Integrating Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Accepting the Challenges of Employment and Self-Sufficiency (DBT-ACES) Strategies into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

DBT-ACES (Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Accepting the Challenges of Employment and Self-Sufficiency) is an expansion and adaptation of Standard DBT developed to assist clients to achieve their employment, social, and financial independence goals. This paper provides an overview of several DBT-ACES strategies and considerations for their use in standard CBT as well as DBT treatment settings to increase employment among clients with significant emotion dysregulation difficulties including borderline personality disorder. These novel strategies include conceptualizing specific Recovery Goals, tracking Normative Productivity hours, setting Work as Therapy and Career Activities contingencies, facilitating a Check-In, and providing skills training using an innovative skills curriculum to address behavioral deficits that limit self-sufficiency. Considerations for how both DBT and non-DBT therapists alike can utilize these strategies to help their client find and maintain living wage employment are discussed.