When Relationships Become High-Conflict: DBT Strategies for Validation and De-escalation is a practical, two-hour training for mental health clinicians who want to help clients respond more effectively during emotionally challenging interactions. Drawing on DBT-informed strategies for understanding relationship conflict and the six levels of DBT validation, the course examines how emotional arousal, inaccurate expression, and invalidating responses can contribute to escalating interpersonal exchanges. Participants will learn both how to validate effectively in therapy and, more importantly, how to teach validation to their clients. Instruction includes identifying what can genuinely be validated, distinguishing validation from agreement, demonstrating the six levels, coaching clients through practice, providing corrective feedback, and troubleshooting difficulties with real-world application.

Clinical examples and guided exercises illustrate how these strategies can be used in individual, couples, and family therapy. The course also addresses de-escalation, accurate expression, appropriate repair, and essential safeguards involving coercive control, abuse, and power differences. No prior DBT experience is required. The training introduces selected DBT-informed clinical strategies rather than comprehensive DBT or specialist couples-treatment training.

Upon completion of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Identify how emotional arousal, inaccurate expression, and invalidating responses can contribute to escalating interpersonal exchanges, using a DBT-informed transactional framework.
• Differentiate the six levels of DBT validation and identify a genuinely valid target within an emotionally charged communication without endorsing inaccurate conclusions or harmful behaviour.
• Demonstrate an introductory process for teaching validation to a client, including explanation, modelling, guided rehearsal, corrective feedback, and troubleshooting a common difficulty.
• Select an appropriate validation, de-escalation, or repair intervention for a fictional individual, couples, or family therapy situation, identifying at least one relevant safety or treatment-context consideration.