DBT Diary Card & Skill Tracker

About

There is a paper diary card on your therapist's desk right now, and it is doing more work than it has any right to. It is a simple grid — emotions down the left side, days of the week across the top, a few boxes for skills and behaviors. Nothing fancy. Your therapist photocopied it from a workbook by Marsha Linehan, the same way therapists have done for thirty years. And yet this ordinary sheet of paper is quietly extraordinary. Every week, you fill it out, and it transforms something invisible — the texture of your inner life — into something you can actually look at, point to, and discuss. A 0 next to Shame on Tuesday. A 4 next to DEAR MAN on Thursday. These aren't just numbers. They're the story of how hard you worked that week. Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn ran a famous experiment called Significant Objects. They bought worthless thrift-store trinkets — a plastic horse, a broken figurine — and hired talented writers to attach a story to each one. Then they listed them on eBay. A $1 object with a story sold for $36. A $1.49 trinket went for $197.50. Their conclusion: "Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object's subjective value can actually be measured objectively." Narrative transforms the insignificant into the significant. Your diary card works the same way. Without the record, a week of DBT practice is just a blur — you know you tried, but you can't say exactly when or how. The card gives your effort a story. It turns "I think I used some skills this week" into "I used Opposite Action three times and it worked twice." It makes your progress real. The problem is that the tools for keeping this record digitally have been broken for years. The most-recommended DBT diary card app on the App Store hasn't been updated in over six years. It crashes on launch. It still charges $4.99. Therapists keep recommending it because they don't know it's broken, and patients keep downloading it because they trust their therapist. Meanwhile, the paper cards pile up, get lost, get left at home on session day. DBT Diary Daily exists because your diary card deserves to work. WHAT YOU GET A complete DBT diary card on your phone. Every section follows the standard Linehan format your therapist already knows: Emotions & Urges — Rate sadness, anger, shame, fear, joy, and custom emotions on the standard 0–5 intensity scale. Track urges alongside them. Target Behaviors — Define the behaviors you want to decrease or increase. Toggle them daily with optional intensity ratings. Your therapist helps you choose these; the app makes them easy to track. All 30 DBT Skills — Every skill across all four modules: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. Rate each on the 0–5 effectiveness scale. Collapsible sections keep it fast. Daily Notes — A free-text field for what happened, what was hard, and what you want to discuss in session. THE FEATURE YOUR THERAPIST WILL THANK YOU FOR One tap. Clean PDF. Emailed before your session starts. The PDF matches the paper diary card layout therapists recognize. Select a single day or a full week. Share it through email, Messages, or AirDrop. Your therapist gets a professional, readable document — no screenshots of a phone screen, no squinting at handwriting. WEEKLY SUMMARY See your emotion trends, skill usage patterns, and behavior data charted across the week. Walk into session prepared. Notice patterns you might have missed. Watch your progress take shape over time. BUILT FOR TRUST Mental health data is sensitive. We take that seriously: Face ID and Touch ID lock your data the moment you close the app. All data is stored locally on your device using Apple's own data framework. The app makes zero network calls — no servers, no accounts, no analytics, no tracking. Your diary card belongs to you and only you.