Feeling Bad: Improve Quality of Life by Getting Better at Feeling Bad There is a problem with the mental health industry. Individuals seek therapists to help them eliminate anxiety, sadness, anger, and other uncomfortable emotions despite the evidence that these emotions do not go away. Our culture is fixated on “feeling good” and the holy grail is happiness. That must means vanquishing unpleasantness, right? Wrong.
The cause of suffering is the avoidance of emotions, not the emotions themselves. Mental health professionals know this, but sadly, the public is generally unaware. The problems people bring to therapy often track a well-worn pattern: an uncomfortable emotion arises, behavior organizes around getting rid of the emotion (impulsive ineffective behaviors, distraction, avoidance, dissociation, drugs/alcohol, etc.) which works, temporarily. Before long, the emotion returns or even worsens as a result, requiring more efforts to get rid of it, and so it goes.
Adolescent mental health expert Britt Rathbone teaches parents how to apply a state of the science counterintuitive approach to managing painful emotions, in themselves and their children. Drawing from current highly successful evidence-based therapies (DBT, ACT, CBT, and more) for some of the most challenging mental health conditions, attendees will learn groundbreaking tools for FEELING better, by experiencing their emotions more effectively and shown powerful techniques for behaving in ways that ultimately change emotions when emotions are ineffective.
With Britt Rathbone, LCSW-C
This virtual presentation is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Britt H. Rathbone is an expert in adolescent mental health and is committed to providing evidence-based treatments including CBT, DBT, Unified Protocol, ACT, Behavioral Activation, Prolonged Exposure, and others. He is the founder and director of Capital Youth Services, a psychotherapy practice focusing on mental health issues and conditions of adolescence.
Mr. Rathbone earned his social work degree from Columbia University in New York and has been a highly rated instructor in the MSW programs at the National Catholic University School of Social Service and the University of Maryland School of Social Work. He has decades of experience in adolescent mental health and psychotherapy and he holds the most advanced certifications available through his professional societies. His expertise has been recognized by being consistently named a top therapist for teenagers by Washingtonian magazine and listed in Bethesda magazine’s “Best of Bethesda” for child psychology. He is proud to be the first clinician in Maryland, DC and Virginia to have passed the rigorous standards established by the DBT-Linehan Board of Certification and to be recognized as a DBT-LBC Certified DBT Clinician and to lead a DBT-LBC Certified Program.
Mr. Rathbone has written numerous articles and book chapters and is the coauthor of the books: “Dialectical Behavior Therapy for At-Risk Adolescents“, “What Works with Teens: An Evidence-Based, Practical Guide for Working Effectively with Adolescents”, and “Parenting a Teen Who Has Intense Emotions”