand the DBT framework and why it's different from other approaches you may have encountered. Learn how it applies to your specific life as an educator. Meet your group.
2. Core Mindfulness Skills — Learn to observe, describe, and participate in your classroom experience without getting swept away by it. Mindfulness, done right, is not about emptying your mind. It's about being present with what's actually happening — including the hard stuff.
3. Distress Tolerance I — Crisis Survival — What do you do when you're at an 8 out of 10 and you cannot problem-solve your way out? This session gives you concrete tools that work fast, in real time — in the hallway, in the staff bathroom, in the 90 seconds before your next class walks in.
4. Distress Tolerance II — Radical Acceptance — Learn to stop fighting what you cannot change. This is not giving up. Radical Acceptance is what frees you to act effectively — and this session will show you exactly how.
5. Emotion Regulation I — Understanding Emotions — Learn what your emotions are actually telling you, reduce your biological vulnerability to emotional overwhelm, and begin building a life that can sustain this work long-term.
6. Emotion Regulation II — Changing Emotions — Check the facts. Act opposite. Problem-solve. This session gives you a full toolkit for navigating difficult emotional moments — with your students, your colleagues, and yourself.
7. Interpersonal Effectiveness — Ask for what you need. Set limits with dignity. Navigate parent conferences, administrative requests, and the difficult conversations that are part of every educator's week. Keep relationships intact while still taking care of yourself.
8. Integration & Sustainability — Celebrate your growth. Build a personalized maintenance plan that reflects who you are and what you actually need. Write a letter to your future self. Graduate.

Each session includes a brief mindfulness practice, skill instruction with educator-specific examples, facilitated group discussion, and a realistic weekly home practice assignment — designed to take minutes, not hours.

Ready to Begin?

Space in this group is limited to ensure a safe, connected experience for every participant. Small groups work better — and that means spots fill up. If you're ready to invest in yourself as an educator and as a person, we'd love to have you.

Reach out to me using the Contact link below.