DBT SKILLS TRAINING CLASS TIMES AND CURRENT ASSIGNMENTS
THURSDAYS 5:00-7:00 PM CST (ONLINE)
DBT Homework Assignment - Assigned March 26, 2026 | Due April 2, 2026
This assignment focuses on mindfulness skills — specifically learning to observe and describe experiences by separating facts from judgments and emotional interpretations.
Assignment: Mindfulness Handout 5–5A - Writing a Narrative of Events
Complete this week's homework by writing a detailed account of a significant event, extracting only the observable facts, and reflecting on what you noticed in the process.
What This Assignment Guides You Through:
• Writing a full, detailed narrative of a significant event including your environment, thoughts, feelings, and actions
• Identifying and separating factual, observable statements from judgments and interpretations
• Creating a facts-only version of your narrative
• Reflecting on what you noticed and experienced doing this exercise
What This Worksheet Guides You Through:
- Identifying specific addiction urges and their triggers (people, places, emotions, situations, times)
- Applying the Burning Bridges skill to make using harder and recovery easier
- Using Alternate Rebellion to satisfy the urge to rebel or break rules without using
- Practicing Clear Mind to recognize and respond to addiction's seductive thoughts
- Implementing Community Reinforcement strategies to make sober life rewarding
- Creating a concrete plan for managing high-risk situations and intense urges
The Purpose of This Practice: One of the core mindfulness skills in DBT is learning to observe and describe your experience without judgment. We often mix facts with interpretations without realizing it — and that mix can intensify emotions and distort how we understand situations.
This exercise trains you to notice the difference between what actually happened and the story you're telling about what happened. Both matter, but knowing which is which gives you more clarity and more choice in how you respond.
The Assignment — Three Parts:
Part 1: Write Your Full Narrative
Choose a significant event from the past week (or longer if needed). Write a blow-by-blow account of what happened, including:
• Environment: Where were you? Who was there? What was happening around you?
• Thoughts: What were you thinking as it unfolded?
• Feelings: What emotions came up? How intense were they?
• Actions: What did you do? What did others do?
Write it all out — don't hold back. This version can and probably will include judgments, interpretations, and emotional language. That's okay. Let it be messy.
Part 2: Extract the Facts Go back through what you wrote and highlight every factual statement — things that could be observed on a video camera, measured, or verified. Things that just happened, with no interpretation attached.
Then create a second, separate version that contains only the highlighted facts. Cut everything else.
Example: If you wrote "She was being completely unreasonable," that's a judgment — cut it. If you wrote "She raised her voice and interrupted me three times," that's a fact — keep it.
Part 3: Reflect on the Process: On a separate page, briefly write about your experience doing this exercise:
- What was it like to write the full narrative?
- What did you notice when you tried to separate facts from judgments and emotions?
- What was the emotional impact of reading just the factual version?
- What did you observe about the difference in length between your full narrative and your facts-only version?
What to Bring to Class:
We'll discuss this mindfulness practice on April 2. This kind of honest self-observation takes real courage. Looking forward to hearing what you noticed!