Complaint Review: DBT Path

I took Interpersonal Effectiveness 1 and spent the next four classes listening to Debbie read aloud from what everyone was typing in the chat box. This lady has a heart of gold and genuinely wants to help others. I know she means well, but I found her class style to be extremely disorganized and more along the lines of wanting to make friends and receive validation rather than be an authority with an engaging teaching style.

My advice would be to save yourself the $99 per class by buying "The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook" and setting aside 1.5 hours each week to work through it on your own. The 'homework' was actually links to her blog or other web sites that you could just as easily Google to learn the DEARMAN techniques, etc., and it was extremely frustrating that she would show up to each class with no idea what homework had been assigned, which topics we previously covered, or referencing the 'red' book (I still have no idea what this one is) when our class had purchased and was supposed to be working from the 'green' book (the DBT Skills Workbook).

When it came time for Phase 2, I paid and registered early, yet never received the link to the class. When the link was finally sent a week after classes had already begun, the email clearly stated it would take place on Mondays. I had to make arrangements with my boss and coworkers to cover for me, move my meetings around so that I could be available, brought my lunch from home, and made other arrangements for my dogs that day. The time for class came and went, and I emailed Debbie only to find out that the class was supposed to take place on Wednesdays instead of Mondays. Turns out she had to send an entirely new link to all class participants since she had originally set the meeting up for the wrong day.

I can understand goofing up, we are all human, but it was the flippant tone of her email back to me with no apologies for the mix-up. It instead contained a list of excuses and 'poor me' stories, when I felt like I was the one who had been inconvenienced, that prompted me to ask for a refund, which of course was not and will not be forthcoming. No surprise there.

I agree with the other review on here, that favorites are picked in class, and it is often hard to interact with other classmates in a meaningful way since most of the class time is spent with Debbie scrolling through and reading aloud what the attendees are typing in the chat box to her and to each other. I did find Debbie and my classmates to be very supportive when I did get a chance to speak but for the money, I would say find a local DBT Group, attend in person, and I feel you will get a much more significant, profound, life-changing experience from that rather than hiding behind a keyboard and not working on the very thing this class is supposed to help with - interPERSONAL relationships.