- Live Interactive Webinar
- 12-3:30 PM (Eastern)
- Wednesday, May 6, 2026
- Held online
- 3 CE Hours
- $139
Overview.
This 3-hour workshop offers concrete instruction on applying select DBT skills to parents of multi-diagnostic adult children. Attendees will learn practical strategies for teaching parents DBT skills to identify, accept, and change accommodation patterns with their multi-diagnostic adult children. Building on the theoretical and structural foundation established in Part One, this training will translate DBT’s core dialectical, acceptance, and change strategies into concrete, parent-friendly tools that target real-world accommodations and common parenting dilemmas. Participants will learn how to help parents notice and map their own accommodation behaviors, validate the fears and emotions driving those behaviors, and implement stepwise behavioral changes that are sustainable over time.
Through brief didactics, modeling, and in-vivo practice, the workshop will demonstrate how to help parents apply DBT skills to their specific circumstances with the goal of providing short- and long-term change. Special attention will be paid to working with accommodation around suicidal communication and urges, non-suicidal self-injury, and moderate to severe eating disorder behaviors, with an emphasis on maintaining safety while reducing ineffective patterns. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to outline parent-only interventions to help caregivers feel less trapped, more effective, and more aligned with their parenting values.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe how DBT skills can be taught to help parents identify and understand their own accommodation behaviors with multi-diagnostic adult children.
- Apply DBT-based acceptance and change strategies to collaboratively help parents decide when to reduce accommodation in the context of high-risk behaviors.
- Demonstrate the ability to coach parents in using selected DBT skills in vivo to help them feel less trapped and more effective in their parenting role.
- Integrate DBT and SPACE principles into a coherent parent-only intervention framework that provides parents the rationale, structure, and skillful means to reduce accommodations with their struggling adult children.
While this training is Part I of a two-part training, attendees are free to register for one or both trainings. Designed as an intermediate-level training, there are no pre-requisites. However, it is recommended that participants have a working knowledge of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
Instructor Credentials
Amy Kalasunas (she/her), LPCC-S, CCMHC, is Chief Operating Officer and Director of DBT Services a CEBT. She is a behaviorist with over 25 years of experience working within evidence-based treatment models. A DBT-Linehan Board of Certification™ Certified Clinician, she has extensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and its sub-specialty areas of DBT for Eating Disorders, DBT- Prolonged Exposure for Borderline Personality Disorder, and DBT supervision and consultation team adherence practice.
A co-chair for the DBT LBC™ Publications and Communications Committee, Kalasunas is also a highly regarded instructor and trainer, and a sought-after presenter on the topics of comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), DBT and Multi-diagnostic Eating Disorders (MED-DBT), and DBT-Prolonged Exposure and Eating Disorders. She developed, piloted, and offers trainings on interventions for parents of multi-diagnostic adult children using an adaptation of the Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) protocol and DBT.
Her clinical work has included developing, implementing and evaluating program outcomes across the spectrum of clinical settings, including inpatient psychiatric hospitals, Partial Hospitalization Programs, Intensive Outpatient Programs, community mental health agencies, specialty practice clinics and private practice offices.
JAN
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