Corine Burgard sat calmly waiting for the next instruction from her dialectical behavioral therapy group leader Sara. Burgard looked around at all the curious faces and let her eyes traverse the room. Sara then made an announcement that they would be trying an activity where everyone pretends to be a wacky waving inflatable tube man.

At first, everyone in the room exchanged confused glances and murmured their criticisms. Sara offered out a chance for one of the students to choose a song they’ll listen to while doing the exercise, the song that ended up getting picked was Escape (the pina colada song) by Rupert Holmes

“The whole point of it is that you’re kind of judging it [The DBT exercise], and this can apply to most things in life you know, something new or something that you’re not used to,” Burgard said. “For me it gave me an example of an activity of something new that I’m like okay I don’t want to do it, or it looks stupid or you’re judging it, but, you should always try even if you don’t like it, then just don’t ever do it again.”

Burgard has struggled with depression in recent years and it is clear how much DBT has impacted her life. Going through the DBT program has really helped Burgard not only develop coping mechanisms for herself but has also enabled her to give her loved ones the aid they need for their own struggles. “I think that DBT has helped me improve on myself, first of all, so like I felt like I was open-minded before, but I’m even more, and perspective is a really big thing too, cause you never know what somebody else is going through so you want to be careful about things that you say. Obviously, its like common sense but you really don’t realize the little things that could affect a relationship.” Burgard said.

While DBT may be lighthearted at times there are also much more serious topics such as learning helpful coping mechanisms. “The 4 basic things that they want to teach are living in the moment/being present, coping with stress, regulating emotions, like you’re going to have emotions but its like, validating them and acknowledging that they’re there and not just ignoring them, and then finding a healthy way to way to use them, cope with them and keep moving forward even though you have them, and then improving relationships, communication, and stuff,” Burgard said.

In our public school system, we have classes on many different basic topics on things such as math, science, social studies, etc But there is something crucial missing from the public school system, a class teaching the youth how to deal with their emotions or even mental illness. “The problem with society right now and that’s a big deal and issue in ann arbor, at least for the students, is that were taught in school like ABCs, math, stem, you know like all this stuff and there’s all this pressure and everything, and, were not taught to deal with the stress that comes with all of it,” Said Burgard.

In the end, the DBT process shows us how as a society we need to focus more on mental health and coping mechanisms, whether it be through acting like an inflatable tube man and learning to try something new, or simply learning to have a new way to deal with stressful situations. There is a lot of stigma sometimes associated with mental health issues and action needs to be taken.

“They recommend you to go to the DBT center, like, an outside therapy thing, and at first I was like iffy about it because when you think about, that type of thing and you think oh you know ‘just take deep breaths’, ‘grab a bag’ you know, just really cheesy leaving the moment type deals, like are you kidding me. But it’s not like that at all, some of it is, like for example meditating, you know, it just helps you be in the now, and some people are like, “that’s stupid” but for some people, it really helps them.” Burgard said.