Learn and Earn Over Lunch Series

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The Learn and Earn over Lunch series is an opportunity to earn free NBCC approved continuing education credits from outstanding trainers, while you eat lunch! Join us online (via Zoom) from noon to 1:00pm Pacific Time every month on the second Wednesday.

In addition, feel free to take a look at our other training offerings as well as employment opportunities at PDBTI!

How to Think Like an Adherence Coder: The DBT AC-I in Practice

 

Sara Schmidt, PhD, DBT-LBC

August 13th, 2025

Registration will close August 12th, 2025

Clinical Credibility: Challenging Pseudoscience with Ethical and Evidence-Based Practice

The concept of evidence based practice in the field of mental health involves systematic decision-making about treatment choices that includes the integration of the best available research evidence with considerations of specific client characteristics including demographic factors and preferences (American Psychological Association, 2005). The use of evidence based treatments is a core part of this practice. However, many practitioners are unaware of how evidence based treatments are defined and determined. Moreover, when modifying a treatment to fit client needs or preferences it can be challenging to determine whether these modifications fit within the frame of evidence based practice. Complicating the matter is the inundation in the field of treatments that clinicians may run across or clients may ask questions about that have the appearance of providing strong clinical care but lack the evidence to support it. Understanding how to identify pseudoscientific practices and promises is important in the ethical consideration of treatment decision-making.  

Learning Objectives  
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. Define evidence-based practice and evidence-based treatments
2. Name at least three identifiers that may raise concern for an intervention being pseudoscientific
3. Describe the process by which an evidence-based treatment is determined

Instructor | Sarah Hope Lincoln, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Northeastern University in the Department of Applied Psychology and a licensed clinical psychologist. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Harvard University and completed in internship at Bellevue Hospital/NYU Langone Medical Center. She completed post-doctoral fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital and McLean Hospital. Prior to her doctoral degree she worked with the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy studying the process of ethical decision-making. Dr. Lincoln specializes in serious mental illness in children and adolescents with an interest in understanding the neuroscience behind social functioning in these populations. She has taught several courses in understanding pseudoscientific practices in clinical psychology. 

Dr. Lincoln will be providing a 3-hour follow-up training on this topic on January 30, 2026!

Your Parent Compass: DBT and Behavioral Parent Training for Parents who Support Struggling Youth

If you’ve ever felt like tweens, teens, or young adults could be helped by improving how their parents interact with them, this Lunch & Learn is for you! Your Parent Compass is a curriculum to assist parents in supporting their youth who have mental health, behavioral, and/or developmental struggles. The curriculum pulls from DBT and Behavior Parent Training (BPT), both of which have many decades of research behind them. Your Parent Compass can be offered as a class or in individual sessions with parents. Youth can be in their own treatment or not. Parents who do multifamily DBT groups and Your Parent Compass find it helpful to do both. 

At the Lunch & Learn we will give an overview of the WHAT of Your Parent Compass - the Skills that we teach parents to: 

• Build the parent-youth relationship 

• Radically accept/ignore a vast variety of youth behaviors  

• Regulate emotionally to parent effectively 

• Team with their youth to pursue change in a positive, accepting, gentle, and collaborative manner.  

The HOW of Your Parent Compass is as important as the WHAT! We’ll show how Your Parent Compass teaches Skills by using Skits to maximize showing and experiencing (rather than telling), to increase parent learning. 

Learning Objectives  
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. Describe parent Skills to:
   • Increase positive and reduce negative interactions with their youth
   • Get in the mood to parent effectively
   • Solve problems together with their youth
2. Describe experiential approaches to teaching parenting Skills

Instructor | Nancy Cohen, PhD, is a clinical psychologist whose personal mission is to help families enjoy each other. She’s worked in private practice, at the University of Washington, in community agencies, schools, Head Starts, homes, juvenile detention, jail, and churches. Nancy has extensive training and experience in Behavioral Parent Training (BPT), DBT, DBT-C, and DBT for Families, and has learned a great deal raising her children. 

Instructor | Tracy Kalloway, MA, LPC, is a Certified DBT Clinician™ through the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification, with extensive experience delivering Full Model DBT to both teens and adults. She has led Multifamily and Adult DBT Skills groups, sharing her expertise in emotional regulation and mindfulness. Tracy’s dedication to supporting parents began in the early 1990s when she navigated the challenges of raising her own children and recognized the lack of support and resources for parents with challenging children. She firmly believes that “parents are always doing the best they can, and with non-judgmental support and new skills, they can do even better.” 

The Role of Zen in DBT

DBT is the synthesis on Behavior Therapy and Zen Practice.  Zen is the basis of reality acceptance, validation, and core mindfulness.  The practice of core mindfulness skills are essential for all of the skills.  In addition to being a world renown psychologist and treatment developer, Marsha was also a Zen Master and teacher.  Zen fingerprints are found all over the treatment.  This workshop will provide brief overview of the importance of Zen based mindfulness to DBT and provide instruction and practice of Zen meditation.  The workshop will be didactic and experiential and beneficial for DBT practitioners of all levels.  

Learning Objectives  
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:

1. Understand how to practice daily meditation
2. Describe the dialectical interface of Behavior Therapy and Zen

Instructor | Randy Wolbert Zen Master Serene Cloud  (寂雲 Jaku-un) 

Randy was a student of Marsha Linehan Roshi and Gregory Mayers Roshi.  In 2016 he was given authorization to teach in the Empty Cloud Lineage of Zen by Willigis Jager Roshi.  This was confirmed by Linehan Roshi in 2018.  Having completed koan study with Mayers he received transmission as a Zen Master in 2021.  He is the 89th successor to Shakyamuni Buddha and the 47 Successor of Lin-Chi.  When Marsh Linehan retired from Zen teaching in 2018, Randy took over the role as the authorized teacher for Empty Cloud Sangha, Inc.  

In addition to Zen sesshins in the United States he has lead sesshins and Zen Based Mindfulness Trainings in 12 different countries.  He has 34 Zen students from around the world. 

He remains actively affiliated with the Empty Cloud Lineage in Germany and with Greg Mayers and his dharma heirs. 

Randy is a highly experienced trainer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). He was a full-time and contractual DBT trainer with Behavioral Tech for 25 years, the dissemination organization established by DBT founder, Marsha Linehan.   

Prior to his role at Behavioral Tech, Wolbert worked for 25 years as the Clinical Director of InterAct of Michigan, where he had responsibility for several teams, including those covering DBT, dual disorders, and assertive community treatment.    

A Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW), He was previously a Board Member of the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification. 

Randy Wolbert, MSW will be offering a 12 CE hour follow-up to this training!

FREE CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDIT

Participants who attend an event in this series will earn one free continuing education credit, NBCC approved.

Portland DBT Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6326. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Portland DBT Institute is solely is responsible for all aspects of the programs.