Learning About Friendship: Lessons from Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Recently, my 14-year-old niece was visiting and overheard me talking about Radically Open-Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO DBT) with my partner:
My niece: “What’s RO DBT?”
Me: “It’s a therapy I use to help people who suffer from conditions of overcontrol.”
My partner, being undercontrolled, pipes up and says: “Your Auntie helps people who don’t know how to make friends.”
Of course, RO DBT is a bit more complicated than that, but we do know that emotional loneliness is at the root of “overcontrolled” conditions such as depression, anxiety, and anorexia nervosa.