DBT Diary Card: Track Emotions, Urges, and Skills Used to See Your Patterns

About this tool

The diary card is a cornerstone of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). It is a simple daily log that you complete between sessions, rating the emotions and urges you felt and noting which skills you practiced. It sounds basic, but it does something powerful: it turns a fuzzy sense of how the week went into concrete data you and your therapist can actually work with.

Diary cards serve two jobs. First, they keep skills front of mind. Knowing you will log whether you used a skill nudges you to reach for one. Second, they reveal patterns: which days the urges spiked, what tended to precede them, and whether the skills you are practicing are moving the numbers. In standard DBT, the diary card sets the agenda for each session, with the therapist focusing first on the highest-priority targets like self-harm urges.

There is no single correct diary card. Yours can track whatever targets matter to you: specific emotions, urges to self-harm, substance use, or behaviors you are trying to change, plus a record of skills used. Consistency matters more than detail. A quick honest entry every day beats an elaborate one you fill in once and abandon.

If you are working with a DBT therapist, ask which targets they want you to track, and bring the card to every session. If you are using this on your own, keep it light and use it to spot what helps.

The diary card was developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan as part of dialectical behavior therapy, a treatment she created for chronically suicidal people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. DBT has since been adapted for emotion dysregulation more broadly, including substance use, eating disorders, and depression, and the diary card remains one of its most consistently used tools across those adaptations.

Reading your own card is less about hitting low numbers and more about spotting direction and triggers. A run of high urge ratings on the same day of the week, or urges that spike right after a specific kind of conversation, is more useful information than any single day's score. If a skill you are practicing is not moving the numbers after a few weeks, that is worth raising with your therapist rather than a sign you are doing DBT wrong.

Rating in the moment or at the end of each day gives a truer picture than reconstructing a week from memory. If your urges to harm yourself are frequent or intense, tell your therapist or another trusted person right away rather than waiting for your next scheduled session, and consider looking for a DBT-trained therapist through the Psychology.com therapist directory if you do not have one.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the tracked fields for fidelity to standard DBT diary card practice.

References

1. Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Manual. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.
2. Linehan MM. DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2015.

DBT Diary Card FAQ