the gold

Your workbook: what buyers wished for, drafted for your eyes

We read what people say about every workbook like yours on the market. They keep wishing for the same things: no walls of text, no being talked down to, room to actually write, little real-life examples, and an honest word about what to do when a skill seems not to work. Your workbook is already closer than most. These drafts close the rest of the gap.

We also checked every word of the two skills below against the official DBT manual, and tightened a couple of things it cares about (including one safety note). Each card tells you why in one line.

No rush, no order, no homework. Read a card when you have a quiet minute. Three buttons each: keep it, tweak it (tell us what to change, however it comes to you), or bin it and we start that one again. Your word is the last word on every card.

One question to mull as you read the Dan and Priya stories: should the people in the examples be invented like these two, or drawn from your years of real sessions, made unrecognisable? Either works; it is your call.

Prefer to see them as real pages? Open the seven drafts laid out exactly as they would appear in the workbook (PDF) → They are the same words as the cards below; the buttons live here.

New: a third skill, built to stand on its own. Check the Facts, a four-page module (PDF) → This one is a trial of selling single exercises on their own as well as inside the big workbook. Same checks as the other two skills; your word is still the last word.

How each skill is scoring

Before anything reaches this page it goes through a set of checks: is it true to the official manual, is the safety wording complete, does it sound like you, does it fit the page, and, new this week, could someone use it entirely on their own, with every mentioned skill clearly signposted. Here is where the three skills stand, honestly. The last two rows only humans can fill in.

TIPP (the crisis skills)

True to the official manual All five must-have details present, checked word by word.	good
Safety note complete Every warning the manual asks for, in plain words (this was the page we had to fix).	good
Sounds like you, never talks down Zero telling-off moments in our read; your read below is the one that counts.	good
No walls of text, room to write All pages pass the layout checks, write-lines sized for real handwriting.	good
Kind to home printers Ink kept light on every page; buyers print these at home.	good
A real-life example, honestly told Dan: practised first, a partial win, no fairy-tale ending.	good
A picture where a picture helps We now list every idea a skill teaches and decide its picture. TIPP: 6 of 8 drawn (the cold-water steps are three little line drawings now); still to draw: the breathing rhythm and the muscle sequence.	nearly
Other skills always named as skills Where the pages mention self-soothe or ACCEPTS, a small marker now says they are skills of their own and where they live.	good
Works with nobody else in the room New check, and it caught something real: the cold-water page now says a bowl on a worktop only, never a bath or a sink you could slip into.	good
David's pen test on a printed copy Waiting on David and a printer.	waiting
Your verdict The cards below; your word is the last word.	waiting

Opposite action

True to the official manual All five must-have details present, including what the skill is NOT.	good
Safety note complete No safety warnings needed for this skill.	—
Sounds like you, never talks down Zero telling-off moments in our read; your read below is the one that counts.	good
No walls of text, room to write All pages pass the layout checks after we added writing lines.	good
Kind to home printers Ink kept light on every page.	good
A real-life example, honestly told Priya: the churn allowed, a small win, the practice adding up.	good
A picture where a picture helps Re-marked under the stricter check: 4 of 6 drawn (fork, ladder, Priya). Best one still to draw: a little curve showing each go starting lower than the last, right beside the practice log.	nearly
Other skills always named as skills Your catch: "check the facts" IS its own skill and nothing said so. Every mention now carries a clear marker, and the skill got built (next table).	good
Works with nobody else in the room Pen-and-paper skill; nothing assumes a group or a professional guiding it.	good
David's pen test on a printed copy Waiting on David and a printer.	waiting
Your verdict The cards below; your word is the last word.	waiting

Check the facts (new, the stand-alone module)

True to the official manual Built from the official handouts word by word: all six questions, including the two everyone skips (how likely is the feared thing, and could I cope if it happened).	good
Safety note complete No physical risks, so the care is in the framing: it opens with "this is not about proving your feelings wrong", and it says when to do this with a therapist instead.	good
Sounds like you, never talks down Zero telling-off moments in our read; your read is the one that counts.	good
No walls of text, room to write Four pages, all passing the layout checks; it grew a fourth page rather than cramming.	good
Kind to home printers Ink kept light on every page.	good
A real-life example, honestly told Sam and the Friday email: some of his worry fit the facts, the ruined weekend did not. No fairy-tale ending.	good
A picture where a picture helps All 5 of 5 drawn: the event-story-feeling loop, the camera test (a camera’s pile of facts next to the mind’s pile of stories), the six questions, the three-way signpost, and Sam.	good
Other skills always named as skills It ends by handing you on (problem solving, radical acceptance, opposite action), each clearly marked as its own skill in the full workbook.	good
Works with nobody else in the room The official version says "ask Wise Mind"; ours asks "is this feeling, at this size, helping me right now?" so nobody needs the training course.	good
David's pen test on a printed copy Waiting on David and a printer.	waiting
Your verdict Read the module PDF linked above; its keep/tweak/bin cards come once you have had a first look.	waiting

Card 1 of 9

A new first page: "Learn it before you need it"

Why: This is your own teaching, the bus story you tell. People who give up on these skills almost always tried them for the first time mid-crisis.

Learn it before you need it Most people find this out the hard way, so it goes at the front instead: these skills are a language. You would not try to speak your first sentence of Spanish in the middle of an emergency in Madrid. You would learn it at the kitchen table, say it wrong a few times, get comfortable, and THEN it would be there for you when you needed it. These skills work the same way. If you try one for the very first time in the middle of your worst moment, it will probably let you down, and you will decide it does not work. It does work. It just was not ready yet, because it had not been practised. So: practise when things are calm. In the kitchen, on the bus, on an ordinary Tuesday. It will feel a bit pointless, like saying "¿dónde está la biblioteca?" to nobody. That is what learning feels like. And when you do use a skill in a hard moment for the first time, expect it to be clumsy. First sentences always are. It still counts. It gets smoother every time.