What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy? Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or “ACT”) is an empirically supported behavioral treatment. ACT has hundreds of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) demonstrating its effectiveness in treating a wide range of diagnoses. Additionally, ACT is a treatment developed from basic research on learning principles (i.e., behavior analysis and Relational Frame Theory; RFT). ACT has been recognized as by the American Psychological Association, Society of Clinical Psychology, Div 12 as a treatment with modest to strong effectiveness at treating a number of common problems of human suffering, including chronic pain, depression, mixed anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and psychosis. To learn more about the Society of Clinical Psychology’s list of evidence-based treatments, click here.  Session 1 – How Language Gets Us Stuck

• In this session, you will learn how the human ability to use language dysfunctions to gets us ‘stuck’ in life. Jacob Martinez, MA, LPC will explain in simple language the properties of verbal behavior and how they influence the development of ‘psychopathology.’ This course will cover the basics underlying Relational Frame Theory (RFT) the behavior analytic account of the properties of verbal behavior and their relevance to human suffering.

Session 2 – Getting in Touch: Contact with the Present Moment

• In this session, you will learn how to get your clients connected to the present moment. We will describe the functions of ‘mindfulness’ within the therapeutic hour and beyond. We will also provide examples and practice to help you utilize mindfulness of the present moment in your clinical work.

Session 3 – Accepting Our Experience

• In this session, you will learn how to help your clients ‘accept’ their experiences and thereby reduce the amount of unnecessary ‘struggle’ and pain in their lives. You will learn the ACT perspective on ‘acceptance’ and how unnecessary struggle tends amply the pain experienced by your clients. You will learn exercises and metaphors that will help your clients ‘unhook’ from the unworkable agenda of ending all unpleasant experience (e.g., anxiety, sadness, loss).

Session 4 – Seeing it as it is: Cognitive Defusion

• In this session, you will learn how to help your clients see past their thoughts to their direct experience. You will learn about ‘cognitive defusion’ and how the properties of language keep us from seeing our world and our experience as it is. You will learn exercises and metaphors that will help your clients connect to their experience as ‘what it is’ not ‘what it says it is.’

Session 5 -Understanding the ‘Self’ as context

• In this session, you will learn how to help your clients see their experience in the context of their lives and their ever-evolving experience. You will learn the ACT perspective on how this meta-cognitive perspective can help your clients reduce struggle with their everyday experiences. You will learn exercises and metaphors that will help your clients see their experience and themselves in a more adaptive way.

Session 6 – Clarifying What’s Most Valuable

• In this session, you will learn how to help your clients identifying what their values are. You will then learn to use your client values to invigorate your treatment as you motivate your client towards adaptive behavior change. You will learn exercises and metaphors that will help your client identify their values and reorient their lives towards what matters most.

Session 7 – Committing to Action

• In this session, you will learn how to motivate your clients to formulate and take step-by-step actions to improve their lives. You will learn exercises and metaphors that will help your client move toward what matters most in their lives.

Session 8 – Putting it All Together: Am I doing ACT?

• In this session, you will learn how to put all the ACT processes into place and know where you are “doing ACT” appropriately. This final segment of the “Learning ACT Naturally” course sequence is free-standing but meant to help the new ACT learner begin to piece together an ACT-based practice.

8 – 60 min. Segments