Full Course Description

Session 1: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Step-by-Step

  • Looking to improve your therapy approach?
    How often do you review your appointment calendar and start wondering how you’re going to, finally, help a regular client who seems to progress for a while - and then regress?
    Each time he/she arrives, you use the same tools and techniques you’ve used for so long - and mostly successfully - but this one client is testing your skills. Now, you can begin to integrate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) into your practice - and see improved outcomes.
    Researched and developed by world-renowned researcher, speaker and author Steven Hayes, PhD, ACT is fast becoming the treatment approach that gets to the heart of therapeutic relationship.
  • ACT techniques for mood disorders, anxiety, trauma, anger and more
  • Experiential exercises, case studies and video examples
  • Practical & transformative for you and your clients!
  • Join ACT expert, trainer and co-author with Steven Hayes of ACT in Practice, Daniel J. Moran Ph.D., BABA-D, for this two-day Acceptance & Commitment Therapy workshop where you will develop highly practical, evidence-based skills, case conceptualization techniques and powerful strategies that will improve outcomes for the following:
  • Anxiety Issues
  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  • Mood Disorders
  • Substance Abuse
  • Anger Management
  • Eating Disorders
  • Trauma
  • Personality Disorders

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Objectives

  1. Demonstrate effective use of the six core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients advance psychological flexibility.
  2. Employ clinical techniques for increasing psychological flexibility in clients using ACT.
  3. Utilize acceptance approaches with avoidance problems to strengthen a client’s willingness to have emotions.
  4. Apply clinical skills to help client effectively handle automatic cognitions.
  5. Utilize effective ACT exercises in therapy to aid clients with developing new skills to engage in the present moment and move past struggles.
  6. Assess and clarify a client’s values in order to develop an effective treatment plan and avoid potential clinical problems.
  7. Integrate ACT into different therapeutic styles and methods as an approach to managing symptoms.
  8. Create committed action plans for clients with anxiety disorders to improve level of functioning.
  9. Use metaphors to undermine language-based avoidance repertoires to improve client engagement.
  10. Utilize clinical strategies to develop an ACT-based behavior therapy plan as it relates to treatment outcomes.
  11. Perform emotional, behavioral willingness and exposure techniques with clients to reduce experiential avoidance.
  12. Apply ACT techniques to the treatment of specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.

Outline

The ACT Model

  • The nature of human suffering
  • “Healthy normality” is a myth
  • Language: The double-edged sword
  • Undermine unhelpful thoughts
  • Aiming for psychological flexibility and why
  • The ACT hexagon model

Acceptance

  • Strengthening a willingness to have emotions
  • The opposite of acceptance is experiential avoidance
  • Experiential avoidance throughout the lifespan
  • Why acceptance is important
  • Case example: Teenage shyness & hoarding

Defusion

  • Look at thoughts rather than from thoughts
  • Deal with automatic thoughts
  • The power of words
  • The problem with cognitive fusion
  • Address CBT-based disputation techniques with defusion
  • “Taking your mind for a walk” exercise
  • Case example: Eating disorders & social phobia

Perspective-Taking

  • Understand the “Self” in ACT
  • Self-as-content, self-as-perspective, self-as-context
  • Observer self-exercise
  • Deal with identity issues
  • Case examples related to PTSD & childhood sexual trauma

Mindfulness

  • Contacting the present moment
  • Why being in the here-and-now is critical for mental health
  • Relationship between mindlessness and psychopathology
  • Meditation, mindfulness and mindful action
  • Exercises for mindful action
  • Case example: Anger, personality disorders, alcoholism

Values Work

  • The positive side of language
  • Identifying core values
  • Differentiate values and goals
  • Writing values-based treatment goals
  • The ethics of values clarification
  • Establishing the life line
  • Case example: Heroin addiction, bipolar disorder

Committed Action

  • Define “commitment” objectively
  • Integrate evidence-based therapy with ACT
  • Develop ACT-based behavior therapy treatment plans
  • Improve behavioral activation with ACT
  • Accelerate exposure therapy with ACT
  • Case example: Depression, agoraphobia

Pulling It All Together

  • Hexaflex model for psychological flexibility
  • Ask the “ACT Question” for self-help and case conceptualization
  • Inflexahex model: Diagnosis from an ACT approach
  • Case example: Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Incorporate ACT into Your Own Approach

  • Social skills training
  • Applied Behavior Analysis
  • Inpatient treatment programs systems
  • Exposure and ritual prevention
  • Behavioral activation
  • Parent management training
  • Executive coaching

The Mindful Action Plan

  • ACT simplified
  • Passengers on the bus: The classic ACT group exercise
  • How ACT can make you a better therapist

Copyright : 07/07/2016

Session 2: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Step-by-Step

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Demonstrate effective use of the six core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients advance psychological flexibility.
  2. Employ clinical techniques for increasing psychological flexibility in clients using ACT.
  3. Utilize acceptance approaches with avoidance problems to strengthen a client’s willingness to have emotions.
  4. Apply clinical skills to help client effectively handle automatic cognitions.
  5. Utilize effective ACT exercises in therapy to aid clients with developing new skills to engage in the present moment and move past struggles.
  6. Assess and clarify a client’s values in order to develop an effective treatment plan and avoid potential clinical problems.
  7. Integrate ACT into different therapeutic styles and methods as an approach to managing symptoms.
  8. Create committed action plans for clients with anxiety disorders to improve level of functioning.
  9. Use metaphors to undermine language-based avoidance repertoires to improve client engagement.
  10. Utilize clinical strategies to develop an ACT-based behavior therapy plan as it relates to treatment outcomes.
  11. Perform emotional, behavioral willingness and exposure techniques with clients to reduce experiential avoidance.
  12. Apply ACT techniques to the treatment of specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.

Copyright : 07/07/2016

Session 3: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Step-by-Step

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Demonstrate effective use of the six core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients advance psychological flexibility.
  2. Employ clinical techniques for increasing psychological flexibility in clients using ACT.
  3. Utilize acceptance approaches with avoidance problems to strengthen a client’s willingness to have emotions.
  4. Apply clinical skills to help client effectively handle automatic cognitions.
  5. Utilize effective ACT exercises in therapy to aid clients with developing new skills to engage in the present moment and move past struggles.
  6. Assess and clarify a client’s values in order to develop an effective treatment plan and avoid potential clinical problems.
  7. Integrate ACT into different therapeutic styles and methods as an approach to managing symptoms.
  8. Create committed action plans for clients with anxiety disorders to improve level of functioning.
  9. Use metaphors to undermine language-based avoidance repertoires to improve client engagement.
  10. Utilize clinical strategies to develop an ACT-based behavior therapy plan as it relates to treatment outcomes.
  11. Perform emotional, behavioral willingness and exposure techniques with clients to reduce experiential avoidance.
  12. Apply ACT techniques to the treatment of specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.

Copyright : 07/07/2016

Session 4: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Step-by-Step

Program Information

Objectives

  1. Demonstrate effective use of the six core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients advance psychological flexibility.
  2. Employ clinical techniques for increasing psychological flexibility in clients using ACT.
  3. Utilize acceptance approaches with avoidance problems to strengthen a client’s willingness to have emotions.
  4. Apply clinical skills to help client effectively handle automatic cognitions.
  5. Utilize effective ACT exercises in therapy to aid clients with developing new skills to engage in the present moment and move past struggles.
  6. Assess and clarify a client’s values in order to develop an effective treatment plan and avoid potential clinical problems.
  7. Integrate ACT into different therapeutic styles and methods as an approach to managing symptoms.
  8. Create committed action plans for clients with anxiety disorders to improve level of functioning.
  9. Use metaphors to undermine language-based avoidance repertoires to improve client engagement.
  10. Utilize clinical strategies to develop an ACT-based behavior therapy plan as it relates to treatment outcomes.
  11. Perform emotional, behavioral willingness and exposure techniques with clients to reduce experiential avoidance.
  12. Apply ACT techniques to the treatment of specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.

Copyright : 07/07/2016

Session 1 | Facing the Struggle

ACT has quickly established itself as a leading "3rd wave" approach in the behavioral therapy tradition. However, unlike CBT, which emphasizes helping a client modify irrational or unhelpful thoughts, the underlying philosophy of ACT is that trying to change or even fix ourselves often exacerbates our symptoms--and thus acceptance is key.

ACT brings together the best of many worlds: it integrates mindfulness into a coherent system of therapy (long before mindfulness was all the rage), and at the same time extensive research on ACT with a variety of populations has helped it to achieved the status of an evidence-based approach, recognized as such by the American Psychological Association and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Government.

 

 

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Objectives

Session 1: Facing the Struggle

  1. Apply the core theory and principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) used in clinical practice.
  2. Analyze how "creative hopelessness" lays the groundwork for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Session 2: Control & Acceptance
  1. Prepare clients to accept their thoughts and feelings, and modify their need to control or eliminate them.
  2. Integrate ACT “eyes closed” techniques into your sessions with powerful effects.
Session 3: Cognitive Defusion
  1. Apply cognitive defusion used within clinical practice.
  2. Anticipate common pitfalls with cognitive defusion, and apply methods for recognizing and remedying them.
Session 4: Mindfulness, Self & Contact with the Present Moment
  1. Formulate “eyes-closed” exercises you can integrate into clinical practice.
  2. Generate examples of how to facilitate awareness of the “observing self” with clients.
Session 5: Values & Action
  1. Discriminate between the ACT concepts of values and goals
  2. Modify ACT techniques for increased effectiveness with adolescents
Session 6: Psychological Flexibility
  1. Articulate ways to adapt ACT in brief-therapy settings and situations.
  2. Formulate how to help clients get the most benefit from exposure therapy within the ACT Paradigm.

Outline

Overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

  • Define the six core processes of ACT
  • Discuss treatment techniques used in ACT

Withdrawn client role play

  • Examine why metaphors can be helpful for clients
  • Focus positively on what therapy is for
  • How to handle the client’s lack of interest in feelings and emotions

Concluding remarks from the presenter

  • How to perform informed consent
  • Approaches to handle the process of “facing the struggle”

Copyright : 01/01/2007

Session 2 | Control and Acceptance

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

Overview of control and acceptance

  • Face the struggle to create something new
  • Learn to embrace avoided sensations

Role play topics

  • Use the classic ACT metaphor to provide new possibilities
  • Detect when the cognitive system sets in
  • Learn to recognize familiar patterns with the client

Concluding remarks from the presenter

  • Set up acceptance goals with the client
  • Make sure to be patient while using ACT

Copyright : 01/01/2007

Session 3 | Cognitive Defusion

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

Overview of cognitive defusion

  • Allows for flexible responses
  • The difference between ACT and CBT

Learning through role play

  • Apply defusion methods to clients
  • Learn how to dig through client resistance
  • Turn words into just sounds
  • Discover how to program the mind

Wrap up with the speaker

  • Things to keep in mind when using defusion techniques
  • The human mind and the human life connection

Copyright : 01/01/2007

Session 4 | Mindfulness, Self, and the Present Moment

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

Overview of mindfulness, self, and contact with the present moment

  • How to begin sessions with mindfulness exercises
  • Eliminate irrelevant chatter from the session

Learn through role play

  • Distinguish between content and context
  • Dealing with clients that aren’t open to talking about emotions
  • Trying an “eyes closed” exercise

Wrap up with the speaker

  • Moment-to-moment situations
  • Connecting acceptance and diffusion into a mindfulness approach

Copyright : 01/01/2007

Session 5 | Values and Action

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

Overview of values and action

  • Define the most important components of ACT
  • Understand the meaning of values

Learning through role play

  • Distinguish between choices and logical judgments so values aren’t heavily fused with judgment
  • Determine what the client holds as important

Concluding with the speaker

  • All components of ACT are interconnected
  • Connecting pain-values to the ACT approach

Copyright : 01/01/2007

Session 6 | Psychological Flexibility

Program Information

Target Audience

Addiction Counselors, Case Managers, Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Psychologists, Social Workers, and other Mental Health Professionals

Outline

Overview of psychological flexibility

  • Define psychological flexibility
  • Integrating ACT into normal back and forth therapy

Role plays with different therapists

  • Robin Walser works with a woman that is having a hard time letting go of her children, whom are in their thirties, for fear that serious issues will come up
  • Kirk Strasol’s  client is worried about her disabled veteran brother
  • Stephen Hayes talks with Troy, an obsessive compulsive disordered client that worries about contamination

ACT wrap up

  • Focus on functions and processes that fit personalized models
  • ACT is not just a technique, but a set principles organized into a model that explain what makes being a human is so hard

Copyright : 01/01/2007