Quick answer: A DBT diary card is a daily self-monitoring sheet used in Dialectical Behavior Therapy to record the emotions you felt, the urges you noticed, any target behaviours you engaged in, and the DBT skills you used. Its aim is not a perfect record but a pattern you and your therapist can work from between sessions.
What is a DBT diary card?
The diary card is the self-monitoring tool at the centre of DBT. Marsha Linehan’s treatment model expects clients to track the behaviours that brought them to therapy, the emotions and urges that precede those behaviours, and the skills they used instead. Your therapist uses the card to see what happened during the week, and you use it to see patterns you would otherwise forget.
A diary card is not a mood journal and it is not a test. It is a structured record, usually one page or one screen per day, that answers four questions:
- What did I feel, and how strongly?
- What did I want to do about it?
- What did I actually do?
- Which skills did I use?
Different programmes use different formats. Some cards also track sleep, medication, self-harm, substance use or suicidal urges. Use the columns your therapist gives you; if you are working alone, start with the four above and add only what you will realistically fill in.
What should you track on a DBT diary card?
| Section | What to record | Typical scale |
|---|---|---|
| Emotions | A short list such as sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt, joy, love | 0-5 intensity |
| Urges | Urges to self-harm, use substances, quit, lash out, restrict or binge, isolate | 0-5 intensity, plus whether you acted on it |
| Target behaviours | The behaviours you and your therapist agreed to reduce, and any you want to increase | Count or yes/no |
| Skills used | Which skill from which module, and whether it helped | Checkbox plus 0-5 helpfulness |
| Context | A line about what was happening, plus sleep hours or medication if relevant | Free text |
Which emotions should you track?
Pick five to eight emotions and keep the same list for at least a month. A changing list makes comparison impossible. Most DBT cards rate intensity from 0 (not present) to 5 (extremely intense).
Which urges should you track?
Urges are the bridge between emotion and action, which makes them the most predictive column on the card. Record the urge even when you did not act on it, especially when you did not act on it. That is the evidence that the skill worked.
Which target behaviours should you track?
These are the behaviours that make life worse in the short or long term: self-harm, substance use, bingeing, purging, aggression, threats, running away, or anything you and your therapist have named. Some people also track behaviours they want more of, such as asking for help or going for a walk.
Which skills should you record?
List the skills by name so you can see which modules you actually use. A card that says “used skills” is much less useful than one that says “TIPP, then DEAR MAN”. If a skill helped only a little, write that down too; it is still information.
How do you rate emotions and urges from 0 to 5?
The number matters less than consistency. Write down what each number means to you and use the same definitions all week.
| Rating | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not present at all |
| 1 | A faint trace; easy to ignore |
| 2 | Noticeable, but you can carry on with what you were doing |
| 3 | Clearly affecting your thoughts or body; you have to make an effort |
| 4 | Hard to concentrate on anything else; strong physical signs |
| 5 | Overwhelming; the strongest you have felt this emotion |
Rate the peak intensity for the day, not the average. A two-hour panic attack and a low-grade bad mood should not produce the same number. If an emotion came in several waves, note the highest one and, if you have space, the time it happened.
How do you fill in a DBT diary card, step by step?
How do you set up the card in the morning?
Open today’s card and glance at yesterday’s. Write one intention for the day, such as “notice the urge to cancel plans and use DEAR MAN instead”. This takes under a minute and makes the evening review much easier.
How do you record events during the day?
When something notable happens, record the emotion, the urge or the skill you used while it is fresh. A few words is enough: “2pm, anger 4, urge to text something I’d regret, used paced breathing”. Do not wait until you can write it beautifully. Memory reconstructs emotion badly, usually in the direction of “it wasn’t that bad”.
How do you complete the ratings in the evening?
Spend three to five minutes finishing the card:
- Rate each emotion at its peak.
- Rate each urge, and note whether you acted on it.
- Mark the target behaviours, including zeros.
- Tick the skills you used and rate how helpful each was.
- Add one sentence about what was happening.
How do you review the week for patterns?
Before your session, read the week as a whole and write three observations:
- Which emotion showed up most often, and what tended to trigger it?
- Which skill did you use most, and did the intensity drop afterwards?
- Where did the urge and the action line up, and where did they not?
Those three answers are usually the most useful thing you can bring to therapy.
What does a filled-in DBT diary card look like?
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sadness | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Anger | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Fear | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Urge to isolate | 4, acted on it | 5, did not act | 2 |
| Self-harm urge | 0 | 3, did not act | 0 |
| Skills | Paced breathing (3/5) | TIPP (4/5), called a friend (5/5) | Walk (3/5), radical acceptance (3/5) |
| Note | Bad sleep, difficult meeting | Argument at home | Recovering |
The pattern worth discussing here is not the bad Tuesday. It is that the urge to isolate was high on both difficult days, and that the one time it was acted on, no skill was recorded. That is a concrete target for the next week.
What are common diary card mistakes?
- Treating the card as a scorecard. A week of high numbers is not a failed week. It is a week of honest data.
- Filling it in from memory days later. The further away you are from the moment, the more the record flatters or punishes you.
- Tracking too much. Twelve emotions and eight behaviours will collapse within a fortnight. Five to eight emotions and the behaviours you actually care about are enough.
- Only recording bad days. Zeros are the comparison group. Without them you cannot tell whether a skill is working.
- Hiding it from your therapist. The card is most useful when it includes the parts you would rather not discuss.
- Starting over after a missed day. Write “missed” and continue. Restarting resets the baseline and turns one gap into a lost month.
Paper, spreadsheet or app?
All three work. The right choice is the one you will still be using in six weeks.
- Paper is quiet, private to your bag, and easy to hand to a therapist. It is also easy to lose, has no reminders, and makes trends hard to see.
- A spreadsheet gives you charts and full control, but it needs a laptop habit and careful handling of sensitive files.
- An app can remind you, timestamp entries and group them by week. The trade-off is that some apps sync mental-health data to a server, require an account, or hide basic features behind a subscription.
If you use an app, check four things before entering anything personal:
- Where the data is stored: on the device, in your own iCloud, or on the developer’s servers.
- Whether an account is required: an email address is an identifier that can be breached or subpoenaed.
- Whether it works offline: a diary card is most needed on the days you cannot reach a network.
- What the App Store privacy label says: “Data Not Collected” is the only label that means the app is not receiving your entries.
Bifocal was built around those four questions: one card per day, timestamped entries grouped by week, storage on the device and in your own private iCloud, no account, and no advertising.
How do you keep a diary card going?
Most diary cards fail in week two, not because the tool is wrong but because the routine is fragile. These adjustments help:
- Anchor it to something you already do. The card goes with your morning coffee and your evening toothbrush, not “sometime today”.
- Use the 60-second rule. If a day’s entry takes more than a minute, cut a column. A smaller card you complete beats a thorough one you abandon.
- Keep it visible. A shortcut on the home screen or a page on the kitchen table beats an app buried in a folder.
- Review weekly, not daily. Patterns are the point. One review a week is enough to make the daily entries worthwhile.
- Plan for gaps in advance. Decide now what you will do after a missed day: write “missed”, not “ruined”.
How to practice the diary card using Bifocal
The diary card is where Bifocal starts: open today’s card, log emotions, urges and skills as they happen, and fill in the ratings in the evening. The card works offline, so a day without signal is still a day you can record, and there is no account, email address or profile to set up first.
Bifocal timestamps each entry and groups entries by week, which makes the weekly review a matter of reading down the week rather than counting days. If your therapist uses the standard DBT sheet, export your entries in that format and bring it to session instead of transcribing by hand. Everything stays on your iPhone and in your own private iCloud.
Frequently asked questions
What is a DBT diary card?
A DBT diary card is a daily record of the emotions, urges, target behaviours and skills that occurred that day. It is a core self-monitoring tool in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, used to spot patterns and to focus therapy sessions on what happens between them.
How often should I fill in a diary card?
Daily is the standard. In practice, most people capture events as they happen and finish the ratings in the evening. A card completed four days out of seven still shows a pattern; a card completed once a fortnight rarely does.
What if I miss a day?
Write “missed” on the card and continue the next day. Do not try to reconstruct the day from memory, and do not start a new card. Gaps are normal and are less misleading than invented ratings.
Do I have to show my diary card to my therapist?
It is your record, and you decide what to share. That said, the card is designed to be discussed: the entries you least want to read aloud are often the ones that move therapy forward. If sharing feels unsafe, say so and agree on what stays private.
Is there a free DBT diary card app?
Several apps include a free diary card, and Bifocal is free to download, with current pricing and any paid features listed on the App Store. Whatever you choose, confirm where entries are stored and whether an account is required before you type anything personal.
Can I use a diary card without a therapist?
Yes. A diary card is a self-monitoring tool, and many people use one alongside books or a skills group. It does not replace assessment or treatment, though. If your entries show a rising pattern of self-harm, substance use or suicidal urges, that is a signal to involve a clinician rather than to track harder.