ACT Made Easy: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Depression, Anxiety, Trauma and Personality Disorders

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Daniel J. Moran, PhD, BCBA-D Related seminars and products

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Daniel J. Moran, PhD, BCBA-D, is the former president of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), the international ACT organization with over 8,000 members worldwide. He co-authored the first case conceptualization manual for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy entitled ACT in Practice (New Harbinger) and served on the first ACT training committee.

As a recognized ACT trainer in the ACBS community, Dr. Moran has an engaging training style that has led him to be an invited keynote speaker for many events in the last decade. He has also been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Network, TLC, and The Discovery Channel discussing the treatment of many clinical disorders and has published several articles and book chapters, including publications with CBT pioneer Albert Ellis and ACT pioneer Steven Hayes.

Dr. Moran founded the MidAmerican Psychological Institute, a clinic in Chicagoland, and continues to supervise therapists and treat patients in that organization. His passion is for applying the ACT principles in important areas outside of the clinic, such as the boardroom or construction sites. He established Pickslyde Consulting in order to bring mindfulness and value-directed commitment skills to the workplace in order to improve safety, innovation and leadership. Dr. Moran has utilized ACT in work implementations and clinical training sites on six continents and in all 50 of the United States.
 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Daniel Moran is the founder, president & CEO of Pickslyde Consulting and the founder of bcbasupervison.com. He has employment relationships with Touro University and FoxyLearning.com. Dr. Moran receives royalties as a published author. He receives a speaking honorarium, recording, and book royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. He has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Daniel Moran is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Sciences, the International OCD Foundation, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Behavior Analysis International, the Association for Behavioral & Cognitive Therapies, and the American Society of Safety Engineers.

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Outline

ACT in a Nutshell

• The role of values: mindfulness, acceptance, commitment, behavior
• Experiential avoidance
• Existential behaviorism
• Psychological flexibility
• ACT for anxiety, depression, trauma and personality disorders
• Disorder-specific strategies
  • Common treatment elements
  • Metaphors, paradox and experiential exercises

Role of Exposure in ACT

• Translate client values into behavioral goals
• Barriers to behavioral goals: external and internal avoidance
• External Exposure
  • Situations
  • People
• Internal Exposure
  • Thoughts
  • Emotions
  • Memories
  • Bodily sensations

ACT in Action

• Anxiety
  • Client avoidance strategies (including rumination)
  • Clean vs. dirty anxiety
  • Attack reason giving
  • Anxiety detector exercise
  • Turn up the willingness knob
  • Mountain of food metaphor
  • Passengers on the bus metaphor
  • And vs. but
• Trauma
  • Function of trauma symptoms
  • Specify treatment goals
  • Target self-harm behaviors
  • Increase psychological safety
  • Tin can monster exercise
  • Mindfulness exercises
• Depression
  • Role of avoidance in depression
  • Target suicidality
  • Evaluation vs. description exercise
  • Buy thoughts and defuse language
  • Observing self-exercise
• Personality Disorders
  • Increase emotional tolerance
  • Values clarification
  • Mind vs. experience
  • Man in the Hole analogy
  • Target the client’s story
  • Work with client anger
  • Role of therapist self-disclosure
  • Chessboard metaphor

Objectives

1. Appraise ACT concepts such as experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion in session.
2. Assess client’s fusion with thoughts about the past or future and illustrate mindfulness exercises to clients in a clinical setting.
3. Evaluate the role of psychological flexibility in ACT and devise interventions for increasing it to improve treatment outcomes.
4. Construct emotional and behavioral willingness exercises to address experiential avoidance.
5. Analyze the efficacy of exercises in values clarification as it relates to treatment outcomes.
6. Integrate the ACT approach into treatment to address clinically-relevant issues for specific disorders including depression, anxiety, trauma and personality disorders.