7 ways to reduce stress at work—using the science of behavioral therapy

At its best, work can be energizing, creative, and meaningful. It can also be emotionally exhausting and stressful. Even in healthy organizations, we all deal with interpersonal tension, stinging feedback, impossible deadlines, and the constant pressure to perform. Add in the rapid pace of change and a steady diet of uncertainty, and it’s no wonder many of us feel perpetually on edge.

Stress isn’t just a sign that something’s wrong—it’s a signal that something matters. Emotions like frustration, anxiety, and excitement all contain useful data about what’s important to us, what we value, and what we need. Yet in most workplaces, we’re trained to treat emotions as distractions from rational thought rather than as essential information that guides it. When we ignore or misread that emotional data, we lose access to one of our most valuable internal resources.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), originally developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan to help individuals struggling with chronic emotion dysregulation, offers a powerful framework for understanding and responding to emotions effectively. DBT isn’t about suppressing or indulging emotions—it’s about interpreting them accurately and acting wisely in response. The same skills that help people navigate crises and build healthier relationships can help you stay centered in a difficult meeting, receive feedback without spiraling, and recover from professional setbacks with greater resilience.

Here’s how DBT’s core principles can help you use your emotions as data—and manage stress and intensity at work more effectively.

1. Recognize When You’re in Emotion Mind and Do Something Different

DBT starts with the idea that many of our problems arise from emotion dysregulation—feeling hijacked by strong emotions and acting in ways that make things worse.

At work, that might look like firing off a reactive email, shutting down in a tense discussion, or replaying a negative interaction long after it’s over. These reactions come from what DBT calls Emotion Mind—a state in which feelings drive thoughts and behavior, often overriding reason and long-term goals.

The antidote is Wise Mind, the integration of emotion and reason. Wise Mind is the space where you can both acknowledge how you feel and still act in ways that serve your goals.

When you notice your pulse racing before a presentation or frustration mounting in a team meeting, take a breath. Ask yourself: What is this emotion trying to tell me? Maybe it’s signaling that you care about doing well, that you value fairness, or that you need more clarity. Once you’ve decoded that data, you can decide how to respond skillfully rather than react impulsively.

2. Check the Facts

Emotions provide information, but not all that information is accurate. Sometimes they’re based on assumptions or incomplete data. You might feel angry when a manager doesn’t include you on an email chain and interpret it as rejection, or anxious when a colleague’s brief message reads as criticism.

DBT’s Check the Facts skill helps you distinguish between what your emotions are telling you and what’s actually happening. Ask yourself:

• What exactly happened?
  
• What are other possible explanations?
  
• Am I assuming intent I can’t verify?

This isn’t about invalidating your feelings—they’re real, even if the story attached to them isn’t. It’s about ensuring your next action fits the facts, not your assumptions. When you treat emotions as data, checking the facts becomes the emotional equivalent of verifying a source before acting on it.

3. Practice Opposite Action to Change Your Emotion

Once you’ve checked the facts, you can choose whether to act on an emotion or shift it. DBT’s Opposite Action skill is a behavioral way to update your emotional data. If your emotion doesn’t fit the facts, you do the opposite of what it urges you to do.

If you’re angry and want to withdraw or lash out, the opposite action might be to approach calmly and with curiosity. If you’re anxious before a presentation and want to avoid, the opposite action might be to step forward—to practice, to engage, and to risk.

Opposite Action doesn’t mean pretending to feel great when you don’t. It’s about behaving in line with your goals rather than your impulses—and, over time, reshaping the emotion itself.

4. Use Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills to Navigate Difficult Conversations

Emotional data doesn’t just live inside us—it shows up between us. Interpersonal friction is inevitable, especially in environments with high stakes and constant feedback. DBT offers practical tools for these moments.

The skill of DEAR MAN provides a clear structure for asserting needs or saying no effectively:

• Describe the situation objectively.
  
• Express how you feel or what you think.
  
• Assert what you want or don’t want.
  
• Reinforce why collaboration helps everyone.
  
• Stay Mindful of your goal.
  
• Appear confident, even if you don’t feel it.
  
• Negotiate when needed.
  

You might say:

“The last few deadlines have been difficult to meet because the workload has increased significantly. I’m feeling stretched thin. I’d like to discuss redistributing tasks or adjusting the timeline so the work remains high-quality.”

By integrating emotion and reason, you turn emotional information—I’m overwhelmed—into effective communication. That’s what Wise Mind looks like in real time.

5. Cultivate Mindfulness of Current Emotions

Mindfulness, the foundation of DBT, helps us observe emotional data without reacting to it. When you’re flooded with stress—heart pounding, shoulders tense, thoughts racing—pause for a moment and name what’s happening.

“Tension in my chest. Tightness in my jaw. Thoughts saying, ‘I can’t handle this.’”

Labeling activates the brain’s prefrontal cortex, shifting you from reaction to reflection. You move from being in the emotion to observing it. That small shift—recognizing emotion as data rather than as danger—can completely change how you respond.

6. Practice Radical Acceptance

Sometimes the data your emotions deliver points to something you can’t change: a difficult colleague, a lost opportunity, or an organizational decision you don’t agree with. Fighting that reality adds suffering to pain.

Radical Acceptance means acknowledging reality fully so you can decide what to do next from clarity rather than denial. You can say:

“I don’t like this, and it’s happening.”

“This situation is painful, and resisting it isn’t helping.”

Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation—it means seeing the full picture so you can use your emotional data wisely rather than fighting it blindly.

7. Build Resilience Proactively

Most of us think of resilience as bouncing back after stress, but DBT teaches that resilience starts before the stress hits. Skills like PLEASE (taking care of physical health) and ABC (accumulating positive emotions, building mastery, and coping ahead) help maintain emotional stability so your system processes stress more accurately.

When your body and mind are well cared for, you’re less likely to misread emotional signals as threats. Daily habits—sleep, nutrition, movement, connection—aren’t just wellness clichés. They’re how you keep your internal data system online and responsive.

A New Model of Effectiveness at Work

DBT’s philosophy is dialectical: balancing acceptance and change. In the workplace, that means recognizing that emotion and reason aren’t opposites to be managed—they’re partners to be integrated.

Emotions are data. They tell us what matters, guide our attention, and strengthen connection. But like any data, they require interpretation and skill to use well. The most effective people and teams aren’t the ones who avoid emotional intensity; they’re the ones who train for it—who can read emotional cues accurately and respond with balance and wisdom.

That’s the heart of DBT: learning to stay grounded, curious, and fully human in the middle of life’s—and work’s—chaos.

Adapted from Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships (Guilford Press, 2026).

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