DBT
Dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT for short, is a type of talk therapy that helps people become grounded in reality and strive for change within their lives. It is based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and is particularly helpful for people with difficulty regulating their emotions. For this reason, it is often recommended to people struggling with borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety, or some types of eating disorders.
DBT is built on four core principles: mindfulness, acceptance & distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Therapists who specialize in DBT use these core tenets to help their patients challenge unhelpful thought patterns and put things into perspective. The hope is to give them the skills they need to deal with stressful situations on their own without slipping into negative self-thought.
Delusion
Delusions are unchanging false beliefs based on incorrect or misguided perceptions of reality. People with delusions are prone to resisting evidence contrary to their false beliefs, and will often fabricate reasons for why their delusions are true. Most of the time, people have non-bizarre delusions, or false beliefs that are grounded in reality, such as feeling the presence of a perceived stalker or having an incurable illness. Bizarre delusions are those that are outright or virtually impossible with no basis in reality.
Delusional disorder is a mental disorder that causes people to experience delusions. There are many types of delusional disorders, categorized by the kinds of delusions they induce. Two of the most common delusional disorders are grandiose and persecutory. Grandiose delusional disorder causes those afflicted with it to believe that they are more powerful, knowledgeable, or well-known than they actually are, while persecutory delusion disorders induce feelings of being watched, followed, or mistreated by an unseen third party.
Dementia
Dementia is a group of symptoms that relate to the loss of cognitive abilities, such as memory, logic and reasoning, to the point where it affects everyday activities. Dementia becomes more common in adults as they get older, with one-third of people over 85 experiencing dementia in the United States. Dementia is not a single disease, but a result of the neurons in the brain losing connections with each other, which manifest as the general decline of cognitive abilities.
There are many types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, that share similar symptoms of declining memory and thinking abilities. Someone with dementia may experience difficulty with navigating familiar environments, trouble keeping track of daily tasks, issues with handling money, etc. Dementia may also cause a shift in personality as the cognitive decline worsens. While there is currently no single cause of dementia, a healthy lifestyle has been proven to reduce risk factors related to the development of dementia.
Demisexual
Someone is demisexual when they only feel sexual attraction to people they have an emotional bond with. This means that there is little to no sexual attraction without the emotional aspect of the relationship. This emotional bond does not have to be romantic; demisexual people can develop sexual attraction through the platonic bonds of friendship as well. People who are demisexual can also identify with other sexualities, such as hetero, bi, or homosexual.
Demisexuality is not necessarily the same as waiting until a romantic connection develops to initiate sexual contact with someone. The difference is that demisexual people normally don’t feel sexual attraction at all without the emotional component, and the romantic connection for them is not optional. For this reason, demisexuality is closely related to asexuality and often considered a “midway” point between asexuality and allosexuality (experiencing sexual attraction to others).