Sep 26 • Khoa Tran, neurodivergent freelance writer

How dialectical behavior therapy breaks down paradoxes in our lives

Diverse Minds subject matter expert and therapist Jared Dubbs tells about his journey as a mental health professional and how his work has always been about one thing: helping others unlock their true potential.

“Learning about neurodiversity for me was really about appreciating the value in everyone. For counselling, my goal with clients who are neurodivergent is helping them understand just how perfect they are.”


“The thing I really love about counselling is that it takes the things I love about teaching and condenses them,” explains Jared Dubbs. From the intimate and welcoming office he shares with a fellow practitioner, the educator-turned-therapist recounts his previous career. 

During his 15 years facing classrooms from kindergarten to university, Dubbs most enjoyed helping his students learn more and grow to their fullest abilities. When he found out about what counselling was and how it was doing that exact thing for everyone, it did not take long before Dubbs enrolled in a master’s program, set to refocus his career towards what mattered most to him.

Immersed in counselling literature and extracurriculars, one therapy method stood out to him among others for its clarity and ease of use, one that would come to define his practice: dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT).

What is DBT?

At its core, DBT provides specific and clear guidance that everyone can apply to resolve problems. Dubbs sees it as a set of tools for people to address how opposite facts in life (or dialectics) can co-exist—a concept many struggle to accept and move forward with.

“Let’s say your mother hates you when she’s angry and loves you when she’s nice,” he explains. “The truth of the matter is that both of those things can be true at the same time, but we often get really stuck thinking that one side is all there is without appreciating the other side of things.”

Indeed, we often retreat into such “black and white” thinking because it makes things a lot easier to see the world as such rather than for what it really is—a colourful but messy blend. It takes less effort to hold a grudge against someone, thinking they’re mean or jealous, than to uncover the source of this resentment.

“So the key with DBT is validation—that’s the primary tool we use,” Dubbs says. “If your mother yells at you, validation is to realise that maybe she’s had a hard day. That doesn’t make it okay for her to do so: you’re not validating the behaviour, you’re validating the person.”

Four components of DBT

There are four components to DBT: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance and emotional regulation. 

Through conversation and conscientious practice, DBT practitioners such as Dubbs guide clients through developing skills in these four areas, how to think differently and ultimately achieve their very best in life.

According to him, a lot of emphasis in the method is placed on the idea of acceptance. “In DBT, we define suffering as pain plus non-acceptance. That’s where the distress tolerance comes in,” he says. “Things are going to be hard, they can be difficult. How you handle it is up to you. You can choose to reject or accept it. There are different ways of accepting reality. It’s also important to know that acceptance does not equal approval.”

Acceptance is perhaps the first step towards the open state of mind needed for understanding and healing. For Dubbs, acceptance was crucial to finding his bearings as a neurodivergent individual diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at an early age.

Although he took the prescribed medication, little was known about ADHD at the time and he did not fully come to terms with the larger context until later. “I didn’t really understand what being ADHD and neurodivergent meant to me until I started learning more about it,” Dubbs admits. “What’s been really enlightening to me is the coming to acceptance and understanding that this current world wasn’t built for people like me.”

Rethinking ADHD

This line of questioning led the therapist to rethink his ADHD not as a handicap but simply as a fact of life. “I struggle with a lot of tasks, feel a lot of pressure to be ‘normal’ and that’s not what I’m meant to be,” he says. “I’m not meant to be 'normal', I’m meant to be who I am and be the way that I’m built.”

Dubbs carved a niche counselling neurodivergent individuals like himself and he hopes to ignite in each of them a similar realisation. “Learning about neurodiversity for me was really about appreciating the value in everyone. For counselling, my goal with clients who are neurodivergent is helping them understand just how perfect they are.”

Dubbs believes this therapy aspect is underemphasised in the treatment of ADHD. Yes, the medication is still important as ADHD is an imbalance of chemicals in the brain but “it doesn’t fix everything,” he says.

“I think there is an inherent trauma within neurodivergence. You grow up feeling there’s something wrong with you—why can’t I do this? I’m not good enough for this—you internalise it. So there’s a lot to work through, a lot to relearn and undo.” 

“I think there is an inherent trauma within neurodivergence. You grow up feeling there’s something wrong with you—
why can’t I do this? I’m not good enough for this—
you internalise it. So there’s a lot to work through, a lot to relearn and undo.” 

And DBT provides the tools to constructively address this trauma and more.

Western & Asian approaches

Though addressing mental health issues with therapy may be more widespread in Western countries, it continues to carry a social stigma in other parts of the world, especially in Asia. Terms like “learning disabilities” or even “diagnosis” further feed into the notion that neurodivergence is something to be fixed.

“The idea that neurodivergent people are incomplete people, less desirable, is something that needs to change. There’s so much value in every person,” says Dubbs.

The therapist remains hopeful that the scene is gradually changing in Hong Kong, especially in a post-pandemic environment where confinement has placed a renewed emphasis on mental wellbeing. Dubbs wants to take advantage of this new wind to spread the word about how DBT techniques can help.

His upcoming course with Diverse Minds introduces individuals and corporates to basic DBT principles and techniques to apply in everyday life.

Everyone struggles in their own way, but help is available

Ultimately, whether someone is neurodivergent or not should not matter all that much to how Dubbs wants to help them.

“There are certain aspects to [neurodivergent individuals]’ struggle that we might relate with a bit more, but everybody’s struggling in their own way,” he says.

“I look at everybody who’s coming to me the same way: here’s someone who’s trying to do the very best they can with the skills they’ve got. If you view everybody as trying their best, it makes it easier to see what’s getting in their way.”

Jared Dubbs is the Diverse Minds subject matter expert for an upcoming e-learning course on DBT. 

Join the waitlist below for Diverse Minds Collective to access the course. 
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