DBT Environmental Skills Training (EST) Workshop:
Next workshop starting Monday, October 23th!
The DBT-EST Workshop was designed specifically to help provide assistance for loved ones of clients in our program. We know emotion dysregulation can drain both the person and the environment. For years we have offered high quality treatment for the person needing additional skills. We now want to extend the same skills to the environment so as to help everyone be more skillful and pursue the life we all want.
Information about the DBT EST Workshop
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What is it: A DBT informed skills training workshop that is aimed to help the social environment of our clients, including those on our waiting list, current clients, or graduates.
Who's it for: Loved ones (partners, parents, friends, family) of prospective, current, or former clients of Ebright. This group is also open to the public should you believe it will benefit you. When are the groups: Mondays 4pm-5:30pm (90 minutes) online for 7 weeks. What's the cost: $350 (due prior to starting). 50% off for any additional family members. Resources will be provided if you miss any days. |
Goals and Curriculum |
The goals of this workshop aim to:
The weekly topics we cover to meet those goals are:
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Workshop Notice |
It is important to explicitly state that this workshop is NOT psychotherapy nor a substitute to therapy. This means you are not considered a client at Ebright and this service is not covered by your insurance. If you feel that you are in need of therapy, please seek out a therapist who can best help. If you need assistance finding a therapist, we are happy to offer consultation and resources.
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Experimental Nature of the EST Workshop
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An immense amount of resources have been devoted to help those struggling with significant emotion dysregulation. Based on these efforts, there is hope. DBT can help.
So then what about loved ones who might not have the skills or understanding to interact effectively with those suffering? Heightened emotions can significantly impact the environment too. Important research have also been conducted to determine the usefulness of offering DBT informed educational programs to people in the environment of someone struggling with emotion dysregulation and/or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). “The need for interventions for family members who are living with and caring for a patient with BPD, in order to support them and deal with their problems, are a key aspect of BPD treatment,” as described by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) BPD treatment guidelines. Among the various programs developed, Family Connections (Hoffman et al., 2005) has shown significant decreases in the subjective experience of disease burden, perceived discomfort, depression, and distress, including statistically significant increases in the participants subjective experience of mastery/empowerment (Guillien et al., 2020). Most notably, these changes were maintained or even improved at three- or six-month follow-ups. At this time, unfortunately, there remains a 6+ month waitlist to join a Family Connections course. Additionally, research shows that teaching DBT Skills directly to parents/caregivers can ameliorate the emotion dysregulation of children without the child’s direct participation in a DBT program (Berk et. al., 2022). Similarly, teaching DBT Skills and concepts to partners, family members, and friends has revealed benefits for more effectively supporting the person with emotion dysregulation as well as reducing the burden on the environment (Zalewski et. al., 2020). Findings like these are helpful in suggesting the best ways to support the whole system when someone is struggling with intense emotions and problematic behaviors. There is hope for loved ones too. All of these programs have shown a reduction in emotional burnout, feelings of pain and guilt, overload, depressive-anxious symptoms. They also show an improvement in relationship skills and the family climate (Guillien et al., 2020). These programs provide family members with a series of strategies to help them relate to the patient suffering with emotional dysregulation and know how to better act in a crises. This workshop does not seek to replicate one protocol in it's entirety but rather takes the common components of each and create a comparable curriculum. As such, this specific approach (DBT EST) is thus considered experimental. The combination of numerous published research studies on the benefits of DBT skills for family members makes a strong case for the DBT Environmental Skills Training workshop we are offering (In fact, we have consulted with a number of DBT experts to ensure that the DBT EST workshop we have designed makes good clinical sense based on the latest scientific research). While we are optimistic that the DBT EST workshop will be helpful to you, it is still experimental. We will be carefully monitoring this workshop, outcomes over time, and ask for your feedback. Should we find that this workshop is helpful, we will do all we can to offer it to our community. RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:
BOOKS
PODCASTS Is My Child A Monster? A Parenting Therapy Podcast by Leslie Cohen-Rubury The Skillful Podcast by Bay Area DBT & Couples Counseling Center RESEARCH ARTICLES Guillén, V., Díaz-García, A., Mira, A., García-Palacios, A., Escrivá-Martínez, T., Baños, R. and Botella, C. (2021). Interventions for Family Members and Carers of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: A Systematic Review. Fam. Proc., 60: 134-144. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12537 Hoffman, P. D., Fruzzetti, A. E., Buteau, E., Neiditch, E. R., Penney, D., Bruce, M. L., Hellman, F., & Struening, E. (2005). Family connections: A program for relatives of persons with borderline personality disorder. Family Process, 44(2), 217–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2005.00055.x Zalewski, M., Maliken, A., Lengua, L. J., Martin, C. G., Roos, L., & *Everett, Y. ̈(2020) Integrating dialectical behavior therapy with child and parent training interventions: A narrative and theoretical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. Zalewski, M. *Lewis, J. K., & *Martin, C. G. (2018). Identifying novel applications of dialectical behavior therapy: considering emotion regulation and parenting. Current Opinion in Psychology, 21, 122-126. Berk, M. S., Rathus, J., Kessler, M., Clarke, S., Chick, C., Shen, H., & Llewellyn, T. (2022). Pilot test of a DBT-based parenting intervention for parents of youth with recent self-harm. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 29(2), 348-366. National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (UK) (2009). Borderline personality disorder: Treatment and management. Leicester, UK: British Psychological Society. (NICE Clinical Guidelines, No. 78.). |
Getting Started and Workshop Agreements |
Once you sign up, a member of our team will reach out to collect some basic information. We will want to make sure you thoroughly have read this page and agree to the conditions of this workshop.
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