Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) Training

Psychological training for professional coaches & clinicians with Dr. Aprilia West, PsyD, MT, PCC

Now Available On-demand (up to 7.25 CEs available)

Activating Psychological Flexibility for Anxiety, Trauma & Emotional Dysregulation

Getting stuck when working with clients who are psychologically inflexible is a common experience for therapists. But it can often feel like fighting a losing battle where, despite your most powerful clinical tools, there is little to no real progress.

This often happens because, in addition to knowing WHAT to do to expand your client’s behavioral repertoire, you also need the skills and confidence to know HOW to create the context for transformation. By learning to make expert-level therapeutic moves with ACT you can help clients decrease suffering and live a more meaningful life -- regardless of their diagnosis or level of functioning.

WHY IS PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY SO IMPORTANT

Psychological flexibility can be defined as the ability to: 1) maintain an open, curious and skillful relationship with your experience, and 2) adapt to situational demands while aligning and staying focused on your most important interests, goals and values. Said another way, your level of psychological flexibility can tell you how effectively you harness your experience and choose your actions based on what matters to you.

The construct of psychological flexibility is rooted in psychological science, originating in a therapeutic model called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and has been recognized as a critical factor for enhancing both flourishing and high performance. Psychological flexibility has been shown to improve wellbeing and performance in over 1000 research trials. Being psychologically flexible happens we people have developed the mindfulness, mental agility, and meaningful moves to skillfully navigate their lives, even in the face of stress, challenge and pain. 

A growing body of research also highlights the benefits of psychological flexibility for people across numerous personal and professional domains:

-        Increased physical health

-        Increased mental health and wellbeing

-        Improved performance, satisfaction and engagement in the workplace

-        Increased self-efficacy, goal attainment and goal-related thinking

-        Decreased risk of burnout and increased resilience 

-        Improved team dynamics and productivity

-        Leadership effectiveness

References:

Skews, R., West, A., Archer, R. (2021). Acceptance and Commitment Coaching in the Workplace. In: Smith, WA., Boniwell, I., Green, S. (eds) Positive Psychology Coaching in the Workplace. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79952-6_26

Archer, Rob et al. (2024). Increasing workforce psychological flexibility through organization-wide training: Influence on stress resilience, job burnout, and performance. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. 33. 100799. 10.1016/j.jcbs.2024.100799.

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About the Training

Activating psychological flexibility for anxiety, trauma & emotional dysregulation

This 1-day training with Dr. Aprilia West takes you all the way through the ACT model using process-based cognitive-behavioral strategies to accelerate psychological flexibility across a wide range of diagnoses and improve client outcomes.

By learning to make expert-level therapeutic moves with ACT you can help clients decrease suffering and live a more meaningful life -- regardless of their diagnosis or level of functioning. This ACT workshop will help you enhance your ability to work with common clinical presentations including: chronic stress, anxiety and depression, emotional reactivity and emotional dysregulation, unprocessed trauma/PTSD, substance abuse and compulsivebehaviors


Learning

Participants will be able to:

  • Identify core underlying processes related to mental health and wellbeing.

  • Distinguish between the 6 psychological flexibility processes in the ACT hexaflex model.

  • Apply “open” skills to address experiential avoidance and past and/or future focus.

  • Utilize “aware” skills to address over identification with self as content and cognitive fusion.

  • Demonstrate “engage” skills to address lack of meaning and purposeful action in context.

  • Conduct experiential exercises to enhance the learning, retention and recall of new ACT skills.


COURSE OUTLINE

Acceptance and Commitment Theory: The myth of “normal”

  • What does wellbeing look like?

  • The Human Condition: Pain vs suffering

  • Why Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT?

The ACT Model: Psychological Flexibility

  • The problem of avoidance: the Inflexahex model

  • How ACT is different from other approaches

  • Evidence of ACT

  • Limitations of the research and potential risks

Components of the ACT Model Present Moment Awareness (PMA)

  • The power of anchoring in the present

  • Common obstacles to Present Moment Awareness

  • Metaphor for PMA

  • PMA experientials to contact the “here and now”

Acceptance

  • The opposite of control

  • What’s possible with non-reactivity

  • Acceptance of painful emotions and realities

  • What acceptance is not

  • Obstacles to acceptance

  • Metaphor for acceptance

  • Acceptance experientials

Defusion

  • Benefits of holding thoughts lightly

  • The power of language

  • Obstacles to defusion

  • Metaphor for defusion

  • Defusion experiential

Self As Context (SAC)

  • 3 levels of ‘selfing’

  • Benefits of flexible perspective taking

  • Obstacles to Self as Context

  • Metaphor for Self as Context

  • SAF experientials

Values

  • The power of values

  • Values vs. scripts or goals

  • Obstacles to clarifying values

  • Values clarification

  • Values-based action plan

  • Metaphors for clarifying values

Committed Action

  • Benefits of values-based moves

  • Pivoting from default to intention

  • Using functional inquiry to stay on track

  • Obstacles to committed action

  • Committed action metaphor:

  • Committed action experiential

Pulling it all together

  • Embodying ACT to be a psychologically flexible clinician

  • Workability as a guide

  • ACT case conceptualization

  • Pop culture examples

  • Integrating other therapies with ACT

    Common obstacles to PF in therapy


Structure

This is a 1-day training is available ON-DEMAND.


Investment

From $224.99

Testimonials

Dr. Aprilia West PsyD MT PCC - psychologist, executive leadership and team coach, trainer and organizational consultant

About Dr. Aprilia West

Dr. Aprilia West is a psychologist, executive coach, trainer, author, advocacy campaign strategist, and digital health consultant.  She has 20+ years of experience working with founders, leaders, creatives, teams, and organizations spanning U.S. Congress, tech, entertainment, Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofit advocacy campaigns.

Her extensive experience as a psychologist, executive coach, trainer, author, advocacy campaign strategist, and digital health consultant give her a niche understanding of human behavior and how to facilitate wellbeing, peak performance, and prosocial behavior change.

Dr. West's interest in human behavior and choice-making led her to study emotional intelligence, psychological flexibility, resilience and positive psychology. She went on to develop the construct of emotion efficacy— the ability and belief your ability to harness emotional experience, shift your mindset and take action aligned with your values. She explains, “emotion efficacy is what you’d get if emotional intelligence, psychological flexibility and resilience had a love child.”Dr. West designed the Emotion Efficacy Therapy protocol as part of her doctoral studies, as well as the related assessment, the Emotion Efficacy Scale-2 (EES2). She has since developed and expanded the emotion efficacy tools and trainings, including authoring the self-help book, What You Feel Is Not All There Is. She is also co-author of the clinician's guide to Emotion Efficacy Therapy.

Dr. West is known internationally as an expert in the application of behavioral science and conducts professional trainings for coaches and clinicians around the world.

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