Learn and Earn Over Lunch Series
Thanks for being part of our community!
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!
Your Parent Compass: DBT and Behavioral Parent Training for Parents who Support Struggling Youth
Nancy Cohen, PhD
Tracy Kalloway, MA, LPC
October 8th, 2025
Registration will close October 7th, 2025
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:
- 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
- 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
Randy Wolbert, MSW, Zen Roshi
November 12th, 2025
Registration will close November 11th, 2025
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:
- Understand how to practice daily meditation
- 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!
DBT in Context: Clinical Considerations for Oppressed Populations
Linda Oshin, PhD
December 10th, 2025
Registration will close December 9th, 2025
This presentation will discuss how to address oppression within the context of DBT. It will highlight how to conceptualize oppression and its effects on the individual within clients who are struggling with chronic emotion dysregulation and self-harm behaviors. The presentation will review how the primary strategies of DBT can be viewed within the lens of oppression (e.g., dialectical philosophy, communication strategies, case management, etc.). Clinical examples and common pitfalls will also be addressed.
Learning Objectives
By the conclusion of this event, participants will be able to:
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Identify 2 ways in which individual and systemic oppression can impact individuals experiencing chronic emotion dysregulation and self-harm behaviors.
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Provide examples of 2 DBT strategies that can be implemented to address clients’ experiences of oppression
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Describe 3 common clinical pitfalls when working with marginalized clients
Instructor | Dr. Linda Oshin is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Connecticut. She completed her predoctoral internship at the Yale Department of Psychiatry and her postdoctoral fellowship at GSAPP. Her program of research focuses on the social context of depression, emotion dysregulation, and suicidality among adolescents and young adults of color. Her research goal is to make mental health treatment more effective and accessible to youth of color.
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.
Portland DBT Institute, Inc. (PDBTI) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PDBTI maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
