When emotions become intense, it can be hard to slow down before reacting. You might feel overwhelmed quickly, struggle to calm down after something upsetting, or have difficulty understanding why certain situations affect you so strongly.
Therapy Works Wonders, based in Naperville, offers DBT and emotional regulation therapy that can help you build practical skills to manage difficult emotions, handle stressful situations, and respond more intentionally.
Strong emotions are not always easy to explain. Sometimes a situation that seems small to someone else can feel extremely upsetting, while other moments can bring frustration, sadness, anxiety, or anger that takes a long time to settle.
You might react quickly during conflict, struggle to communicate what you need, or find yourself replaying an interaction long after it happened. You may also know that you want to respond differently but feel unsure how to pause when your emotions are already running high.
DBT provides practical skills to recognize what is happening in those moments and create more space between an emotional reaction and your response. If emotional patterns are affecting your relationships, you can also combine individual therapy with couples or family therapy when working together on communication, which would be helpful.
Emotional Triggers
Everyone experiences strong emotions. It can be worth exploring therapy when emotional reactions become difficult to manage or begin affecting your relationships, responsibilities, or sense of well-being.
You might notice frequent arguments, difficulty calming down after conflict, impulsive reactions, intense frustration, or a tendency to shut down when emotions become overwhelming. You may also feel like your emotions change quickly or that it takes a long time to recover after something upsetting happens.
Therapy gives you a place to look at these patterns without judging yourself for having strong emotions. Therapy Works Wonders will work on understanding what is happening and developing skills that help you handle difficult moments with greater awareness.
DBT is practical by design. We can explore how specific skills apply to situations you encounter at home, at work, at school, in sports, and in your relationships.
Mindfulness and Awareness – Mindfulness can help you notice your thoughts, emotions, physical reactions, and surroundings without immediately acting on them. This can help athletes during competition, students under academic pressure, and individuals who need to stay focused in stressful situations, and more.
Distress Tolerance – Some situations cannot be changed immediately, and distress tolerance skills can help you get through difficult moments without making them harder. These skills can be useful when handling pressure at work, responding to stressful events, or managing frustration.
Emotion Regulation – Understanding your emotional patterns can make intense feelings easier to navigate. We can work on strategies for managing frustration, stress, anger, and pressure while balancing school, sports, work, or other responsibilities.
Interpersonal Effectiveness – DBT skills can help you communicate your needs, set boundaries, handle disagreements, and navigate difficult conversations. This can be useful with coworkers, friends, partners, and family when pressure or conflict affects how you communicate.
DBT isn’t about telling you your emotions are too much or that you need to become less sensitive. The purpose is to help you understand your emotional responses and develop skills that give you more choices in how you handle difficult situations. When an emotion feels immediate, creating even a small pause can change what happens next. We will practice ways to recognize that pause and use it before responding.
Saadia works with adolescents and adults and has experience across private practice, outpatient, inpatient, and community counseling settings. Her experience across different settings informs her work with people navigating emotional and everyday life challenges.
Kylie works with children ages 6 and older, adolescents, and young adults. Her areas of interest include anxiety, relationships, identity development, academic and career stress, and major life transitions, which can all involve emotional regulation and difficult feelings.
Learning a skill is different from using it when you’re upset. We connect DBT skills to situations you actually encounter so you can practice using them in everyday life.
Not every strategy will feel useful in every situation. We explore different skills and approaches based on your experiences, preferences, relationships, and the areas where you want to make changes.
At Therapy Works Wonders, we believe therapy should be shaped around the person—not the other way around. Every client brings a unique history, identity, set of relationships, strengths, challenges, and life experiences into the therapy room. Because of this, our clinicians do not rely on a single therapeutic approach or set of techniques.
We take an integrative, whole-person approach to psychotherapy, drawing from a range of psychological theories and evidence-based practices to understand each client more fully and tailor treatment to their individual needs and goals.
Depending on the client and what they are working through, therapy may incorporate approaches such as
For some clients, therapy may focus on understanding patterns of thinking and behavior. For others, it may involve exploring past experiences, relationships, identity, internal parts, emotions, personal values, or the stories they have carried about themselves. Often, meaningful therapy includes several of these perspectives.
Our goal is not to fit you into a particular model. It is to understand you as a whole person and thoughtfully use the approaches that best support your healing, growth, and goals.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, is a form of therapy that teaches practical skills for managing emotions, handling stressful situations, improving relationships, and becoming more aware of thoughts and reactions.
DBT includes several areas of skill development, including mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. You can apply these skills outside of therapy, making them useful for everyday challenges.
Emotional regulation therapy focuses on understanding and managing strong emotional responses. Rather than trying to eliminate difficult emotions, therapy can help you recognize what you are feeling, understand what contributes to those reactions, and develop healthier ways to respond.
This work can be especially helpful when emotional reactions affect relationships, communication, responsibilities, or your ability to handle stressful situations.
You don’t need to experience constant emotional distress to benefit from learning emotional regulation skills. Therapy may be worth considering if you regularly feel overwhelmed by emotions, have difficulty calming down after upsetting situations, react in ways you later regret, or find that emotional reactions are creating problems in your relationships or everyday life.
If you’re unsure whether therapy is appropriate, reach out to our team to talk through what you have been experiencing.
DBT can provide skills to understand what happens when anger becomes intense and learn ways to respond before the emotion leads to actions you don’t want to take.
Therapy can also explore what tends to trigger anger, how you communicate when you’re upset, and what happens in the moments leading up to an argument or reaction. The focus is not on eliminating anger, but on finding healthier ways to understand and express it.
DBT skills can be useful when anxiety becomes intense or makes it difficult to respond effectively to stressful situations. Mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation skills can help you become more aware of what is happening and create more space before reacting. If anxiety is a major part of what you’re experiencing, anxiety therapy may also be an appropriate part of your care.
Yes. Relationships are one of the areas addressed through DBT skills. Interpersonal effectiveness focuses on communicating needs, setting boundaries, navigating disagreements, and maintaining relationships while also respecting yourself.
Therapy can also help you recognize patterns that tend to happen during conflict and practice different ways of responding.
No. DBT skills help anyone better understand emotional reactions and develop healthier ways to respond to difficult situations.
The therapy focus depends on what you want to work on. You might want help with communication, emotional regulation, stress, relationships, or handling situations that consistently feel overwhelming.
Yes. We offer teletherapy for people located in Illinois. Whether virtual therapy is a good fit depends on factors such as your age, communication needs, what you want to work on in therapy, and how comfortable you are participating through video.
Yes. We currently accept BCBS IL PPO, UnitedHealthcare/Optum PPO, Aetna PPO, and Cigna PPO. We also offer self-pay options and a sliding scale for eligible individuals.
Coverage and out-of-pocket costs can vary, so we can provide more information about accepted insurance, our rates, and payment options when you reach out. We’re happy to answer your questions so you have a clearer understanding of costs before beginning therapy.
Strong emotions can be difficult to navigate, especially when you feel like your reactions happen before you have time to think. DBT and emotional regulation therapy can help you understand those patterns and build practical skills to handle difficult moments in more intentional ways.
