Daniel J Moran – Acceptance & Commitment Therapy: 2-Day Intensive ACT Training

Are you looking to improve your therapy approach?

How often do you review your appointment calendar and wonder how you are going to help a regular client who seems to progress for a while and then regression?

Each time he/she arrives, you use the same tools and techniques you have been using for a long time, but this one client is testing your skills. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can be integrated into your practice.

The treatment approach that gets to the heart of therapeutic relationship has been researched and developed by a world- renowned researcher, speaker and author.

Steven Hayes is a trainer and co-author of the book. It is possible to practice the act. The course recording will show you how to develop evidence-based skills, case conceptualization techniques and powerful strategies that will improve outcomes.

• Anxiety Issues
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Mood Disorders
• Substance Abuse
• Anger Management
• Eating Disorders
• Trauma
• Personality Disorders

You can start a new path for healing with your most difficult clients by watching this recording.

The exercises are free. You will get copies of psychological assessment tools and case conceptualization forms.

1. Develop a deep understanding of the six core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help clients advance psychological flexibility.
2. Incorporate the role of psychological flexibility in ACT and list clinical techniques for increasing it.
3. Utilize acceptance approaches with avoidance problems to strengthen a client’s willingness to have emotions.
4. Implement clinical skills for helping clients to defuse from language obstacles.
5. Utilize exercises in therapy with clients like, contacting the present moment, to aid clients with developing flexibility to engage in the present moment and let go of their struggles.
6. Detect how a client’s unclarified values can lead to clinical problems in relation to assessment and treatment planning.
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. Implement emotional and behavioral willingness techniques with clients to reduce experiential avoidance.
11. Integrate ACT techniques into treatment for specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and the personality disorders.
12. Demonstrate how ACT incorporates elements of exposure therapy to reduce experiential avoidance.

The model is called the ACT.

• 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

There are limitations of the research.

• 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

The focus is on the present and not on what happened in the past or what is going to happen in the future. The focus is on the present and not on what happened in the past or what is going to happen in the future.

• 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

Work values.

• 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

The action was committed.

• 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

You can incorporate the act into your approach.

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

The plan is called the Mindful Action Plan.

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

The Daniel J Moran Review is about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Daniel J Moran has a download of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy: 2-Day Intensive ACT Training. The Daniel J Moran discount is for acceptance and commitment therapy.

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