Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Made Simple-ACT for PTSD, Anxiety, Depression and Personality Disorders – Daniel J Moran

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Are your current techniques just not working?

You’ve experienced the frustration; you have a client who seems to just not break through. You’ve tried your best, but the outcome is the same: he or she progresses for a while, then regresses again.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is the popular transdiagnostic approach that you can integrate into your practice to achieve positive therapeutic outcomes with difficult-to-treat clients.

Watch ACT expert and presenter Daniel J. Moran, in this recording as he delivers an exercise- and intervention-heavy course that will give you the tools you need to more effectively treat clients with PTSD, anxiety, depression or personality disorders.

You’ll learn how ACT weaves mindfulness strategies with cognitive-behavioral change strategies to revolutionize client outcomes, as well as discover a variety of ACT techniques for helping clients who are struggling to make difficult behavior changes due to the presence of painful thoughts, feelings and memories.

By shifting focus to their own values, ACT sets clients up to embrace behavior change that is meaningful to them while simultaneously fostering skills that allow clients to more effectively handle impulsive actions based on current thoughts or emotions.

Purchase this recording today, and Dr. Moran will guide you step-by-step through highly practical, evidence-based ACT skills that you can apply in your practice immediately!

1. Recognize and identify ACT concepts such as experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion in session.
2. Assess client’s fusion with thoughts about the past or future and illustrate mindfulness exercises to clients in a clinical setting.
3. Explain the role of psychological flexibility in ACT and devise interventions for increasing it to improve treatment outcomes.
4. Identify how to reduce experiential avoidance by implementing emotional and behavioral willingness exercises with clients.
5. Analyze the efficacy of exercises in values clarification as it relates to treatment outcomes.
6. Integrate the ACT approach into treatment to address clinically-relevant issues for specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.

The ACT Model

• Pain vs. suffering
• Language as a double-edged sword
• Goal: Psychological flexibility
• Limitations of the research & potential risks

Components of the ACT Model

Acceptance: Foster Client Acceptance of Emotions to Increase Values-Based Action

• What should be accepted?
• The problem with controlling thoughts
• How to sidestep the happiness trap
• Spot common phrases of non-acceptance
• Experiential avoidance
• How to help clients understand acceptance
• Experiential Exercise: The finger trap

Defusion: Change the Way Clients Interact with Their Thoughts

• Relational frame theory & mental health
• Undermine unhelpful language processes
• Give clients skills to notice their thoughts
• How to decrease believability of unhelpful thoughts
• Experiential Exercise: Notice the meaning of language

Self-As-Context: Aid Clients in Establishing Their Identities

• The three different versions of the self
• How to describe the “observer self” to clients
• How to distance the self from thoughts & emotions
• The chess board metaphor
• Experiential Exercise: ”I am” exercise

Contact with the Present Moment: Strategies to Build Attention to the Here & Now

• How language affects mindfulness
• Goals of mindfulness
• ThoughtFit exercises
• How do we teach clients to be mindful?
• How to build focus on values
• Obstacles in teaching mindfulness
• Experiential Exercise: Mindfulness meditation

Values: Aid Clients in Deciding What Gives Live Meaning

• What are values?
• How to help clients author their values
• Values vs. goals
• When clients are “stuck”
• Values assessment
  • Batteries exercise
  • Epitaph exercise

Committed Action: Assist Clients in Behaving in the Service of Chosen Values

• Persistent inaction, impulsivity or avoidance
• Address rule-governed behavior
• Exposure & ritual prevention strategies
• The Mindful Action Plan

ACT in Action

PTSD

• Function of trauma symptoms
• Experiential avoidance in PTSD
• Increase psychological safety
• Dominating concepts of the past & future
• Trauma-informed mindfulness exercises

Anxiety

• Client avoidance & escape strategies
• Assessment tools
• Address reason-giving as a barrier
• Strategies to increase willingness
• Anxiety Detector exercise

Depression

• Values contradiction
• How experiential avoidance impacts depression
• Fusion to the damaged conceptualized self
• Behavioral activation strategies

Personality Disorders

• Coping strategies
• Increase emotional tolerance
• Target the client’s story
• Experiential avoidance from the therapist