If you’ve ever had DBT or CBT, you know that these therapies come with a lot of homework. Homework is usually not anyone’s favourite word, let alone anyone’s favourite thing to do. So, what’s the point of all this homework?
Well, CBT and DBT are both learning-oriented therapies. The idea is that people need to learn new things in order to solve problems and figure out how to build happier, more fulfilling, and meaningful lives. Some of the new things people might need to learn include new ways to understand their thoughts and emotions, and how to direct their behaviour toward goals that are important to them. Often, people also have to learn how to get out of their own way, such as by finding ways to let go of maladaptive coping strategies that work in the short term but cause problems in the long term.
All of this learning takes a fair amount of work, both inside and outside of therapy. In CBT and DBT, we don’t assume that the most important work happens within the 50-minute therapy session. Think of how that one hour stacks up to all the hours in your week. We’d have to be pretty phenomenal therapists to do something so transformative in that one hour that our clients don’t have to do anything for the rest of the week! Therefore, a lot of the most important work involves putting that new learning into action in everyday life situations.
If you’re trying to learn how to be more effective with other people, for example, your therapist will help you with tips, skills, and strategies within your therapy sessions, and then they’ll probably suggest that you practice these in a range of situations outside of therapy. By doing so, you can begin to generalize what you’re learning in therapy to important situations in your life.
To generalize means to broaden or transfer what you have learned from one situation to other situations. There are two different types of generalization in behaviour therapy: stimulus generalization and response generalization. Both of these types of generalization take practice (homework).
Stimulus generalization means that you have learned a new skill and are now able to use it in a variety of different situations (i.e., in response to a variety of different stimuli). So, if you are learning how to be more assertive and ask others for what you need, stimulus generalization would involve engaging in assertive behaviour when you’re ordering coffee, at a restaurant, when negotiating conflict with a loved one, dealing with coworkers, and so forth. To generalize in this way, you need practice identifying situations that call for assertiveness. You need to recognize these situations when they occur and put your new skills into action.
Response generalization means that you are able to engage in different forms of the same skill in the same situation. In this case, you might learn to engage in a variety of assertive behaviours within the same situation. Let’s say you’re trying to learn how to navigate conflict with your partner. Response generalization would mean that, when conflict occurs, you are able to flexibly engage in a variety of assertive behaviours, such as asking for what you want or need, validating and listening to the other person’s perspective, negotiating, asking for a time-out when conflict becomes heated, and so forth. To generalize in this way, you need to practice a variety of different assertive behaviours that might be effective in particular situations. That way, you’ll have many tools on hand when you need them.
In conclusion, one reason to do all your homework if you’re in DBT or CBT is so that you can transfer all of the great stuff you’re learning in therapy to the everyday life situations that are most important to you. In case you need more of a reason to do your homework, there is pretty consistent evidence that CBT with homework works more effectively than CBT without homework, and that client compliance with homework is associated with better outcomes (Ryum et al., 2023). Therefore, if you have a therapist who’s not giving you homework, you might consider asking them to give you some homework. Then, of course, you have to do it!
~Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.