Nurturing Roots to Reach New Heights: Revisiting Foundations of ACT as Clinical Behavior Analysis for Mastering Flexible, Process-Based Implementation

Nurturing Roots to Reach New Heights: Revisiting Foundations of ACT as Clinical Behavior Analysis for Mastering Flexible, Process-Based Implementation

Nurturing Roots to Reach New Heights: Revisiting Foundations of ACT as Clinical Behavior Analysis for Mastering Flexible, Process-Based Implementation

Workshop Leader: 
Emily K. Sandoz, Ph.D.
 
Dates & Location of this 2-Day Workshop:
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
 
CE credits available: 13
Tuesday, July 14, 2020 - 9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - 9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
 
Workshop Description:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is defined by its behavior analytic roots and its focus on building flexibility into the behavioral repertoire. Many ACT clinicians, however, find behavior analytic language lacking in its ability to capture and inform the clinical work they do every day. Instead, ACT assessments and interventions are typically guided by less specific, “mid-level terms,” such as acceptance, defusion, and values. While mid-level terms certainly reduce the barriers to learning ACT as a new approach, they may unnecessarily limit the clinicians’ application of ACT to the creation and use of techniques, exercises, and metaphors that target flexibility components. This workshop offers practice with an alternative approach to ACT mastery - ACT as clinical behavior analysis.

ACT as clinical behavior analysis is simply the direct clinical application of functional contextual behavioral science and behavior analytic theory, typically in a talk therapy format. Many have dismissed behavior analysis as cold, rigid, and overly technical. However, practicing ACT as clinical behavior analysis tends to bring clinicians closer to practicing in a way that is connected, compassionate, and closely attuned to the therapist-client interaction. Far from building in rigidity, practicing ACT as clinical behavior analysis fosters innovation and therapist growth.

Using an experiential approach that progressively builds skills across two days, participants will practice the functional analysis of moment-to-moment therapy process in service of building clients’ psychological flexibility. These practice opportunities will begin with only the most basic philosophical assumptions underlying ACT and move through principles that are increasingly specific, converging on the ACT components that are typically described in mid-level terms. Participants will leave the workshop with a simple but effective behavioral framework in hand for providing clients opportunities to develop flexible, adaptive, and expansive patterns of behavior that extend far beyond the therapy room.

About Emily K. Sandoz, Ph.D.: 

Dr. Emily K. Sandoz is the Emma Louise LeBlanc Burguieres/BORSF Endowed Professor of Social Sciences in the Psychology Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Emily is the Director of the Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. She has co-authored three books on acceptance and commitment therapy for struggles with eating and body image, along with chapters and journal articles on ACT, Relational Frame Theory, values, the therapeutic relationship, and psychological flexibility. Emily has led more than 70 professional training workshops around the world, and serves as a peer-reviewed ACT trainer. She also practices as a Clinical Psychologist, focusing on clinical behavior analysis of body-related difficulties.

Learning Objectives:

Following this workshop participants will be able to:

  1. Describe three clinical implications of functional contextualism for clinical behavior analysis.
  2. Analyze talk therapy interventions in terms of the function game vs. the correspondence game.
  3. Analyze talk therapy interventions by tracking the functional relationship between context and behavior.
  4. Demonstrate clinical behavior analytic interventions based on analyses of the functional relationship between context and behavior.
  5. Analyze talk therapy interventions by tracking behaviors under aversive and appetitive control.
  6. Demonstrate clinical behavior analytic interventions based on analyses of aversive and appetitive control.
  7. Describe the psychological flexibility model of psychological well-being in behavioral terms.
  8. Describe the psychological flexibility model of clinical behavioral intervention in behavioral terms.
  9. Assess psychological flexibility in the therapeutic interaction, along with the manipulable conditions that influence it.
  10. Demonstrate interventions that manipulate immediate conditions to build psychological flexibility.

Target Audience: Intermediate, Advanced, Clinical

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

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

CEs Available: APA type, NASW type (pending approval), NBCC type (pending approval)
ACBS staff