Announcing: DBT-Trauma Outpatient Program!

Y’all. We are sooooo excited to announce that beginning in March 2020, we will begin assessing potential clients for our new DBT-Trauma Outpatient Program!

Kat Zwick is attending an intensive training in the DBT-PTSD group treatment protocol offered by Behavioral Tech (Marsha Linehan’s training institution) in February 2020 and will be bringing back her knowledge and training to RtW staff and preparing a team to roll out this new outpatient program in September 2020! Kat is wicked stoked to finally attend a DBT training through Behavioral Tech and thrilled to bring this evidence-based treatment program back to the Santa Cruz community!

Here are the deets!

This outpatient program for adults teaches a specific protocol of Dialectical Behavior Therapy designed to help reduce and eliminate maladaptive coping strategies, introduce and enhance effective coping skills, and improve emotion regulation, as well as treat complex and non-complex PTSD to a committed group of recovering individuals.

The program will include:

  • A 45-week group series that will meet from 6-8pm on Tuesday evenings (the group will run on a set schedule of 45 sessions as opposed to running 45 weeks all in a row)

  • Individual DBT therapy 1 time per week when trauma symptoms are not being targeted

  • Individual DBT-PTSD therapy 2 times per week when trauma symptoms are being targeted

  • Access to phone skills coaching outside of session time

  • A DBT Skills & Homework Binder with all needed materials for participation in the group

This program may be helpful for those who experienced complex childhood/developmental trauma or who experienced event trauma who currently struggle with their own guilt, shame, self- or other-hatred, emotional volatility or sensitivity in their personal or professional lives, unstable friendships, self-harm, dysfunctional communication patterns, reactive suicidality, overwhelming helplessness, emotional eating, purging, restriction, sex or gambling or other types of process addictions, and substance abuse. This group may be helpful for those who additionally experience dissociation, flashbacks, fear and/or avoidance of any potential trigger or emotions related to trauma, hypervigilance, and difficulty letting go of trauma both in their minds and in their bodies.

This particular program is going to differ from the DBT Mindfulness & Skills Series that Kat Zwick started in 2017 (and will be running through mid-2020) in that Kat will be receiving intensive training and consultation from Behavioral Tech (Marsha Linehan’s training institution) specifically in applying DBT to complex and non-complex PTSD, which includes not only all the core DBT skills and principles, but also, significantly, strategies in individual and group therapy for coping with symptoms of PTSD and moving beyond PTSD into a fuller life. Kat will bring this training back to the RtW team so that all practitioners participating in the DBT-PTSD program have this knowledge base and work together to serve clients in the program.

Behavioral Tech’s website describes this particular DBT-PTSD group treatment protocol as aiming “to help patients a) revise their fear of trauma-associated primary emotions, b) question whether secondary emotions like guilt and shame fit the facts, and c) radically accept the fact of trauma in their lives in order to establish a life worth living.”

All potential members must be assessed prior to beginning the series.


Kat Zwick