2024-2025 Contextually-Focused Dialectical Behavior Therapy Fellowship

E. Paul Holmes, PsyD Related Seminars and Products

Senior Lecturer; Director, Center for Contextual Behavioral Practices (CCBP)

The University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

Paul Holmes is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. His focus is on advancing empirically-supported, contextually-based interventions such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). In addition to DBT, his fields of interest include Contextual Behavior Theory and Therapy, mindfulness and psychotherapy, chronic distress, and issues related to substance abuse.

Holmes teaches courses including Fundamentals of Behavioral Therapy: Contemporary Approaches, Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Intervening with Persons who Experience Chronic Distress, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

In addition to teaching, Holmes is also the founder and managing partner/clinical director of the Emotion Management Program, LLC in Orland Park, IL. He provides Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and DBT to client populations. He also conducts training workshops and clinical consultation to public and private mental health providers.

He was previously a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago for twelve years.

After receiving his B.A. in Psychology from Olivet Nazarene University in Kankakee, Illinois, Holmes received his Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology in 1993. 

Tamara Sharifov Related Seminars and Products

Clinical Fellow

Emotion Management Program

Tamara Sharifov is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with 13-years’ experience across diverse disciplines – including clinical psychology, academia, humanitarianism, conflict resolution, global affairs, and activism. She is an expert in the newest forms of psychotherapy – Third-Wave Contextual Behavioral therapies, including Contextual-Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - with additional expertise in PTSD, complex trauma, international armed-conflict, peace-building, and political unrest.

Her experience spans facilitating full model DBT and contextual therapies across mental health contexts, medical missions to the Syrian-Lebanese border, co-founding a humanitarian emergency response NGO serving Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, teaching conflict-resolution to war-affected Armenian and Azerbaijani peace-builders, acting as primary family therapist within intensive outpatient clinics (IOP), community mental health services in Chicago, private practice, and masters level lectureship. Tamara holds a Masters in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago School of Social Service, and a second Masters in Conflict Management and Resolution from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, at the University of San Diego.

Currently, she runs a psychology private practice, consults, and acts as a lead clinical instructor teaching Third-Wave Contextual therapies to post-masters mental health clinicians at the University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.