Hi reddragon,
I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can understand the concepts myself.
Dialectics is a philosophy term refering to opposing ideas. Within the context of DBT it means "The reconcilliation of opposites in a continual synthesis" I had to look it up on Wikipedia. DBT was originally developed to treat people with Borderline Personality Disorder, but has also been shown to be effective with people with post traumatic stress disorder, or any affect regulation problems, who use destructive coping mechanisms to regulate their moods / tolerate their feelings. It's broken down into modules the two biggest of which are distress tolerance, so you learn to tolerate negative feelings, and self soothing, so you learn healthier coping mechanisms. One of the really big concepts is "Radical Acceptance" I sum that up as "My situation is complete crap, I feel awful, there's nothing I can do to change the situation, so I'm just going to accept it for what it is, and not react negatively." In a way it's a bit like Step One in AA. I'm finding DBT really helpful with my mood regulation problems, and while it's early days - I think it will help me with my urges to drink.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation. It was popularized in the West by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who had been a meditator for years and thought that meditation could be useful in treating people with chronic conditions, so he founded the Mindfullness Based Stress Reduction program. The idea of mindfullness is to be fully in the present concentrating only on the now, with an attitude of oppenness, willingness, and curriosity. There are mindfullness meditation CD's that you can buy to help you get started - the two biggest one's are a body scan where you concentrate on going through every part of your body and just notice how it feels, and concentrating on your breath. I do breathing exercises when I start feeling anxious or freaking out and find that they really calm me down. I love mindfulness and try to practice it daily. Two good books, both by Zinn, are "Full catastrophe Living" which explains the original MBSR program, and "Wherever you go, there you are" which is a book of short essays on everyday mindfulness." I did a formal 8 week program in Mindfullness based Cognitive Therapy which is specifically to treat individuals who have had multiple bouts of depression but are not currently depressed, with a view to helping them avoid slipping back into a depressive episode.
I find them both really useful.
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