Support Student Mental Health with Proven DBT Skills
Today's students are facing more emotional challenges than ever. DBT in Schools equips educators with the tools to teach emotional regulation, resilience, and relationship-building before students are in crisis.
🔹 Evidence-based Curriculum
🔹 Ready-to-Use Tools
🔹 Practical, School-Friendly Training
Help Little Learners Understand Big Emotions
The Feelings Journey
The Feelings Journey
Help students understand what happens when emotions take over with The Feelings Journey, a colorful, kid-friendly poster from the DBT STEPS-E curriculum**.
Following our lovable Yeti through an everyday playground experience, this visual guide helps elementary students explore how situations, thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations connect and how they can choose what to do next.
Designed to make the Model of Emotions easier to understand, this poster breaks down a complex emotional process into four simple, relatable steps:
1. Something Happens – Recognize the situation that starts an emotional response.
2. I Think, I Feel – Explore how our thoughts and feelings connect.
3. My Body Tells Me– Notice physical signs of emotions, like a racing heart or butterflies in the stomach.
4. I Want to Do Something – Understand that we can choose how to respond to our feelings.
Perfect for Classrooms, Counseling Offices & Calm Corners
Whether you're a teacher introducing social-emotional learning (SEL), a school counselor teaching DBT skills, or a mental health professional helping children build emotional awareness, The Feelings Journey provides an engaging visual students can return to again and again.
Why Educators Love It:
- Makes emotional awareness easier to teach and understand.
- Uses familiar school situations and friendly illustrations.
- Encourages students to recognize feelings, body sensations, and behavioral urges.
- Supports conversations about emotional regulation and mindful decision-making.
- Reinforces skills taught in the STEPS-E elementary DBT curriculum.
Poster Details
- Premium 10 mil (0.25 mm) thick paper
- Slightly glossy, partly matte finish
- Fingerprint-resistant surface
- High-quality paper sourced from Japan
Because understanding our emotions is the first step toward learning how to respond to them.
Every feeling tells a story, and every child deserves the tools to understand theirs! Designed for the DBT STEPS-E curriculum, our new The Feelings Journey poster helps elementary students explore their emotions, recognize how feelings develop, and better understand their responses. With colorful, child-friendly visuals, this classroom resource makes complex emotional concepts easier to understand and discuss.
DBT STEPS-E Is Here
A complete DBT skills curriculum designed for K–2 and 3–5 students, giving your school the tools to build resilience from the very start.
The long-awaited DBT STEPS-E manual is now available.
Tailored specifically for elementary classrooms, DBT STEPS-E adapts DBT skills to meet younger learners where they are developmentally. Together with DBT STEPS-A, it creates a K–12 continuum of evidence-based skills that prepares students for success in school, relationships, and life.
Back-to-School Transition Skills
A free week of DBT skills practice to help students navigate change, build connection, and ask for what they need.
Back-to-school transitions can bring new routines, new expectations, new relationships, and BIG emotions.
Our free Transition Skills Workbooks give students a practical way to work through those changes using developmentally appropriate DBT skills.
Choose the DBT STEPS-E workbook for elementary students or the DBT STEPS-A workbook for adolescents, then use the included 5-Day Educator + Caregiver Guide to turn the activities into about 20 minutes of skills practice each day for one school week.
WHAT IS
DBT IN SCHOOLS?
DBT STEPS-A is a curriculum that is derived from the skills portion of Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
DBT in Schools, LLC has taken the skills portion of DBT and created a curriculum that can be taught in schools at the classroom level. You can think of these skills as life skills to be utilized when emotions take control …on the soccer field, during a recital, or navigating life.
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a cognitive behavioral treatment that was originally developed to treat chronically suicidal individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and it is now recognized as the gold standard psychological treatment for this population. In addition, research has shown that it is effective in treating a wide range of other disorders such as substance dependence, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eating disorders. As such, DBT is a transdiagnostic, modular treatment.
The term “dialectical” means a synthesis or integration of opposites. The primary dialectic within DBT is between the seemingly opposite strategies of acceptance and change. For example, DBT therapists accept clients as they are while also acknowledging that they need to change to reach their goals. In addition, the skills and strategies taught in DBT are balanced in terms of acceptance and change. The four skills modules include two sets of acceptance-oriented skills (mindfulness and distress tolerance) and two sets of change-oriented skills (emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness).
There are four components of comprehensive DBT: skills training group, individual treatment, DBT phone coaching, and consultation team.
Prevention Over Reaction: A Better Way Forward
Our mental health and education systems too often wait until students are in crisis to offer help. DBT in Schools changes that.
We bring DBT STEPS-A, a DBT skills-based curriculum, designed specifically for schools directly into the hands of teachers, counselors, and administrators.
Students learn skills to:
Handle stress and overwhelming emotions
Communicate needs clearly
Make effective decisions
Build healthy relationships
Training Opportunities
Trainings Designed for Counselors, Teachers, and Adminstrators.
We offer virtual and in-person trainings to help your team implement the DBT STEPS-A with confidence.
✔️ Flexible live sessions
✔️ CE credits for educators
✔️ School counseling & SEL focused
Start Using DBT Skills in Your School Today
Access a growing library of free classroom tools, videos, and lesson materials.
📎 Handouts & Worksheets
📽 Video Guides
🧩 Posters & Visual Aids
🧠 Lesson Planning Support
DBT Skills For Every Teen
Building social emotional wellness and resiliency in schools.
Browse the DBT STEPS-A curriculum and see how schools around the world are translating this work across languages and cultures.
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It
“I was unsure how a three day training would be, but you did a great job of keeping us entertained and engaged with the content of the presentations. You made us feel comfortable and have provided us with some very valuable tools!”
“The training was again very strong. Your ability to read us remotely and make adjustments to your presentation shows not only knowledge of your content, but a genuine desire for us to get the most out of this training. Thank you so much for being flexible and dynamic. I am looking forward to digging deep with this curriculum through the year and improving my students’ mental health through the year and beyond.”
“Once again, you were a fabulous presenter and I am SUPER impressed by the amount of energy you exhibited throughout the training, especially considering we began at 5:00 AM your time! Your ability to incorporate responses of the audience is fantastic! You really make the importance of this visible to everyone, despite the discipline they teach daily. I enjoyed every minute!”
“This training gave me ideas on how to reach students in crisis and how to give them the skills to rationalize their emotions and communicate their intent/desire.”
