2-Day: Intensive ACT Training: Acceptance & Commitment Therapy

Speaker: Daniel J. Moran, PhD, BCBA-D
Duration: 12 Hours 01 Minutes
Format: Audio and Video
Copyright: Jan 17, 2024

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 relationships.

Watch ACT expert, trainer and co-author with Steven Hayes of ACT in Practice, Daniel J. Moran, Ph.D., BCBA-D, for this training 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

Watch this intensive, engaging, and transformative training and start a new path for healing you can use with your most difficult clients.

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Psychotherapists
• Social Workers
• Addiction Counselors
• Therapists
• Art Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Case Managers
• Occupational Therapists
• Physicians
• Mental Health Professionals
• Nurses

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

Limitations of the Research and Potential Risks

• Children and adolescents
• Acute, florid hallucinations
• Catatonic depression
• Individuals with an adverse reaction to mindfulness exercises

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