Dear Fellow Clinician,
In the early years of my practice, I found the traditional focus on diagnosing and reducing symptoms too restrictive, feeling more like a checklist of problems rather than a door to growth and fulfillment. Also, even if I was able to reduce clients’ symptoms, it didn’t necessarily mean their lives became more fulfilling.
When I taught mindfulness programs, clients would often ask, “Now that I am in the present moment, what do I do with my life?”
That's when ACT's approach to values, flexibility, and defusion reframed the way I think about client behavior entirely.
ACT's revolutionary approach lets us focus on what truly matters: helping our clients thrive, find fulfillment, and live lives aligned with their values.
After years of practice, teaching, and authoring best-selling books on ACT, I've focused on distilling the sophisticated science of ACT into practical tools that you can apply immediately. Because ACT focuses on the processes of change, you can apply these principles no matter what other theoretical orientations you use.
Today, I invite you to join me in my exclusive program, where you'll discover the tools to apply ACT's core processes with greater precision and confidence across client presentations.
This training includes practical approaches to the processes of change, guided experiential exercises, and real-life case studies designed to prepare you for greater treatment success and reignite your passion for your practice.
Unlike standard online programs, this conference will offer demonstrations, and skill-building practice opportunities conducted by me.
I hope you'll join me!
Best,
Nationally Recognized ACT Teacher & Best Selling Author
Richard Sears, PsyD, Licensed Psychologist
Register today and save up to $200 – includes up to 12.5 CE hours
Your Chance for a Premier 2‑Day ACT Training in Parsippany, NJ or at Home via Live Webcast!
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy is not just another modality.
It offers a fundamentally different way of understanding why people suffer and what it actually takes to help them change.
If you’ve ever felt stuck with complex clients, limited by diagnosis, or unsure how to create meaningful movement in therapy, ACT gives you a practical way forward.
You’ll gain a concrete, flexible framework that applies across the most common and complex presentations you see — without abandoning what already works in your practice.
Over two immersive, experiential days, you will not just study ACT. You will do it, developing the skills to:
- Use the ACT model and Hexaflex for accurate case conceptualizations
- Move beyond DSM(tm) categories to identify the core processes driving suffering
- Apply ACT across anxiety, trauma, depression, chronic pain, addiction, and relational challenges
- Use metaphors, experiential exercises, and mindfulness to shift clients' relationship with their inner world
- Help clients take committed action in the presence of difficult internal experiences
- Apply ACT principles to clinician self-care and burnout prevention
This training doesn't just add techniques to your toolkit. It reframes how you conceptualize clients, behavior, and the therapeutic process itself.
Register now and join us in Parsippany, NJ!
Register by 10/15/2026
Deep experiential learning + Audience Q&A
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Experiential exercises & community connection
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Can't attend these dates? Order the self-study version here!
Click here for in-person cancellation policy details
Dr. Sears is a sixth-degree black belt in Ninjutsu, and once served as a personal protection agent for the Dalai Lama with his teacher, Stephen K. Hayes. He has studied Eastern Wisdom for over 40 years, receiving ordination in three traditions, and transmission as a Zen master.
Click here for information about Richard Sears
What Your Colleagues Are Saying about Dr. Sears
“Wonderful presenter. Made it easy to understand and applicable to daily life, as well as practice with clients.”
“Thank you! I loved Dr. Sears humor and its slight dent on the dark. He is wonderful!”
“Dr. Sears was wonderful. Very knowledgeable and in tune to his population — loved it.”
“I liked the style of Richard with multiple examples & trying to get people more involved in conversation. It was very enriching and I learned a lot!”
“Dr. Sears was clearly a very organized experienced presenter. It was beneficial to hear his ACT oriented approach and broaden my scope of awareness.”
“Dr. Richard Sears was one of the best speakers on PESI trainings. He was very knowledgeable and engaging. His stories were so helpful in absorbing the information and the humor also helped with the absorption.”
“Dr. Sears is an excellent presenter and his sense of humor goes a long way!”
Register by 10/15/2026
Deep experiential learning + Audience Q&A
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Experiential exercises & community connection
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Can't attend these dates? Order the self-study version here!
Click here for in-person cancellation policy details
Reserve your room now!
When you book your stay at the Hilton Parsippany, you’ll be just steps away from the conference room! Enjoy the convenience of being on-site for your training – as well as being a short drive from Newark International Airport! Onsite recreational amenities include an indoor pool, fitness center, and complimentary internet as well as a 24-hour express market and onsite restaurant. You'll also be a quick drive from wonderful downtown Morristown, The Mall at Short Hills, Red Bull Stadium, and the Prudential Center.
Hilton Parsippany
1 Hilton CT,
Parsippany, NJ, 07054
973-267-7373
Register by 10/15/2026
Deep experiential learning + Audience Q&A
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Experiential exercises & community connection
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Can't attend these dates? Order the self-study version here!
Click here for in-person cancellation policy details
Your Curriculum
Take your practice to the next level! Here’s what you’ll learn at the amazing Hilton Parsippany, where you can find an on-site pool and fitness center, as well as an on-site restaurant, express market, and so much more within driving distance!
A Deep Dive into Foundational ACT Principles
The Six Processes of Change
- Exercise: Setting intentions
- Toward process-focused treatment versus techniques
- The importance of context and function of behaviors
- Relational Frame Theory: How thoughts get their power
- What Goes Wrong: ACT Model of Psychopathology
- Attachment to conceptualized self
- Cognitive fusion
- Experiential avoidance
- Dominance of past & future
- Lack of values clarity
- Unworkable action
- The Hexaflex: Six universal processes of change
- Limitations & Risks
Becoming Psychologically Flexible
- Why psychological flexibility is critical to mental health
- Struggles as control attempts: Letting go of what is not working
- Systematically explore what does not work
- Increase psychological flexibility to do what matters
- Metaphor exercise: Creative helplessness
- Exercise: Bus metaphor
Clients Are Not Their Struggles: Expand the Sense of Self
- How clients over-identify with their problems
- Chessboard metaphor: Getting lost in the game
- Shift from self-as-content to self-as-context
- Metaphor exercise: Expand the sense of self to put struggles in context
- Exercise: Cosmic self meditation
Defusion: Break Free from The Battle with Thinking
- How internal representations develop in the human mind
- How thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion
- Reification of thoughts: How arguing with thoughts can make them worse
- Brain programming: Why clients cannot control or suppress thoughts long-term
- Metaphor exercise: Shift from being lost in the drama to aware of thoughts as they are
Acceptance: Break Free from the Battle with Unpleasant Feelings
- Diving into feelings to uncouple them from thoughts and misinterpretations
- Changing our relationship to unpleasant emotions
- Rope and finger trap metaphors to let go of struggle
- Metaphor exercise for exposure therapy
- Metaphor exercise for self-compassion
- Metaphor exercise for developing empathy for challenging clients
Just this Moment: Break free from Future Worries and Past Regrets
- Exercise: Three-minute mindfulness
- Eternity in this moment – the illusion of time
- Experiencing reality through the senses versus mental representation
- Explore challenges with curiosity – math problem versus sunset
Help Clients Set Their Life’s Course: Don’t Let Struggles “Drive the Bus”
- How values increase client motivation
- Helping clients explore the 10 value domains
- Use “the voice” of struggle to discern values
- Exercise to discern values: “and if you had that…”
- Breaking out of stuckness and moving toward a fulfilling life
Take Committed Action: Just Do It
- Build momentum toward what really matters
- Develop a realistic and workable action plan
- Teach clients to act with difficult thoughts and feelings
- The essentials of effective exposure therapy: time and situation
Putting ACT Into Action
- Anxiety
- From natural stress response to chronic reactivity
- How anxiety about anxiety leads to a restricted life
- Conceptualizing GAD, Panic, OCD, Health Anxiety, and PTSD from an ACT frame
- How rumination becomes an avoidance strategy
- Quicksand and Crying Baby Metaphors
- Clean vs. Dirty Anxiety
- Internal Exposure
- Trauma
- Nature of trauma & why clients get trapped
- Mindfulness Exercises-Exposure vs. Avoidance
- The Science of Memory Reconsolidation
- File Cabinet Exercise
- Tin Can Monster Exercise
- Chronic Pain
- The problem of fighting pain
- Bringing compassion to discomfort
- Building a life worth living
- Depression
- Assessing medical/substance/medication issues
- Behavioral activation: the essential treatment ingredient
- Mood dependent learning and memory: why arguing does no good
- Beck’s cognitive triad & suicidality
- Defusing from thoughts and taking action
- Personality Disorders
- Why personality disorders are so different
- Increasing psychological flexibility
- Why understanding excessive and missing traits is critical to treatment
- Installing observing ego: making observations and connections
- Finding values and setting behavioral goals
Clinician Self-Care
- The stages of burnout
- Emotional exhaustion
- Cynicism
- Loss of personal efficacy or feelings of accomplishment
- Psychological & physical problems
- Applying the six principles to oneself
- Stepping back from thoughts about clients
- Giving yourself permission to feel
- Remembering your values
Objectives
- Identify the principles of ACT and their practical applications in therapeutic settings.
- Utilize systematic techniques to address control issues that impede client progress.
- Implement strategies to help clients shift their focus to what matters most and maintain this focus amidst challenges.
- Use metaphors and exercises to assist clients in expanding their sense of self beyond their struggles and identifying with their values.
- Analyze how thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion.
- Apply defusion techniques to help clients break free from negative thought patterns and improve psychological flexibility.
- Utilize metaphorical and experiential techniques to teach clients how to change their relationship with unpleasant emotions.
- Apply metaphors for exposure therapy and self-compassion to enhance clients' ability to engage with and accept their emotions.
- Choose mindfulness exercises to help clients remain present and effectively manage past regrets and future worries.
- Implement actionable plans that are consistent with clients' values and support committed action despite difficult thoughts and feelings.
- Use ACT interventions for selected anxiety-related presentations, including GAD, panic, OCD, health anxiety, and PTSD symptoms.
- Apply ACT strategies for trauma-related symptoms, including mindfulness, acceptance, defusion, values-based action, and exposure-consistent exercise.
Register by 10/15/2026
Deep experiential learning + Audience Q&A
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Experiential exercises & community connection
Slides, tools & handouts included
Earn up to 12.5 CE Hours!
Can't attend these dates? Order the self-study version here!
Click here for in-person cancellation policy details
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I don't currently know ACT, is this 2-day training for me?
Yes! This training is for all clinicians — trained in ACT or not.
Is this conference right for me?
If you are ready to strengthen your clinical work with a flexible evidence based framework that moves beyond symptom management this two day ACT training is for you. In this immersive intensive you will gain a practical working understanding of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and learn how to apply its core processes including mindfulness acceptance defusion values and committed action across a wide range of clinical presentations such as anxiety panic trauma chronic pain depression and personality disorders. Through experiential exercises metaphors and real world application you will learn how to help clients loosen unhelpful struggles with thoughts and emotions expand their sense of self clarify values and take meaningful action even in the presence of distress. By the end of the training you will leave with a cohesive ACT framework you can use confidently within your scope of practice to improve outcomes work more process focused and support both client change and clinician sustainability.
This conference is designed for:
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Psychiatrists
- Psychotherapists
- Physicians
- Nurses
- Case Managers
- Other Helping Professionals
Will this training provide a bunch of research, or will I learn how to apply ACT?
Dr. Sears delivers an exercise and intervention-heavy course that will give you the tools you need to more effectively treat clients with anxiety, trauma, and more.
What will the schedule look like?
November 5-6 from 8:00-4:00pm ET
There will be a 70-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch and break times will be announced by the speaker and at their discretion. A more detailed schedule is available upon request.
What is the in-person cancellation policy?
From Purchase Date until October 15th,2026: Cancellation results in a full refund less a $100 administrative fee
From October 16, 2026: Cancellation results in a 50% penalty of the total purchase amount
Event Countdown
We’re that confident you'll find this learning experience to be all that's promised and more than you expected.