Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Made Easy: ACT for PTSD, Anxiety, Depression & Personality Disorders

Credit

Speaker

Michael C. May, MA, LCPC Related seminars and products

Compassionate Psychological Care, LLP

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Michael C. May, MA, LCPC is a psychotherapist in private practice and an ACT Trainer. He is a founding partner of Compassionate Psychological Care, LLP, a clinic that provides a wide-range of psychological services with offices in Chicago and Highland Park, IL.  Within his private practice, his clinical work is focused on anxiety-related presenting concerns, primarily Panic Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Michael is also co-founder of Enriched Couples LLC, a company focused on utilizing applied behavioral science in conjunction with financial literacy training to aid young couples in undermining toxic experiential avoidance and building vital and valued relationships.

Michael has received advanced training in various contextual behavioral approaches to psychotherapy including Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and regularly provides workshops and professional trainings on Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Michael is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in the State of Illinois.  He is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and the Association for Behavior Analysis International.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Michael May is the founder of Compassionate Behavioral Healthcare, LLC and the founding & managing partner of Compassionate Psychological Care, LLP. He is the co-founder of Enriched Couples, LLC. Michael May receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Michael May is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and the Association for Behavior Analysis International.

Additional Info

For live CE credit, you must watch the live webcast in its entirety at its scheduled time and complete the CE quiz and evaluation within one week. You will have access for 90 days after the program for review.

Please note: 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.

Visit our FAQ page at www.pesi.com/faq or contact us at www.pesi.com/info

Objectives

1. Appraise 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. Evaluate the role of psychological flexibility in ACT and devise interventions for increasing it to improve treatment outcomes.
4. Construct emotional and behavioral willingness exercises to address experiential avoidance.
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.

Outline

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

• 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

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

• 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

• 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

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

• 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

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

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

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

Target Audience

• Social Workers
• Counselors
• Psychologists
• Physicians
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Addiction Counselors
• Psychotherapists
• Case Managers
• Nurses
• Mental Health Professionals
• Therapists

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