09/26/2025
Emma’s Turning Point
Emma sat on the cold bleachers, gripping the edges of her track jacket as the game played on without her. The roar of the crowd blended into a dull ache in her head. Just fifteen minutes earlier, she had been screaming at her coach; her throat raw, tears threatening. It hadn’t even been about strategy. A teammate had teased her for missing a pass, and suddenly the shame and anger had erupted like a storm. Now, she sat alone, cheeks burning, aware of her teammates’ sideways glances.
This wasn’t new. Emma was seventeen, a varsity athlete, a good student by most measures. But her “big feelings,” as her mom called them, were constant tripwires. A classroom whisper could send her spiraling into fury, a boyfriend’s casual “calm down” could bring her to sobs. She hated herself in those moments, hated how her emotions seemed bigger than her body. The embarrassment carved distance between her and everyone else. Friends stopped inviting her to hang out, teachers stopped pushing her, and her boyfriend, Will, was withdrawing into silence.
The loneliness pressed down on her like a weight.
Her parents, worried and exhausted, searched for help until they found The Resource Group’s DBT program. Emma didn’t want to go. The idea of sitting in a group, talking about feelings she barely understood, felt like punishment. But something about the calm confidence of the intake therapist made her stay.
At first, DBT was bewildering. The skills sounded like another language...“mindfulness,” “opposite action,” “DEAR MAN.” But slowly, Emma began to notice the difference. She learned to pause, to name what she felt without being swallowed by it. The first time she stopped herself from storming out of class by silently repeating “observe, describe, don’t judge,” she felt a spark of control she hadn’t known in years.
The group sessions gave her something even more precious: other voices. Teens like her, struggling with rage, panic, despair. Instead of feeling broken, she felt human. Her therapist reminded her often: Big emotions aren’t bad; they’re signals. What matters is what you do with them.
One Friday night, at a basketball game, Emma put it to the test. A referee’s call sent the crowd into boos, and her pulse raced with familiar heat. She could feel the explosion rising. But she remembered her breathing exercise, “square breathing," and counted each inhale and exhale. The storm passed. She stayed on the court, steady.
The look on her coach’s face was enough: surprise, then relief.
Over the months, Emma’s world shifted. Her boyfriend began to notice too. Not that she was “fixed,” but that she was trying. She could tell him, calmly, “I need five minutes” instead of slamming the door. With teammates, she practiced DBT’s interpersonal effectiveness skills, asking clearly for what she needed without the edge of accusation. Teachers, once wary, began to lean in again when they saw her effort.
It wasn’t magic, and the feelings didn’t vanish. But for the first time, Emma felt she had tools in her hands instead of chaos.
One evening, writing in her skills diary, she realized something: she wasn’t ashamed anymore. The girl who once feared her emotions was learning to carry them. Not as a burden, but as part of her strength.
And for Emma, that changed everything.
