Jennifer Harbin, MS, LPC, CCH

02/07/2026

DBTSkills. Overview : Guidelines for Dialectical Thinking.

02/03/2026

"I'm not a math person."
"I'm not creative."
"I'm just not good at sales."
"I'm not a morning person."

These aren't personality traits. They're just stories you told yourself so many times they started feeling like facts.

At some point, you tried something, it didn't work, and you made it part of your identity. Now that identity runs the show. It decides what you attempt and what you don't. What's "realistic" and what isn't.

You're not protecting who you are. You're protecting who you were.

That's expensive. Every "I'm just not that kind of person" closes a door you never actually tested. You're making decisions based on data from years ago, collected by a version of you that doesn't exist anymore.

The cage feels like self-awareness. It's not. It's just old observations you stopped questioning.

You can update this stuff at any time.

"I wasn't a morning person" is available. "I haven't been good at sales" works too. Past tense. Room to change.

The person you could become doesn't need you to be someone else. They just need you to stop insisting you're only who you've already been.

—

I write a weekly newsletter where I unpack these ideas.

→ newsletter.scottdclary.com

01/30/2026

Explore inclusive therapy services at Ignite Pathways, offering trauma-informed care, children's programs, and evidence-based practices to support growth and healing.

01/30/2026

DBTSKills. Distress Tolerance Module. Skill: Distracting.

It is often suggested when teaching this skill that several activities are chosen - say 5 to begin with.

We then distract with these 5 activities over and over and over again - practice this regularly until they begin to work. Keep a diary.

If a distraction activity that you have chosen doesn't work, put it to one side and replace with another.

This skill is generally not intended to be a ' mix and match' smorgasbord of constant distractions .

Therapy is serious business and needs consistency daily, hourly to begin with.

Relying on /waiting for motivation is something that rarely works.

Daily skills practice is the way forward. Pick 5 and practice them daily. Over and over and over.

DBT - Dialectical Behavioural Therapy.

01/30/2026

EQ Mind Maps includes 52 large display cards, a pine stand and organza carrying pouch. Each card maps out an Emotional Intelligence skill with a short lesson, key insight, and real-life ways to practice it. Helping you build confidence, improve communication and strengthen your relationships every day.

01/30/2026

DBTSkills & Dialectical Behavioural Therapy.

It's 1961.
A 17-year-old girl is locked in a psychiatric ward.
The doctors don't expect her to survive.
She would go on to revolutionize
how we treat the "untreatable."

She spent 26 months there.
Seclusion rooms. Electroshock.
Burning herself. Banging her head against walls.

But Marsha Linehan made herself a vow:

She would get out of hell.
And she would find a way
to help others escape it too.

Decades later, she did exactly that.

She created Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
A treatment that would save countless lives and improve the quality of life for many others.

visual by Dr Eric Arzubi MD.

01/29/2026

DBT Skills. Distress Tolerance.
In DBT, distress tolerance skills are one approach to coping with uncomfortable emotions. Rather than trying to change or “fix” a feeling, the goal of distress tolerance is to simply get through it. This approach can be especially powerful for feelings that are unavoidable, or where acting upon a feeling might have severe consequences (e.g., addictions & relapse).

The Distress Tolerance: DBT Skills worksheet introduces three skills commonly used in DBT:

Radical Acceptance
Self-Soothe with Senses
Distraction (ACCEPTS)

The distress caused by resisting an emotion can sometimes become a wholly new burden. The idea of sitting with a painful emotion might be intimidating, but when it clicks, it becomes a powerful tool.

via Therapist Aid.

01/28/2026

As a holistic, trauma-focused psychotherapist, I help you heal old wounds through emotional regulation, nurturing mind, body, spirit, and heart.”

01/25/2026

What does this quote mean?

It means that the most exhausting work you will ever do isn’t your 9-to-5; it’s the constant effort of being yourself.

We live in a world that hands us "masks" the moment we wake up. It’s "easier" to be somebody else, to play the role of the perfect employee, the effortless friend, or the person who never causes trouble. It’s even easier to be nobody at all, to stay quiet, hide our quirks, and melt into the background where no one can judge us.

But to be "yourself"? That’s a "hell of a responsibility."

It means choosing your own values when they’re unpopular. It means showing up with your real face, even when you feel flawed or "unfinished." It’s the heavy, beautiful burden of owning your own story instead of reading from someone else’s script.

Most of us spend our whole lives "recalibrating", shedding the versions of ourselves that don't fit anymore, even when the "new" version hasn't quite taken shape yet. It feels like a failure or a stuckness, but really, it’s just the cost of being real.

01/24/2026

Carl G Jung /
"Carl Gustav Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology and religious studies. Jung worked as a research scientist at the famous Burghölzli hospital, un…

01/22/2026