Youth Rights Grievance staff help youth with DBT skills

Youth training in DBT skills

By Youth Rights Staff, Gainesville campus

Youth rights grievance staff and their clerks at TJJD campuses use DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) in daily life to help effectively manage crisis situations and difficult emotions.

Across TJJD, staff work each week with all youth on learning these behavior management skills.

Last week, Youth Rights Specialists Rita Shelli Bengfort at Gainesville State School and Jennifer Eyler at Giddings State School, helped youth in the youth rights program understand the DBT skill of that week – Emotion Regulation-Changing Emotions, Opposite Actions.

In this skill, youth learn to change how they feel about an event or circumstance by adopting the “opposite action” a person might use to respond. For instance, they might try leaning back and relaxing, instead of tensing up their fists over something that normally makes them angry.

Bengfort and Eyler talked with the youth about how to respond in an opposite direction from their first impulse and how that can bring a positive outcome.

Bengfort’s group also played “Tell Me More,” a card game with questions designed to deepen connection. The cards ask players to answer questions such as “What’s one thing about yourself you are genuinely proud of?” or “What’s something you think people tend to assume about you when they first meet you”? Another question: “If you could reconnect with anyone in your life, who would it be and why?”

At Giddings, Eyler and her team played the game “Life is still good,” tossing a ball to each other and giving examples of things haven’t gone exactly how a youth wanted. The game asks the youth to follow up their example with the statement, “Life is still good.” Then the youth list positives in their life and finish by saying, “Still, I feel lucky.”

Here’s an example: “I didn’t wake up to my alarm this morning, but life is still good. Still, I feel lucky, I got to work on time.”

After these sessions, the youth who serve as grievance clerks at their dorms enjoyed a special meal of tacos or pizza. The meal is a reward for the work they do collecting grievance reports from their peers.

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