DBT What Skills Worksheet for Therapists

Authored by Dr. Hannah Lin, counseling psychologist trained in CBT, ACT, and IFS, with over a decade of clinical practice across anxiety and complex trauma.

Twelve minutes left. Devon’s hands are already in the sink. The call ended six minutes ago. The water is running. The mug is in the left hand. The argument is still in the room: “I should have said it.” You could spend the rest of the hour on a states-of-mind diagram, or on a general talk about being present. Neither one gives you a record of what they actually did. What you need on paper is one move: notice, put into words, or join the washing.

A dbt what skills worksheet is that record. Log one practice per trial across observe, describe and participate. Circle one move, then write the setting, what was noticed without a story, the camera-fact words, or how they joined. Assign it as paper the client brings back, not as reading.

This guide is for licensed therapists using DBT or DBT-informed work with adults who can stay with one present-moment move long enough to write it. It is not a self-help article and it is not a protocol for unsupervised use.

Educational content for licensed therapists, not clinical, legal, or emergency advice. Worksheet selection sits inside formulation, consent, and risk review. These sheets do not replace supervision, diagnosis, or a safety plan.

What this sheet is and is not

The parent DBT worksheets pack already covers diary card, chain analysis, crisis-skill planning, and DEAR MAN. This page fills one gap that pack leaves open: a three-skill practice log for observe, describe, and participate. Keep diary-card review on that pack. Keep this sheet for present-moment trials. If the hour is a decision at the overlap of feeling-mind and fact-mind, use the wise mind worksheet instead. That is a different job.

This sheet is	This sheet is not
A three-skill log: observe, describe, participate	A general mindfulness explainer
One circled move per trial	Observe then describe then participate as a ritual
Notice without adding a story, or fact-words, or joining the activity	A body-scan protocol or a guided meditation
Paper under a DBT or DBT-informed formulation	A states-of-mind definition card with no fill-in
A therapist-chosen take-home from the shared pack	A skills-manual reprint or unsupervised self-help

Behavioral Tech training lists the three “What” skills as Observe, Describe, and Participate, and treats them as a separate set from the three “How” skills (Behavioral Tech Institute). Stephanie Vaughn’s teaching notes put it in one sentence: there are three what skills, observe, describe and participate (Psychotherapy Academy). This page does not reprint a publisher handout. It hands you a log that follows those three moves for assigned trials.

When the assignment fits

Use a dbt what skills worksheet when three things are true at once.

1. One present-moment move can be named: notice, put into words, or join.
2. The client can stay with that move long enough to write it, rather than needing a crisis-survival skill first.
3. The job is practice, not a lecture about balance, and not a wise-mind decision.

Devon’s sink after the call fits. “Be more mindful this week” does not. A flooding panic in the parking lot does not. A 1:40 a.m. send/don’t-send decision belongs on the wise mind sheet, not here.

A Behavioral Tech review of mindfulness measurement is blunt about the frame: DBT does not teach mindfulness meditation but instead focuses on mindful awareness in daily life through use of the “what” and “how” skills (Behavioral Tech Institute). If you wanted a sitting practice with a recording, you would already be in the wrong file.

Skip or pause when:

• acute risk, intoxication, or dissociation is in the room
• the page would become a 20-minute body scan, a breathing script, or a states-of-mind class
• home is not private enough to leave written material
• the client cannot stay with one move long enough to describe it
• the indicated tool is a diary card, a chain, a crisis plan, a how-skills sheet, or a wise-mind decision record

Say what the log is for, who will see it, when you will read it, and that it is not monitored between sessions. The APA Ethics Code requires informed consent for therapy provided in person or via electronic transmission, and it limits practice to the psychologist’s competence. Psychologists take reasonable precautions to protect confidential information obtained through or stored in any medium, and discuss the relevant limits of confidentiality.

The record you assign

Keep the dbt what skills worksheet on one page. Three skills. One circled move per trial. No extra columns for emotion-mind, reason-mind, or a meditation timer. Those belong on other sheets.

Do not add a fourth column for nonjudgmentally, one-mindfully, or effectively. That quietly turns the page into a how-skills sheet. Do not add a Venn diagram. That quietly turns it into states of mind. If you need those, assign those sheets instead.

The printable pack’s WHAT skills rehearsal is one trial of one move. This log is how you collect those trials across observe, describe, and participate without asking the client to stack all three in one sitting.

How to walk it in session

Start by circling the move before anyone writes a paragraph. “I should be more present” is not a move. Notice the water, name the thought as a thought, or finish washing the mug is.

Vaughn’s observe teaching is useful as a guardrail, not as a script to copy. Observe is done without an attempt to change anything, with the five senses and with thoughts, and it does not include other people’s feelings, concepts, meanings, or causes. A person who is not observing might say “my life is slipping away.” A person who is observing might say the stomach is tightening, or name the sound of the white noise machine (Psychotherapy Academy).

Stay on the circled row until it includes:

• a setting a witness could recognize
• for observe: one or two noticed items, labeled as sensation, thought, or urge
• for describe: words a camera could catch, with thought labeled as thought
• for participate: the activity they joined, or the pull that took them out
• a stop time, so the trial does not become a scan

Linehan Institute skills groups are structured like a class: a leader teaches the skills, assigns practice exercises (homework), and guides participants in bringing these tools into real-world situations (Linehan Institute). Keep that shape. Teach one move. Assign practice. Bring the log back. Do not turn homework into a second lecture.

A worked example

Notice what the example does not do. It does not ask Devon which state of mind they were in. It does not score how mindful they were. It does not stack all three moves in one sitting as proof they “did WHAT.” Those would be other pages, or no page at all.

The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, built in part from DBT-familiar language, treats observing, describing, and acting with awareness as separate facets, not as one blended score: observing is noticing and attending to sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; describing is labeling experience with words; acting with awareness is attending to current activity rather than automatic pilot (PMC7350530). Use that as a reason to keep the three rows apart on the log. Do not import the questionnaire onto the homework page.

Between sessions and the next-hour review

Assign the log, not a week of “practice mindfulness.” If you send all three skills as a sequence to perform each evening, you will get a ritual.

Write the dose on the sheet: one trial of the circled move, three to five times this week, or until you meet. Fully, halfway, or not are all data. A perfectly filled page with no noticing, no fact-words, and no joining is also data. It usually means the trial was still a story.

Reopen with the circled move, not with “did you do your homework.” Ask which skill they tried, what was noticed or said or done, and what pulled them out. If they washed the mug and the phone stayed in the other room, keep the same skill and shrink or repeat the trial. If they thought about washing and rewrote the call, the participate row was not behavioral. If the session turns into a debate about whether they have a wise mind, you have left this sheet.

If follow-up is the missing piece rather than another form, keep therapy worksheet follow-up in view so the next hour reopens what happened, including a skipped try.

The pack’s last page is a next-session review with chart stems. Use it so the worksheet does not get pasted into the note.

What goes in the note

Do not dump the log into the chart. Capture the clinical signal:

• which skill was circled (observe, describe, or participate)
• the setting in one clause
• what was noticed, said, or done
• whether the trial was full, half, or skipped
• next step, or the reason you switched tools

A sufficient line: “Assigned dbt what skills worksheet after a hard call. Circled observe at the sink. Returned: warm water, shoulder tightness, thought ‘I should have said X’ labeled as a thought. Not a wise-mind target.”

That shows modality fit, a specific intervention, and continuity. It does not store the client’s self-attack in a place that is easier to subpoena than it is to use.

If you still need the modality frame before you pick a form, start with DBT basics for therapists rather than stretching this log into a class.

Where Emosapien fits

The clinical work is the circled move, the trial, and the return. The admin work is remembering that a log went home and turning the return into a line in the note. Emosapien can hold the assignment, collect a short return (full / half / blank), and draft a stem you still have to edit. It does not choose the move and it does not decide that a blank page is resistance.

If you want that loop connected to the next appointment, start for free and keep the worksheet inside the session where it belongs.

Related worksheets

Use the therapy worksheets guide when you are still choosing a form by clinical task. Stay on this dbt what skills worksheet when the task is already a three-skill observe / describe / participate log.

References

• Behavioral Tech Institute. (n.d.). Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training: Introduction and Fundamentals. Learning objective: define and describe the three “What” skills (Observe, Describe, and Participate).
• Behavioral Tech Institute. (2016). The Measure of Mindfulness. DBT does not teach mindfulness meditation but focuses on mindful awareness in daily life through the “what” and “how” skills.
• Vaughn, S. Mindfulness skills training in DBT: The what and how skills. Psychotherapy Academy. Three what skills: observe, describe, and participate.
• Linehan Institute. What are DBT and DBT skills?. Skills groups assign practice exercises and review them.
• Linehan, M. M. DBT Skills Training Manual. Guilford. Skills practice inside a structured treatment frame (not this pack’s record).
• Christopher, M., et al. (2020). Evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Five Facet of Mindfulness Questionnaire. Observing, describing, and acting with awareness as separate facets.
• American Psychological Association. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2017). Informed consent, competence, and confidentiality duties.