Interpersonally Extending Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Couples and Intimate Partners
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)
CE credits available: 7.5
Workshop Leaders: 
Lou Lasprugato, MFT, Peer-Reviewed ACT Trainer
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.
InterACT 8-hour workshop content:
Module 1: Yearnings / Interpersonal Flexibility
Module 2: The ACT Couples Matrix / Intake Interview
Module 3: Multi-Level Assessment / Case Conceptualization
Module 4: Shaping Four Foundational Skills
About the Workshop Leaders:
- Lou Lasprugato, MFT, Peer-Reviewed ACT Trainer
Lou Lasprugato is a psychotherapist and internationally recognized trainer in the field of psychology. He’s a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with private practices in both California and Virginia (United States), and Peer-Reviewed Trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, for which he also serves as Chair of the Training Committee. Lou has worked as a psychotherapist in a variety of settings, including county-operated crisis intervention services with underserved populations; a mental health and substance abuse intensive outpatient program at Kaiser Permanente that he subsequently managed; and an integrative medicine program at Sutter Health. Lou has taught mindfulness meditation to health care practitioners and facilitated nearly one hundred training events on ACT and clinically-applied relational frame theory (RFT), as well as co-created courses on nutritional p sychology and integrative mental health treatment. Lou has also provided supervision to other behavioral/mental health professionals and students and continues to provide individual and group consultation on ACT and other contextual behavioral approaches. He earned his Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology, with a specialization in Holistic Studies from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, following a career as a professional musician.
Following this workshop participants will be able to:
- Demonstrate how to extend the ACT core processes interpersonally within couples therapy
- Describe at least one experiential exercise designed to build a bridge of psychological flexibility between partners
- Explain the central role that yearnings play in couples therapy, including how individual yearnings compete for attention with interpersonal yearnings
- Formulate a functional analytic case conceptualization for couples that situates yearnings as drivers of behavior
- Explain how to facilitate a couples therapy intake interview utilizing the ACT Matrix to evoke awareness of painful private events, (shared) values, and overt behaviors
- Discriminate between behavior under aversive versus appetitive control within couples’ repertoires
- Explain how functional relations, influenced by sociocultural factors and driven by survival mechanisms, between partners can create and maintain contextual clash cycles
- Discuss how to conduct a multi-level process-based functional assessment that examines patterns of interaction within intimate relationships
- List features of the InterACT Assessment Zones that combine attachment-based relating, psychological flexibility processes, and survival mechanisms
- Explain how to shape four functional classes of behavior that can disrupt unworkable patterns of interaction and promote fulfillment within relationships
Target audience: Intermediate, Advanced, Clinical
Components: Didactics, experiential exercises, demonstrations, video vignettes, role plays
Topic Areas: Training, Clinical
Package Includes: A general certificate of attendance
CEs Available (7.5 hours): CEs for Psychologists