When families are distressed and in high conflict (including disengagement), parents, partners and children also show individual distress and dysregulated emotion.  This can include anger, fear, hurt feelings, grief and sadness, embarrassment, and loneliness or isolation. These painful emotions frequently contribute to out-of-control behaviours including suicide attempts/self-harm, substance misuse, aggression, school problems, parent over-control, and a variety of relationship problems (distance and aversive conflict). In addition to being a core transactional problem, family distress can significantly interfere with good outcomes for individuals in DBT. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) of course, has been shown in hundreds of studies to be effective in treating the many problems associated with emotion dysregulation in adults and in adolescents.   Over the past 35+ years Prof. Fruzzetti has adapted DBT to use with parents, couples and families, with multiple studies demonstrating successful outcomes, including improved outcomes for individuals and for their relationships. In this training, Alan will teach and demonstrate DBT family skills for parents and partners.  This will include: 1) individual DBT skills adapted for parents and partners, and 2) specific DBT parent, partner and relationship skills.  

Examples will include skills that can be used to modify problematic transactions between teen and young adult children and their parents as well as couples.  

Teaching handouts, DBT family skill handouts and key readings will be provided.