Presented by Michael May, MA, LPCC-S

This full-day workshop is the third and final of a series of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) workshops aimed at increasing clinicians’ flexibility and sensitivity in applying ACT. As a contextual, systemic, and transdiagnostic approach, its effectiveness hinges on the ability of the clinician to be present, connected, and responsive to their client’s unfolding behavior within the moment of the therapeutic relationships, as well as their own! This requires practice. The opportunity to allow one’s direct experience to be shaped by the specific particularities of the client with whom the clinician interacts in the moment. This workshop is aimed at providing ample opportunities to allow the proficient ACT clinician to move to fluency: creativity, spontaneity, sensitivity, and responsivity. Through structured targeted experiential exercises, as well as structured role-playing/real-playing and trainer feedback, ACT clinicians will have the opportunity to engage with commonly occurring difficult clinical presentations including: client “resistance”, lack of “motivation”, and excessive/ineffective “problem-solving.” Knowing ACT by doing ACT. Participation in this workshop assumes at least an intermediate proficiency in applying ACT as foundational basics will not be reviewed. 

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn to conceptualize client behavior occurring in the moment as one  instance of a history of interaction with various systems; familial, social, cultural, etc.

• Participants will learn to conceptualize middle-level terms/constructs (e.g. acceptance, defusion, resistance, motivation, etc.) in a manner that offers action implications.

• Participants will learn to conceptualize the six core Psychological Flexibility processes of ACT in terms of prompt-response interrelationships. 

• Participants will learn how to attend to ACT processes as an organizing framework while utilizing other applications of psychotherapeutic and systems theories/techniques with individuals, couples, and families.

• Participants will learn how to more effectively discriminate between ACT-consistent and ACT-inconsistent of prompt-response interrelationships. 

• Participants will learn how to engage in vital and ongoing self-assessment of their own behavior when interacting with common difficult clinical presentations. 

• Participants will be offered supportive tools and resources to aid in self-assessment of effectiveness, continued growth, and increased creativity when applying ACT.

This program is Approved for 7 Continuing Education Hours by the following boards:

• Kentucky Board of Licensed Professional Counselors

• Kentucky Board of Social Work

*This program is awaiting approval for 7 Continuing Education Hours by the following board:

• Kentucky Board of Examiners of Psychology (approval pending)