As part of the practice of doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy, we generally assign what is called a “diary card”. The idea with this homework is that tracking your behavior and emotions on a daily basis will allow us to quickly identify patterns in your life that may be leading to problematic situations. After filling this out and examining changes in your emotion, you might be able to understand better what is causing problems in your life so you can start to change it.
To help iPhone/iPad/iPod touch users do their diary cards, we’ve created a DBT app. It’s a diary card app with lots of skills and treatment targets already built in. It helps immensely with generalizing skills and making sure that diary cards get done. You don’t even need to be in therapy to get benefit from it since it has descriptions of skills and targets already built in. We think it’s pretty fantastic and think you will, too. Download it from iTunes now. Or go to diarycard.net for more information.
The card that’s provided here is just a sample of one that you could use. In therapy, we will customize the columns to make it fit your particular needs. Download the diary card sample here.
