Ongoing Parent Skills & Education Group

Mondays 9:00am-11:00am (Eastern USA) via Zoom

Start date: November 6, 2023

Alan E. Fruzzetti, Ph.D. & Sarah Immerman, Psy.D.

This group is intended for parents whose teenage or adult children struggle with or have a history of suicidality and other severe emotion dysregulation difficulties. The comprehensive curriculum covers parenting material over a period of six months or more and includes skills to help parents: a) reduce their own burden, emotional suffering and emotional distress (sadness, fear, shame & guilt, anger); b) manage attention effectively; c) reconnect with their teenage and young adult children through non-judgmental understanding and validation; d) find ways both to observe limits and to collaborate in problem solving; and e) self-validate and accept difficulties that can’t yet be resolved.  We will focus on skills in a supportive, collaborative group environment. 

Comprehensive Curriculum:

• Become familiar with dialectics and parenting: dilemmas, patterns

• Understand emotion & emotion dysregulation

• Be able to use the transactional model for emotion dysregulation

• Overcome shame, stigma and isolation

• Overcome conditioned fear

• Grieve losses effectively

• Use mindfulness & relationship mindfulness, and decrease reactivity

• Recondition & reactivate your relationship

• Let go of anger and invalidation & increase emotion self-management

• Invite accurate expression in others

• Validate responses

• Understand what are typical (and not typical) adolescent behaviors: What is problematic?

• Use learning principles and strategies to increase, or decrease, behaviors

• Learn effective change strategies

• Overview of key DBT skills and skill modules

• Use collaborative problem solving effectively

• Use reality acceptance

• Use radical acceptance in radical situations

• Self-validate

• Practice skills effectively

NOTE: The full curriculum will be covered in approximately six months, divided into 6-week segments.

Cost: The cost is $450 for one parent per segment (6 sessions), or $660 for two parents in the same family (6 sessions)-please see discount code instructions on registration page; sliding scale is available – please contact us.