Treating Eating and Body Image Concerns through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

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Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Speaker

Diana Hill, PhD Related seminars and products

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Diana Hill, PhD, is a highly regarded clinical psychologist, international trainer and sought-out speaker on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and compassion. Host of the podcast Your Life in Process and author of ACT Daily Journal, The Self-Compassion Daily Journal and the upcoming book Wise Effort, Diana works with clinicians, organizations, and individuals to develop psychological flexibility so that they can grow fulfilling and impactful lives. She has a knack for unpacking complex, science-based concepts and making them applicable to clinical practice and daily life. Integrating her over 20 years of meditation experience with yoga and psychological training, Diana guest teaches at InsightLA, Blue Spirit Costa Rica, PESI, Praxis Continuing Education, Yoga Soup and Insight Timer Meditation. She is on the board for the Institute for Better Health, and blogs for Psychology Today and Mindful.org. Diana practices what she preaches in her daily life as a mom of two boys and bee guardian.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Diana Hill maintains a private practice and is a guest teacher for Insight LA Online Meditation Community. She is the co-host and co-founder of a podcast, Your Life in Process. She receives royalties as a published author, and she receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations. Non-financial: Diana Hill contributes videos to PsychFlex.

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Objectives

1. Determine the role that control and experiential avoidance play in the development and maintenance of eating disorder behavior.
2. Choose an experiential exercise to increase acceptance, willingness, and allowing of difficult feelings and cravings.
3. Use strategies such as beginners mind and one eye in and one eye out to increase client’s contact with the present moment.
4. Differentiate between cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusion.
5. Utilize experiential practices such as “the attuned parent” to increase client’s perspective taking and self-compassion.
6. Choose clinical strategies such as the choice point model to increase values awareness.

Outline

Why ACT for Eating and Weight Concerns?
A New Approach to an Old Problem

• Latest research on ACT for eating disorders and weight concerns
• Avoidance and control in the development and maintenance of chronic dieting and overeating
• Metaphor to illustrate the paradox of control
• Creative hopelessness to motivate clients to try something different
• Psychological flexibility (PF) as a new path

ACCEPTANCE-BASED STRATEGIES & EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES TO BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

Being Present:
Help Clients Live in the Now

• How being present relates to eating and weight concerns
• Shift clients from “doing something” about their body to “being in” their body
• Cultivate beginner’s mind and one eye in and one eye out skills
• Practices for embodied eating and embodied movement

Cognitive Defusion:
Help Clients Get Space from their “News Feed”

• A different approach to preoccupation with food and weight
• The paradox of trying to control thoughts about eating and weight
• A new metaphor for preoccupation with food and weight
• Practices for food rules, shoulds, body comparison, and “what the heck” thoughts

Acceptance:
Help Clients be Courageous, Willing and Open

• What acceptance is and what it is not
• How chronic dieting, preoccupation with food, emotional overeating, and over-exercise can serve as experiential avoidance strategies
• How to use the experiential avoidance roundabout metaphor with clients
• Practices for willingness and curiosity to expand clients’ window of flexibility

Perspective Taking:
Help Clients Take in the View

• How rigid self-stories about eating and weight limits flexibility and connection
• How to identify when a client is stuck in a self-story
• Practice flexible perspective taking with clients
• Cultivate an “attuned parent’ perspective to increase self-compassion and wise responses with food and weight

CHANGE-BASED STRATEGIES AND EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES TO BUILD PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

Values:
Help Clients Choose Direction

• How values are defined in ACT
• The role of values in motivating change
• How to use the choice point model to increase awareness of values

Committed Action:
Help Clients Fall on Purpose and Why it Matters

• Uncover intrinsic motivation for change with values
• Focus on action over outcome while working toward change
• Behavioral science to support small, sustainable changes
• Create values-based action plans

Integration:
Practice putting it all together

• Case examples
• How to use the 6 core processes when clients are off track
• The role of therapist PF in supporting client psychological flexibility
• Limitations of research and potential risks

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Psychologists
• Addiction Counselors
• Case Managers
• Registered Dietitians & Dietetic Technicians
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals