Behavioral therapy for emotional disorders

This NYT article was about behavioral therapy for so-called "borderline personality disorder", which could better be renamed "emotional disruption disorder" ...

Personal Health - An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread - NYTimes.com

... Dialectical behavior therapy, a derivative of cognitive behavior therapy, helps patients identify thoughts, beliefs and assumptions that make their lives challenging and then learn different ways of thinking and reacting.

In effect, Dr. Linehan tells patients, “Your problem is that you don’t know how to regulate yourself, and I can teach you how.” She said thousands of therapists have been trained in dialectical behavior therapy, and many others practice it without special training...

I'm generally sympathetic to cognitive therapy approaches. I like the idea of teaching adults to recognize dysfunctional thoughts and assumptions and manage them directly.

I think all adults learn this as a part of getting wise and wizened, the trick is to teach it more quickly to people who have a harder time learning self-regulation.