A Functional Contextualist Approach to Early Language Training: Using Relational Frame Theory to Promote Linguistic Generativity

Workshop Leaders: 

ACT therapists’ use of self: Working with self; working with stuckness

Helen Bolderston, Ph.D.

Couples Therapy in the 21st Century

Workshop Leader:
Sue Johnson, Ed.D.

Couples therapy offers us a rich amazing venue to create lasting change in individuals, core relationships and families. This 2 day long workshop will outline the Emotionally Focused Model of Couple Therapy (EFT), and how it illustrates the new science of love and bonding. This new science will be summarized and its implications for the couple therapist pinpointed. We now have a map for love and loving that allows the therapist to be on target: to go to the heart of the matter and shape new interactions that redefine the security of the bond between partners and create an environment of healing and growth.

The EFT model represents the cutting edge of couple interventions and this workshop will address the three main tasks of therapy, creating a safe haven alliance, working to regulate and transform emotions and emotional signals, and choreographing a couple’s dance to foster emotional connection and fulfill attachment needs. The day will include didactic presentations on the nature of love and attachment, the state of couple therapy and the conceptual and clinical base of EFT as well as experiential exercises and the observation and discussion of therapy sessions.

About Sue Johnson Ed.D.: 

Sue Johnson Ed.D. is the leading developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy (or EFT). She is a Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Distinguished Research Professor in the Marital & Family Therapy Program at Alliant University in San Diego, Director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) and Director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute Inc. Sue received her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1984. She is a registered psychologist in the province of Ontario, Canada, and a member of the many editorial boards of professional journals.

Dr. Johnson has received a variety of awards acknowledging her development of EFT and her significant contribution to the field of couple and family therapy and adult attachment. Sue has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor recognizing outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to Canada. In 2016, she was named Psychologist of the Year by APA, and has been honored by AAMFT for her Outstanding Contribution to the Field of Couple and Family Therapy. Sue has numerous publications in the field of couple therapy and attachment. Her most recent research in her lab includes Changes in Relationship-Specific Attachment in Emotionally Focussed Couple Therapy (JMFT) and Soothing the Threatened Brain: Leveraging Contact Comfort through Emotionally Focused Therapy (PLOS ONE). This study included a brain scans showing how contact with a loving partner mitigates threat and fear responses. Sue’s most recent book, Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science in Romantic Relationships, outlines the new understanding of why and how we love based on scientific evidence and cutting-edge research. Sue is also the author of the bestseller, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Sue’s other books include The Practice of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Creating Connection (2nd Ed, Routledge, 2004) - the basic text on EFT for couple therapy, Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy with Trauma Survivors (Guilford, 2002) and edited books such as Attachment Processes in Couples Therapy (Guilford, 2003).

Developmental interventions on the self and social behaviour of adolescents - Using DNA-v to develop flexibility, mindfulness and compassion

Workshop Leader:
Louise Hayes, Ph.D.

This workshop will focus on how to use the developmental model of ACT, called DNA-V, to help adolescents practice compassion, mindfulness and flexibility with their self and social behaviours.

DNA-v is the distillation of cutting edge science and theory into simple processes that can help young people live well, but it isn’t just for young people, it is also for parents, teachers, mentors etc. This model uses research from evolutionary science, behavioural science, ACT, compassion research, and positive psychology to create a new paradigm for promoting vital living. This makes DNA-v a wholly Contextual Behavioral Science model based on growth and development. It can be used in both educational and clinical settings.

In this workshop, we will focus on understanding and intervening with the developing self, including: how to work with an abusive self, and how to use compassion and mindfulness exercises to create a flexible self. We will also focus on the social world of adolescents, including: how to work with attachments and nurturing, how to build friendship skills, and how to build social groups.

Participants will be provided with prior material on basic DNA-v concepts – reading and videos – so that this workshop can jump straight into skills practice in the areas of self and social behaviours.

This workshop aims to help professionals to:

• Develop functional self-concepts
• Deal effectively with stress and negative feelings about the self and others
• Develop self-compassion
• Build deeper, more satisfying relationships
• Engage in the six patterns of activity that build well-being and vitality

DNA-V is based on the new book, the Thriving Adolescent, by Louise Hayes and Joseph Ciarrochi. Whilst the book is targeting adolescents, it presents a model that can be used to promote positive development at any age. 

About Louise Hayes, Ph.D.: 

Louise Hayes is a clinical psychologist who focusses on using acceptance, mindfulness, and positive growth treatments. She is well known for her work using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for young people and is currently the President Elect of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science. Louise uses acceptance and mindfulness based treatments with young people in schools and clinical settings. She is an author, international speaker, a senior fellow with The University of Melbourne and Orygen, and a peer reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Training (ACT) trainer. She is the co-author of the best-selling book, Get Out of Your Mind and into your Life for Teenagers: A Guide to Living an Extraordinary Life, and the newly released book, The Thriving Adolescent: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Positive Psychology to Help Teens Manage Emotions, Achieve Goals, and Build Connection. Together with Joseph Ciarrochi she conducts research and treatment development; the latest work is DNA-v, a treatment model for young people. Louise is an active philanthropist, taking mental health professionals into the Himalaya to develop their mindfulness skills and raising funds for poor children in remote Nepal. For more information on Louise go to – www.louishayes.com.au or www.thrivingadolescent.com

Doing Experiential Therapy

Workshop Leaders:
Matthieu Villatte, Ph.D.

While Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as well as other third wave therapy techniques have been widely disseminated over the past decade, their application within a truly experiential framework often remains a challenge for therapists. The desire for transparency, the need to make rapid progress, the requirements to use EBP –protocols, or simply the difficulty of transforming theoretical knowledge into concrete practice can lead therapists to be too directive and didactic, or conversely, abstract and confusing. The opportunity to develop the autonomy of clients in the sometimes subtle and pragmatic observation of their experience is thereby undermined. Experiential techniques lose their power of deep transformation; exchanges become less personal and meaningful; therapeutic work becomes less interesting and satisfying even to the therapist, and the therapeutic relationship is lost to application of impersonal techniques.

The goal of this training is to assist you in developing or furthering your skill in experiential and process oriented practice. Focus on the therapeutic relationship with emphasis on recognizing interpersonal and intrapersonal processes that can guide intervention. We will build on the principles of contextual behavioral science and relational frame theory, which have been particularly well developed for clinical work in ACT, but are adaptable to all 3rd wave approaches (ex. Mindfulness-based therapies, dialectical behavior therapy, meta-cognitive therapy) and experiential therapies in general (e.g. psychodynamic, hypnosis, gestalt).

What will you learn in this course?

• Doing experiential work without reliance on standard metaphors and exercises, in natural conversations with your clients.
• Grounding your clinical practice in a stance of curiosity, openness, and equality.
• Relying on the therapeutic process rather than on techniques topographically defined to carry your sessions.
• electing, building, and delivering experiential exercises and metaphors that are linked to the client’s experience and housed in the therapeutic relationship.

Through practical exercises, videos, demonstrations, and role plays:

• You will learn to shape your clients’ ability to be in touch with and observe their own experiences, and to draw conclusions adapted to their personal life choices (e.g. how to evoke observation rather than using didactic psycho-education).
• You will develop the ability to adapt to any situation without departing from your experiential stance (e.g. how not to fall into excessive explanations or battles of arguments with dependent, rigid, overly compliant or stuck clients).
• You will learn to use experiential exercises and metaphors in a way that strengthens the therapeutic relationship (e.g. how to co-develop metaphors with the client and how to integrate them into a natural conversation).
   

About Matthieu Villatte, Ph.D.: 

Matthieu Villatte, Ph.D. is an author and clinical trainer living in Seattle, WA in the United States. He obtained his doctoral degree in psychology in France, where he was trained as a clinical psychologist. He moved to the US in 2010 to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno under the mentorship of Steven Hayes, Ph.D. He then worked as an assistant professor in clinical psychology at the University of Louisiana and at the Evidence-Based Practice Institute of Seattle for several years.

Matthieu Villatte is the author of numerous books and chapters on mindfulness, acceptance, experiential therapies, and contextual behavioral science, such as the first manual published in French on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and his new book, Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention, co-authored by Jennifer Villatte and Steven Hayes.

He is also a peer-reviewed trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy recognized by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). He has facilitated over 90 clinical trainings in the US, Canada, Australia-New Zealand, South America, and Europe. Over the past few years, he has also run dozens of online trainings gathering participants from all continents.

About Robyn D. Walser, Ph.D.:

Robyn D. Walser, Ph.D., is the assistant director at the National Center for PTSD at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. She also works as a consultant, workshop presenter, and therapist in her private business, TLConsultation Services. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno. During her graduate studies, she developed expertise in traumatic stress, substance abuse, and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). She has been doing ACT workshop trainings, both nationally and internationally, since 1998, training in multiple formats and for multiple client problems.

Débuter et approfondir sa pratique de la thérapie d’acceptation et d’engagement (ACT): un atelier de mise en pratique

Animateurs d'ateliers: 

Exploring a Process-Focused Approach to Understanding and Practicing Compassion Focused Therapy

 

Workshop Leaders: 

Dennis Tirch, Ph.D.

Laura Silberstein, Psy.D.

Russell Kolts, Ph.D.

 

Dates & Location of this 2-Day Workshop:

Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth, Montréal, Canada

 

CE credits available: 13

9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 24, 2018

9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, July 25, 2018

 

Workshop Description:

Increasingly, a compelling case is being made that the future of psychotherapy lies not in distinct therapy models, but in interventions that systematically target empirically-based transdiagnostic processes (e.g. Hayes & Hofmann, 2018). This workshop takes a process-focused approach to understanding and practicing compassion-focused therapy (CFT), presenting a conceptualization of CFT as a configuration of interventions aimed at training specific and often interrelated processes that are involved in - and arise from - the experience of compassion.

This workshop will present the working definition of compassion utilized in CFT, and explore how compassion functions as a constellation of processes which facilitate the ability to turn towards painful experiences, work with suffering, and cultivate values-based movement in our clients’ lives (and in our own). We’ll then explore and operationalize compassion via the unpacking of a number of several core, often interrelated processes involved in it, including the facilitation of courage and commitment to confront suffering, the cultivation of functional safeness, and relatedly, a growing ability to experience psychological flexibility.

Drawing upon contextual behavioral science, affective neuroscience, evolution science, and the science of attachment, the workshop will then explore the practice of CFT – both implicit aspects of the therapeutic interaction as well as a number of specific practices – that will allow the clinician to target these processes in psychotherapy. Participants will learn how to use the therapeutic relationship, the facilitation of client realizations via guided discovery, and specific compassion practices to help clients work courageously with life challenges and develop a repertoire of compassionate strengths. Appropriate for newcomers to CFT and veterans alike and led by perhaps the foremost CFT experts to be found in North America, the workshop presents a novel approach to understanding the therapy – aimed at arming participants with a process-focused way of understanding and organizing their work with clients, and a growing repertoire of options for targeting these processes in therapy.

References:
Hayes, S.C., & Hofmann, S.G. (2018). Process-based CBT: The science and core clinical competencies of cognitive behavioral therapy. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

About Dennis Tirch, Ph.D.: 

Dr. Tirch is the Founder and Director of The Center for Compassion Focused Therapy, and President of The Compassionate Mind Foundation USA. Dr. Tirch is an Associate Clinical Professor at Icahn Medical School at Mt. Sinai, NY. Dr. Tirch is an author of 6 books, and numerous chapters and peer reviewed articles, including The ACT Practitioner’s Guide to The Science of Compassion and Buddhist Psychology and CBT: A Clinician's Guide with Dr. Silberstein and Dr. Kolts. He has also served on the faculty of Cornell Weill Medical College and Albert Einstein Medical School. Dr. Tirch regularly conducts Compassion Focused ACT (CFACT) and CFT trainings, consultation & workshops globally. He is a Fellow of ACBS, Diplomate, Fellow & Certified Consultant & Trainer for The Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Founding Fellow and the Past-President of The NYC-CBT Association, & Founding President Emeritus of The New York City Chapter of ACBS. Dr. Tirch is an Associate Editor of The Journal of Contextual Behavioral Therapy.

About Laura Silberstein, Psy.D.:

Laura Silberstein, Psy.D. is the Associate Director of The Center for Compassion Focused Therapy in New York. Dr. Silberstein also serves as a Adjunct Assistant Professor and Consultant at Albert Einstein Medical College. She is the co-author of 3 books including Buddhist Psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, A Clinician’s Guide and The ACT Practitioner’s Guide to The Science of Compassion. Dr. Silberstein completed a 2 year externship at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, in Manhattan; a pre-doctoral internship at Wyoming State Hospital, and a two year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy at the Cognitive Behavioral Institute of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Silberstein has advanced experience, and serves as a consultant and trainer in a range of 3rd Generation behavior therapies including CFT, ACT, and DBT.

About Russell Kolts, Ph.D.:

Russell L. Kolts, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and a Professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University, where he has taught for the past nineteen years. He is Founding Director of the Inland Northwest Compassionate Mind Center in Spokane, WA, USA. Dr. Kolts has authored or coauthored a number of books, scholarly articles, and book chapters, including CFT Made Simple, The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger, Buddhist Psychology and CBT: A Practitioner's Guide (with Dennis Tirch and Laura Silberstein), and the forthcoming Experiencing Compassion Focused Therapy from the Inside Out (with Tobyn Bell, James Bennett-Levy, and Chris Irons, available April 2018). Dr. Kolts regularly conducts international trainings and supervision in CFT and compassion. Dr. Kolts is on the board of the Washington State chapter of ACBS, and has appeared in his own TEDx Talk on CFT and anger, entitled "Anger, Compassion, and What it Means to be Strong," which has been viewed over 100,000 times.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe a working definition of compassion.
2. List at least three core processes involved in compassion.
3. Describe the three-circles model of emotion in CFT.
4. Describe ways to utilize the therapeutic relationship to create a context of relational safeness in the therapy room.
5. Plan ways to assist clients in cultivating experiences of functional safeness in their lives. 
6. Explain the relationship between courage and compassion.
7. Describe methods for assisting clients to develop courage in facing their struggles.
8. Describe the relationship between compassion and psychological flexibility.
9. Utilize the compassionate self practice in helping clients develop compassionate strengths.
10. Describe ways of using Socratic dialogue to facilitate compassionate realizations in the client. 

Target Audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Clinical

Components: Conceptual analysis, Experiential exercises, Didactic presentation, Case presentation, Role play

Package Includes: A general certificate of attendance, lunch, and twice daily coffee/tea break on site.

CEs available: APA type, CPA type, NASW type, NBCC type, Order of psychologists of Quebec (# RE02496-18 - 13 hr)
 

Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: ACT as a Brief Intervention

Workshop Leader:  

Patricia Robinson, Ph.D.

Marcia Sasano, M.Sc.

This two-day workshop provides clinicians that are new to ACT with a brief overview of the Hexaflex and then moves into the fACT Pillars of psychological flexibility. As a brief intervention, fACT makes ACT transparent by requiring clinicians to “focus” (the “f” in fACT) on the unworkable results of avoidance in client behavior. Clinical tools will enable participants to quickly understand and practice the key skills involved in the C.A.R.E. method, a 4-step approach to using fACT. This approach can readily be understood by those new to ACT and may have particular appeal to behavioral clinicians and medical colleagues working closely together to assist patients with psychological, medical, and both psychological and medical problems.

The first skill in C.A.R.E is conducting a 10- or 15-minute assessment that engages the patient and identifies strengths as well as deficits in psychological flexibility (C is for Contextual Interview). Participants will use worksheets to practice the contextual assessment in role-play exercises. The second skill in C.A.R.E. is that of learning to listen with fACT ears while interviewing. With the structure of a worksheet, participants will work in small groups to identify the 3 A’s in client behavior: Attraction, Avoidance, Approach. Additionally, participants will use the fACT Four Square tool to conceptualize possible directions for rapid change in public behaviors. Participants will build upon the contextual interview and 3 A’s to attain mastery of the “R” in C.A.R.E., relating the patient’s suffering to the patient’s values. Skill practice exercises will assist participants with identifying critical opportunities for “Relate” statements and with formulating these statements. The fourth skill area in C.A.R.E. approach is to enhance “experimentation”, the “E”. Without the “E”, radical behavior change is not possible. Participants will have opportunities to experiment with strategies to encourage the behavioral variability of clients.

Participants may want to bring a colleague with them to this workshop, as a partnership may assist with maintaining and growing skills learned in the workshop. In previous offerings of this workshop, some participants will be ready to teach the C.A.R.E. method to others, even with just a 2-day introduction. This is a dissemination-friendly approach, and this is critical, given the huge problems faced by so many patients, particularly those with both medical and psychological problems.  

About Patti Robinson, Ph.D.: 

Patricia J. Robinson, Ph.D., of Mountainview Consulting Group, is recognized as a pioneer researcher in the field of primary care behavioral health and a master clinician in Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. She trains internationally and consults with health care systems about initiation and expansion of integrated services. She is the author of over 150 publications, including Behavioral Consultation and Primary Care, 2nd (2015), Brief Interventions for Radical Change (2012), and Real Behavior Change in Primary Care (2010).

About Marcia Sasano, M.Sc.:

Marcia Sasano is a dedicated health psychologist working as a clinician, consultant, clinical supervisor, and trainer for ProCare, New Zealand’s largest primary care providers' network. With extensive expertise in the use and application of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and unique skills on brief interventions, her work is adaptable in treating a broad range of psychological and emotional distress and behavioural challenges. Sasano’s work is grounded in evidence based practices. She has specialist knowledge in relational and cognitive therapies, with particular interest in their application within primary mental health services. With her integrative therapeutic approach and a biopsychosocial perspective, she is able to offer specialist psychological and behavioural health assessment and interventions that are intrinsically collaborative and client focused.

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP): Deepening and Generalizing Your Clinical Skills of Awareness, Courage and Therapeutic Love

Workshop Leaders: 

Understanding ACT Assessment and Treatment: Not Just for Beginners

Workshop Leader:
Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D.

This workshop will include:

• Multiple live demos by Dr. Wilson
• Experiential exercises
• Practice interviews
• Practice assessment components

In the workshop, we will use the structure of the Hexaflex Functional Dimensional Experiential Interview (HFDEI; from Mindfulness for Two, Wilson & DuFrene, 2009). This interview provides strong linkage between treatment, assessment, and case conceptualization. The HFDEI is an unusual interview. First, it doesn’t bow to syndromal classification. The user of the interview need not discard syndromal classification. Many circumstances require them. Although the diagnoses in the HFDEI are not DSM syndromes, many of the signs and symptoms required for DSM diagnoses will be elicited in the context of this interview. Second, the interview is organized around a dimensional understanding of psychological difficulties. Third, and probably most unusual, the interview contains significant experiential components. The interview for the hexaflex is not a mere series of questions, rather it involves a set of questions embedded in a series of experiential exercises. The exercises and questions will provide you with directly observable samples of client behavior that will allow for rating those behavior samples in terms of the six facets of the hexaflex. The entire interview is embedded in a series of questions about valued domains of living.

ACT is not a treatment aimed at the elimination of symptoms, rather it’s a treatment aimed at the enhancement and development of valued living. Because there’s an intimacy between values and vulnerabilities, an examination of values is a likely entry point to seeing the relationship between difficulties with behavior change processes on the one hand and mindfulness processes on the other. In addition, such an interview helps you and your client remain closely connected to the ACT model. Work with client struggles are always directed and dignified by valued living. Likewise progress in ACT is ultimately to be found in increases in valued living.

The workshop will involve a series of exercises and intensive practice with the HFDEI. Practice with the interview will be interspersed with LIVE DEMOS of interview segments. Participants will practice looking at each of the six facets of the hexaflex and will practice at case conceptualization. As is usual for me, this workshop will be highly experiential. In the workshop, we will mix the experiential and conceptual. This mixing itself is practice for the mixing of conceptual and experiential in our treatment. The interview can provide a framework for assessment and also for treatment. In a short version, the interview allows for the assessment of all six core ACT processes. The interview, in an extended form can serve as a template for the provision of treatment.

Prior to the workshop I will make workshop preparation materials available to attendees. For additional information, please contact me at kwilson@olemiss.edu

About Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D.: 

Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at the University at Mississippi. He was the first President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, a Representative-at-Large of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, and is one of the co-founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Dr. Wilson received his B.A. Summa Cum Laude from Gonzaga University and his Ph.D. at the University of Nevada, Reno. After running a National Institutes on Drug Abuse clinical trial in Reno, he joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi in 2000 where he established the Mississippi Contextual Psychology Lab. Dr. Wilson is a devoted mentor a university-wide Elsie M. Hood Award for undergraduate teaching and also the University of Mississippi Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring. Dr. Wilson has devoted himself to the development and dissemination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Relational Frame Theory, and their underlying theory and philosophy for the past 28 years, publishing 53 articles, 38 chapters, and 11 books. He has central interests in the application of behavioral principles to understanding topics such as purpose, meaning, values, therapeutic relationship, and present moment focused work. Dr. Wilson has presented his re 32 countries, and has participated as co-investigator in a wide range of research projects in the U.S. and internationally.

Using metaphor in training psychological flexibility

Workshop Leaders: