LibGuides: Clinical Interventions: ACT

ACT in Action: A Complete Course

Steven Hayes, PhD, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), will guide you through the core processes and principles used in this evidence-based approach.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) full-heartedly embraces a strange contradiction: We want to help our clients change, and yet have you noticed that the most powerful change often involves the simple act of acceptance of who we are! Unlike CBT which focuses on helping a client modify irrational or unhelpful thoughts, the underlying philosophy of ACT is that trying to change or fix ourselves often exacerbates our symptoms.

With this course you'll learn how to...

Get “stuck” clients moving forward with mindfulness exercises, metaphors and strategic interventions
Cultivate meaningful connections with all your clients, even the ones who don't want to be there
Target and reshape the cognitive processes that are at the heart of your clients' struggles
Align clients with their values using evidence-based techniques that foster meaningful growth and change
Facilitate in-session experiential learning proven to help both you and your clients live rich, fulfilling lives

Volume 1: Facing the struggle
Steven Hayes, PhD, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), will guide you through the core processes and principles used in this evidence-based approach.

Hayes first works with Jerry, a man suffering from significant social anxiety who has very little access to his emotions. You’ll then get to watch other leading ACT therapists demonstrate techniques and interventions used in the opening stages of therapy with a variety of clients, including a young mother struggling with anxiety and depression, a teacher with panic disorder and a woman who suffers from chronic pain. Offering commentary throughout, Hayes illustrates the key concepts of ACT as they are unfolding moment-to-moment in these riveting therapy sessions.
Volume 2: Control and Acceptance
Working with a client who struggles with intense social anxiety, Hayes demonstrates the principle of accepting what we cannot control and living in accordance with our highest personal values. However, there’s also a risk of falling too quickly into what Hayes calls “pseudo-acceptance.” With Hayes's insightful commentary, you’ll learn to identify the signs and manage this pitfall with your own clients.

Hayes also introduces us to the classic principle of cognitive defusion, and demonstrates how to help your clients detach from their thoughts and engage more deeply in therapy.
Volume 3: Cognitive Diffusions
Hayes and master ACT clinician Rainer Sonntag, demonstrate a variety of cognitive defusion techniques that you can easily integrate into your clinical practice.

You'll learn how to use key ACT interventions such as “deliteralization,” separating words from their meanings to create some space between thoughts and emotions. You'll also learn about “physicalizing” thoughts—giving them shape, form and definition so that clients can more easily disidentify from them.

Synthesizing both mindfulness and cognitive behavior techniques, cognitive defusion is a therapeutic tool that every therapist should have in their toolbox and will help your clients move from depression and anxiety to hope.
Volume 4: Mindfulness, Self, and Contact with the Present Moment
Get an in-depth look at core mindfulness techniques that should be in every therapist's repertoire. Hayes demonstrates “eyes-closed” exercises and other in-session methods for helping clients slow down and connect with themselves so that they can engage more deeply in therapy. With commentary throughout, Hayes offers a script for bringing mindfulness practices into the therapy room.

You'll also see ACT cofounder Kelly Wilson conduct a powerful piece of clinical supervision with a struggling therapist. Seeking support for her work with a hostile, resistant client, Wilson introduces several techniques to help the therapist manage her anxiety and engage more deeply with the fear and loneliness behind her client’s hostility. A brilliant example of how ACT can improve not only your client's lives but your own.
Volume 5: Values and Action
Learn how to start putting ACT's powerful interventions together to help your clients come into contact with their most deeply-held values and beliefs and uncover the link between values and emotional pain, laying the groundwork for clients to create goals imbued with meaning and purpose.

You'll see how the ACT model is applied to working with chronic pain patients in sessions with a teenager and an adult, each of whom struggle with severe daily pain. And in an impressive session with a depressed young mother, master ACT therapist Rainer Sonntag quickly and deftly helps her define her values as a parent and set goals for herself. Your clinical work will never be the same after watching these transformative sessions.
Volume 6: Psychological Flexibility
Discover how to integrate various ACT processes into actual treatment scenarios and how therapists of every orientation can use the ACT model in a variety of contexts.

We first meet a mother having trouble letting go of her adult children. In session she comes to realizations about her own values and sees new ways to move forward. Then Maggie, an ACT therapist, is the client in a session conducted in a “fishbowl.” Utilizing a brief-therapy model of ACT, master ACT clinician Kirk Strosahl helps Maggie come to terms with her difficult relationship with her brother. Lastly, Hayes conducts a session with a man diagnosed with OCD. Beginning with a detailed explanation of how exposure is integrated into ACT, Hayes carefully guides the client through the exposure.