Overview
Dr. Sara Liebert provides comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy in New York City for adolescents and adults struggling with intense emotions, self-destructive patterns and unstable relationships. DBT teaches concrete, practicable skills rather than insight alone. Available in Manhattan or online. Call 917.782.0405 or schedule an appointment.
What Is DBT?
Dialectical Behavior Therapy was developed for people whose emotions run more intensely and take longer to settle than most. It combines acceptance — the recognition that you are doing your best with what you have — with change, the work of building different responses.
“Comprehensive” DBT means the full model rather than a few borrowed techniques: individual therapy, skills training, and coaching between sessions.
The Four Skill Modules
Mindfulness. Noticing what is happening internally without immediately reacting to it. Everything else in DBT rests on this.
Distress tolerance. Getting through a crisis without making it worse. Practical, immediate techniques for the moments when emotion peaks.
Emotion regulation. Understanding what emotions do, reducing vulnerability to intense episodes, and changing emotions that no longer serve you.
Interpersonal effectiveness. Asking for what you need, setting limits and maintaining relationships without abandoning yourself in the process.
Who DBT Helps
- Emotional dysregulation — feelings that arrive fast and stay long
- Self-harm and suicidal thinking
- Borderline personality disorder and related difficulties
- Chronic relationship instability
- Impulsive behavior — spending, substance use, anger
- Adolescents with behavioral dysregulation
DBT has the strongest evidence base of any treatment for emotion dysregulation and self-harming behavior.
What It Involves
DBT is more demanding than weekly talk therapy. It asks for practice between sessions, tracking of behaviors and moods, and a genuine commitment to trying skills that will feel unnatural at first.
That effort is precisely why it works. Skills change what you do in the moment, and doing something different is what changes outcomes.
Dr. Liebert will be honest with you at consultation about whether the commitment is realistic right now. Where it is not, individual therapy using CBT may be the better starting point, or EMDR where unprocessed trauma is driving the dysregulation.
For Adolescents and Families
DBT with adolescents typically involves parents or caregivers, since the environment shapes how well skills take hold. Dr. Liebert works with families where clinically appropriate.
Parents often find the skills useful themselves. Emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness are not adolescent-specific, and a household applying the same language tends to see faster change than one where only the young person is practicing them.
In Person or Online
Sessions are available in person on the Upper West Side and online across New York and Connecticut. Dr. Liebert is licensed in New York, Connecticut and Florida.
The practice is out of network with all insurance plans, with superbills provided for out-of-network reimbursement.
Talk to Dr. Liebert
A licensed clinical and forensic psychologist trained in DBT, EMDR, CBT and TF-CBT, and an adjunct professor at NYU. Inquiries answered within 24 hours.
Book a consultation, read about Dr. Liebert, or explore clinical psychology services.