This training is full. If you'd like to be put on a waiting list, please contact Jen Winslow ([email protected]).

An Introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Enhancing Your Practice and Your Life with Acceptance, Self-Compassion, and Values-Based Action.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an evidenced-based intervention model grounded in mindfulness, self-compassion, and values-based action. Clients learn to encounter thoughts and feelings in a mindful way, neither dwelling on them nor pushing them away. At the same time, they are encouraged to act on their most deeply held values. In over 1000 randomized controlled trials and nearly 200 meta-analyses and systematic reviews, ACT has been shown to be efficacious for a wide variety of problems helping professionals address, including depression, anxiety, OCD, psychosis, substance abuse, chronic pain, dealing with cancer, stress, and stigma. Rather than going after reducing symptoms, ACT increases psychological flexibility: the capacity to turn to the present moment as a conscious human being and take action according to personally-chosen values. ACT can enhance your practice as professional as well move one, giving you a transdiagnostic evidence-based model from which to stand. But it can also impact your life, giving you a framework for preventing burnout, finding balance, and engaging meaningfully in the world outside of work.

In this two-day, highly interactive virtual workshop, professionals of any experience level will be introduced to psychological flexibility both intellectually and experientially. You will learn what it’s like, in practice, to open up to thoughts and feelings without getting entangled in them, identify what truly matters to you, and take meaningful action. Training modalities will include brief lecture, clinical vignettes, clinical demonstrations, mindfulness exercises, experiential exercises, large group discussions, small group discussions, and small-group skills practice. This won’t be your typical slog of slides as you sit for hours with glazed eyes. You’ll get multiple opportunities to watch ACT demonstrations, practice ACT with yourself, and practice ACT skills with others. The workshop is intended to be both professionally and personally meaningful.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Define psychological flexibility and identify its six components: acceptance, defusion, present moment awareness, self-as-context, values, and committed action.
2. Identify three strategies for facilitating acceptance and willingness with clients.
3. Identify three strategies for facilitating defusion with clients.
4. Help clients contact the moment-to-moment experience of thoughts, feelings, and sensations without becoming absorbed in them or trying to push them away.
5. Contact a sense of self that is more stable than transient thoughts and feelings and transcends personal narratives about who they are and what they are capable of.
6. Facilitate conversations with clients about personal values and values-based behavior activation.

PARTICIPANT REQUIREMENTS

• Must have the appropriate technology and work environment to join the Zoom training sessions.
• Must actively engage during training sessions using both camera and microphone.
• Space is limited. Please only register if you are able to attend both days of the training,
• Due to the limited capacity, priority will be given to those working in HHS Region 5 (IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI).

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Registrants who fully attend this training will be eligible to receive 12 continuing education (CE) hours. CE certification will be managed by the co-sponsoring organization, UW–Madison Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work.

PRESENTER

Michael P. Twohig, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist in the state of Utah and a Professor of Psychology at Utah State University, where he co-runs the ACT Research Group (with Dr. Levin). He received his B.A. and M.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, his Ph.D. from the University of Nevada, Reno, and completed his clinical internship at the University of British Columbia Hospital. He is past-President of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science, the organization most associated with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). His research focuses on the use of ACT across a variety of clinical presentations with an emphasis on obsessive compulsive and related disorders. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, many book chapters, and 9 books, with the most recent being ACT in Steps (with Levin and Ong) and the Anxious Perfectionist (with Ong). His research has been funded through multiple sources including the National Institute of Mental Health and the IOCDF. In 2022, he was rated as currently the most productive author on ACT and that USU was the most productive institution in the world.

This training is co-sponsored by the UW–Madison Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work.

The Great Lakes MHTTC is offering this training for individuals working in HHS Region 5: IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI. This training is being provided in response to a need identified by Region 5 stakeholders.