DBT Radically Open Worksheet: Shifting from Overcontrol to Openness

This DBT Radically Open Worksheet guides clients through a two-page journey of self-reflection and comparative analysis. The first page features a “Pros and Cons” matrix designed to weigh the benefits of being open to new experiences versus the perceived safety of remaining closed. This exercise exposes the hidden costs of overcontrol, such as social isolation and cognitive fatigue. The second page introduces “Self-Enquiry,” a specialized RO-DBT practice that uses targeted questions to bypass defensive reasoning. Clients are prompted to examine their “stuck” points, their willingness to question their own viewpoints, and their fear of listening to their own internal needs.

The structured layout ensures that clients don’t just intellectually understand openness but actively apply it to a current life challenge. By documenting their fears and needs, clients rehearse the vulnerability required for social signaling and adaptive behavioral change.

How This Worksheet Can Be Used

Clinical Sessions:
Therapists use the worksheet to address “rigid” behaviors or chronic perfectionism. It serves as a starting point for “self-enquiry” dialogues, where the clinician and client explore the biological “threat response” that occurs when the client is asked to try something new or admit to being unexperienced.

Between-Session Practice:
Clients use the worksheet as a real-world tool for managing situations where they feel the urge to “be right” or maintain total control. It acts as a cognitive pause, helping them identify when they are operating out of habit rather than effectiveness.

RO-DBT Skills Training:
As a primary tool for teaching the concept of radical openness, this worksheet helps clients understand that openness is a behavior that can be practiced. It provides a concrete method for shifting from a “fixed” mindset to a “flexible” social-signaling mindset.

Benefits of the DBT Radically Open Worksheet

• Specifically targets the rigidity and overcontrol common in chronic depression, OCD, and restrictive eating disorders.
• Uses “Self-Enquiry” questions to bypass defensive justifications and access deeper internal truths.
• Identifies the “Pros and Cons” of staying closed, revealing how overcontrol maintains social isolation.
• Encourages the “passion for the opposite,” helping clients break free from habitual, safe behavioral loops.
• Reduces the shame of “not knowing” by reframing inexperience as an opportunity for growth.
• Builds foundational skills for social signaling and authentic interpersonal connection.

Integrating This Tool into Clinical Work

Integrating the DBT Radically Open Worksheet is most effective when clinicians emphasize that openness is a “practice,” not a one-time achievement. Clinicians should guide clients to notice the “edge” where they start to feel defensive—that is the exact place where self-enquiry is most useful. It is important to clarify that radical openness is not the same as “letting go of values”; rather, it is being open to the possibility that our current way of achieving those values might be ineffective. When reviewing the “Self-Enquiry” section, the clinician should treat “I don’t know” as a success—it signifies the client is no longer relying on their old, overcontrolled answers. By consistently practicing with this worksheet, clients learn to “turn the mind” toward curiosity, eventually allowing them to experience the social safety and emotional freedom that comes with being radically open.

References

• Lynch, T. R. (2018). Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Theory and Practice for Treating Disorders of Overcontrol. Context Press.
• Lynch, T. R. (2018). The Skills Training Manual for Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Context Press.
• Linehan, M. M. (2014). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
• Hempel, R. J., et al. (2018). Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy for refractory depression: A randomized controlled trial. The British Journal of Psychiatry.