Category
Dates and Location of this VIRTUAL 2-Day Workshop:
VIRTUAL LIVE online via Zoom
Friday, June 6, 2025 and Saturday, June 7, 2025, 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. UTC/GMT -5 (Central Daylight Time)
Contact Hours: 7.5
Workshop Description:
Do you provide couples therapy or would like to consider offering this treatment modality? Are you curious about how acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can be extended interpersonally in a way that is sensitive to the psychosocial longings and stressors between intimate partners? Would you like to build clinical skills in multi-level functional assessment and process-based interventions for couples? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you will likely find great value in attending this 8-hour (7.5 hr plus breaks) live-online workshop for practitioners who will learn how to “InterACT with Couples.”
While ACT has been extensively studied and utilized as an individual form of therapy, its application to couples therapy has been somewhat limited to a few notable publications (Harris, 2023; Lawrence, Cohn, & Allen, 2022; Lev & McKay, 2017) and a relatively small, but growing body of promising research (Ahmadzadeh, et al. 2019; Veshki, et al. 2017) suggesting comparable effectiveness of ACT with cognitive-behavioral couple therapy and integrative couples therapy, and in some regards with emotionally focused therapy (Ghahari, et al. 2021). ACT’s model of psychological flexibility, when extended interpersonally, can offer a unique lens to case conceptualization and functional analysis when examining patterns of interaction between intimate partners. What’s more, yearnings - deep, enduring longings or psychological needs, which are a recent addition to ACT’s theoretical base - are often the primary motivators influencing one or both partners seeking therapy. Individual and interpersonal yearnings compete for attention within relationships, as partners attempt to satisfy yearnings in unworkable (values-incongruent) ways that create conflict, tension, and disconnection. Combined with built-in survival mechanisms that surface when faced with a threat to ‘self’ or one’s relationship, partners can become trapped in contextual clash cycles that inadvertently reinforce suffering.
The workshop will introduce a reimagined ACT Hexaflex that situates yearnings as a core functional feature of an interpersonal psychological flexibility model. Participants will have a chance to experience the psychological flexibility processes extended interpersonally and conduct a couples intake interview with the ACT Matrix. A multi-level, process-based, functional analytic case conceptualization for couples that integrates psychological flexibility, attachment-based relating, and survival mechanisms, will serve as the basis for assessing and intervening on patterns of interaction. The functional relations that shape behavior and create contextual clashes between partners will be examined, including issues related to diversity and sociocultural factors. Participants will practice modeling, evoking, and reinforcing four functional classes of behavior, or foundational skills, that set the stage for meaningful change; this includes a critical process-oriented intervention of slowing down in-session patterns of interaction to allow for observation and tracking of interlocking behavioral contingencies. The workshop will include the following components: didactics, experiential exercises, video vignettes, demonstrations, dyadic and small group practice. As a bonus, participants will also get to learn the art of improv! Note: while the case examples and practice will be focused on intimate partners, most of the principles and processes presented in the course are applicable to any interpersonal context.