5 hours, 54 minutes NOTE: The seminar manual, CE information, and CE test are contained on disc #1 in PDF format. To access these documents, play disc #1 in your computer. For the video presentation, begin playing disc #1 in your DVD player. There are perennially difficult problems in therapy: Depressed clients who can’t seem to get better, anxious clients unable to tolerate exposure to their fears, eating-disordered clients and clients who have tried and failed to lose weight. Standard therapies often fail with these problems, and therapists and clients may feel discouraged and wonder what else to try. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an innovative “third wave” cognitive-behavioral treatment that offers new hope for treating these difficult client problems. Join Dr. Margit Berman for this new and refreshing seminar recording that will allow you to directly experience ACT techniques useful in addressing some of the most common, yet-difficult-to-treat, client problems. You will learn how ACT is used with severe mental disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa or severe depression, as well as developing skills to deal with more routine challenges, such as anxiety or clients who seek help with weight loss. Using surprising homework assignments, experiential exercises, and verbal techniques, clients’ (and therapists’) futile and maladaptive efforts at emotional control are undermined and they develop a lasting sense of self-acceptance and a powerful commitment to the values that matter most to them. List and describe typical ACT treatment strategies for clients with chronic or treatment-resistant depression, and anxiety
Explain the clinical research to using eating disorders and weight problems
Describe the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) models of psychopathology and psychological health
Discuss key commonalties and differences between ACT and other common psychotherapies
Identify therapy problems that ACT is best suited to solve
Summarize the basic and clinical research literature relevant to using ACT with difficult client problems including treatment-resistant or chronic depression and anxiety
Achieving Breakthroughs with ACT
The transformation to psychological flexibility:
Avoidance to acceptance of reality
Cognitive fusion (“being stuck”) to defusion (“taking things lightly”)
Attachment to the conceptualized self to awareness of the self as context
Dominance of the conceptualized past
The feared future to contact with the present moment
Being guided by rules that don’t work to being guided by your own values
Inaction, impulsivity, or avoidant persistence to committed action
The Evidence for ACT
Difficult practice problems
Anxiety Treatment: ACT as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Key commonalties and differences from standard CBT
Case conceptualization in standard CBT and ACT
Decatastrophizing, relaxation & mindfulness
Exposure hierarchies to acceptance
Diagnosis-based goals and client values
When to choose ACT over other therapies
When ACT may not be the best choice Mood Disorders: ACT as an Innovation
Is depression just feeling depressed?
Healthy and unhealthy responses to human pain
The goal of feeling better
ACT in Action with Depressed Clients
Creative hopelessness: Acknowledging the trap clients are caught in
Controlling thoughts and emotions
Learning to fully experience negative feelings and thoughts
Acceptance as an alternative to avoidance and anhedonia
Entertaining the enemy: Values and dreams to transform the role of depression
Addressing clients’ grief for lost time Eating Disorders and Weight Problems
Application of ACT to eating disorders
Anorexia vs. Bulimia vs. ED NOS: Empirical support
The role of control vs. self-acceptance in eating pathology
Undermining clients’ control agendas
Skills for accepting and facing feared food, body, and life situations
Helping families and loved ones to help the client
ACT and Client Weight Loss Goals: Changing the Conversation
Why clients’ efforts at weight loss don’t work: The obesity paradox
Creative hopelessness: Identifying the costs and outcomes of the weight loss struggle
The fantasy of being thin: Mining clients’ weight loss dreams for true values
Life values as a guide to healthful living
Margit Berman, Ph.D. , is a psychologist, assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Medical School and co-director of the Mood Disorders service at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. She has published and presented research nationally and internationally on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for eating disorders, depression, interpersonal relationships, and the integration of science and practice in mental health practice. She has taught workshops on ACT to clinicians, researchers, and students at universities and medical centers throughout the U.S., and uses it clinically with clients of all ages and backgrounds, particularly those with chronic and unremitting concerns. She received a dual Ph.D. in Counseling and Social Psychology from the University of Minnesota in 2006.
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