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Full Course Description

Richard Sears' Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Certificate Program

An invitation from Dr. Richard Sears…

Dear Fellow Clinician, I am thrilled to announce that enrollment for my ACT Certificate Course is now open! In the early years of my practice, I found the traditional focus on diagnosing and reducing symptoms too restrictive, feeling more like a checklist of problems rather than a door to growth and fulfillment.

That's when ACT's transformative approach altered my practice.

ACT's revolutionary approach lets us focus on what truly matters: helping our clients thrive, achieve their goals, and live lives aligned with their values.

After years of practice, teaching, and authoring best-selling books on ACT, I’ve focused on distilling the sophisticated science of ACT into practical tools that you can apply immediately no matter what other theoretical orientations you use.

Today, I invite you to join me in my exclusive certificate program. Each week, you'll discover the tools to create real and lasting change in clients facing trauma, anxiety, depression, and other clinical issues.

The course includes practical approaches to the processes of change, guided experiential exercises, and real-life case studies designed to prepare you for greater treatment success and reignite your passion for your practice.

Unlike standard programs, this course also offers LIVE consultation sessions, demonstrations, and skill-building practice opportunities conducted by me. Not only is this an opportunity to raise your professional profile, but you'll also receive an exclusive ACT Certificate of completion and a digital badge signifying your growing expertise.

This is the only certificate course I am scheduling in 2025. I hope you’ll join me!

Best,
Richard Sears, PhD, Licensed Psychologist

Program Information

Target Audience

  • Counselors
  • Social Workers
  • Psychologists
  • Psychiatric Nurses
  • Psychiatrists
  • Addiction Counselors
  • Marriage and Family Therapists

Objectives

  1. Define and integrate ACT principles, and articulate their practical applications in therapeutic settings.
  2. Apply Relational Frame Theory to help clients manage and deconstruct problematic thought patterns.
  3. Assess and address control issues that impede client progress using systematic techniques.
  4. Develop and implement strategies to help clients shift their focus to what matters most and maintain this focus amidst challenges.
  5. Use metaphors and exercises to assist clients in expanding their sense of self beyond their struggles and identifying with their values.
  6. Recognize how thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion and implement strategies to reduce their impact.
  7. Apply defusion techniques to help clients break free from negative thought patterns and improve psychological flexibility.
  8. Teach clients how to change their relationship with unpleasant emotions using metaphorical and experiential techniques.
  9. Apply metaphors for exposure therapy and self-compassion to enhance clients' ability to engage with and accept their emotions.
  10. Implement mindfulness exercises to help clients remain present and effectively manage past regrets and future worries.
  11. Teach clients to experience reality through their senses rather than getting lost in mental representations.
  12. Assist clients in exploring and defining their core values, using this understanding to navigate life’s challenges and guide their actions.
  13. Develop and implement actionable plans that are consistent with clients' values and support committed action despite difficult thoughts and feelings.
  14. Use ACT principles to effectively address and manage various anxiety disorders, including GAD, Panic, OCD, Health Anxiety, and PTSD.
  15. Apply ACT strategies tailored to trauma, including mindfulness exercises and memory reconsolidation techniques, to facilitate healing and recovery.

Outline

Part 1: A Deep Dive into Foundational ACT Principles

Module 1

  • Mastering the Six Processes of Change
    • Experiential Exercise: Setting intentions for effective treatment
    • Moving toward process-focused treatment and why it matters
    • ACT essentials, core principles and definitions
    • The role of context and behavior functions for better treatment
    • Relational Frame Theory: How thoughts get their power and how to break free
    • How battling thoughts and feelings limits life
  • Challenges in Clients' Lives and how ACT Helps
    • Identifying common pitfalls and how ACT offers solutions
    • The 6 universal core processes essential for effective change
      • Attachment to Conceptualized Self
        • How clients confuse their problems with their identity
      • Cognitive Fusion
        • Why clients get stuck in negative thoughts
      • Experiential Avoidance
        • How people struggle with their own feelings and reality
      • Dominance of Past & Future
        • Why clients create and struggle with a mental world
      • Lack of Values Clarity/Contact
        • How clients lose touch with what really matters
      • Unworkable Action
        • Why clients spin their wheels and feel stuck

Module 2

  • Becoming Psychologically Flexible: The Keys Thriving in Change and Building Resilience
    • Hidden truths about psychological flexibility and mental health
    • Struggles as control attempts: How letting go can be easier than you think
    • Systematic techniques to explore ineffective strategies and patterns
    • How to assess underlying control issues that hinder progress
    • Step by step: How to shift focus to what matters (and stay there!)
    • Metaphor Exercise: Creative helplessness
    • Experiential Exercise: Bus metaphor

Module 3

  • Clients Are Not Their Struggles: How to Expand the Sense of Self
    • How clients over-identify with their problems
    • Chessboard metaphor: Getting lost in the game
    • Shift from self-as-content to self-as-context
    • Metaphor Exercise: Expand the sense of self to put struggles in context
    • Exercise: Cosmic Self Meditation

Module 4

  • Defusion: Break Free from The Battle with Thinking
    • How internal representations develop in the human mind
    • How thoughts are conditioned with meaning and emotion
    • Reification of thoughts – why arguing with thoughts can make them worse
    • Brain programming – why clients cannot control or suppress thoughts long-term
    • Defusion – break the pattern of negative spirals
    • Metaphor Exercise: Shift from being lost in the drama to aware of thoughts as they are

Module 5

  • Acceptance: Break Free from the Battle with Unpleasant Feelings
    • Diving into feelings to uncouple them from thoughts and misinterpretations
    • Changing our relationship to unpleasant emotions
    • Rope and finger trap metaphors to let go of struggle
    • Metaphor exercise: Exposure therapy
    • Metaphor exercise: elf-compassion
    • Metaphor exercise for developing empathy for challenging clients

Module 6

  • Just this Moment: Break free from Future Worries and Past Regrets
    • A practical definition of mindfulness
    • Exercise: Three-minute mindfulness
    • Eternity in this moment – the illusion of time
    • How to be productive without feeling busy
    • Experiencing reality through the senses versus mental representation
    • Using the mindful inquiry process to get the most out of a mindfulness exercise
    • Explore challenges with curiosity – math problem versus sunset

Module 7

  • Help Clients Set Their Life’s Course: Don’t Let Struggles “Drive the Bus”
    • How values increase client motivation
    • Define a life worth living alongside life’s challenges
    • Helping clients explore the 10 value domains
    • Use “the voice” of struggle to discern values
    • Exercise to discern values: “and if you had that…”
    • Breaking out of stuckness and moving toward a fulfilling life

Module 8

  • Just Do It: Take Committed Action
    • How to build momentum toward what really matters
    • Develop a realistic and workable action plan
    • Teach clients to act with difficult thoughts and feelings
    • Why we cannot “try” - making the leap
    • The essentials of effective exposure therapy: time and situation

Part 2: Putting ACT into Action

Module 9

  • Anxiety
    • From natural stress response to chronic reactivity
    • How anxiety about anxiety leads to a restricted life
    • Conceptualizing GAD, Panic, OCD, Health Anxiety, and PTSD from an ACT frame
    • How rumination becomes an avoidance strategy
    • Using knowledge of the psychophysiology of stress to pivot toward what matters
    • Quicksand and Crying Baby Metaphors
    • Clean vs. Dirty Anxiety
    • Internal Exposure

Module 10

  • Trauma
    • Nature of Trauma & Why Clients Get Trapped
    • Why the “nitty-gritty” details of the trauma can be harmful to explore
    • Mindfulness Exercises-Exposure vs. Avoidance
    • The Science of Memory Reconsolidation
    • File Cabinet Exercise
    • Tin Can Monster Exercise

Module 11

Depression, Personality Disorders, and Self-Care

  • Depression
    • Assessing Medical/Substance/Medication Issues
    • Behavioral activation: The essential treatment ingredient
    • Mood dependent learning and memory: Why arguing does no good
    • Beck’s Cognitive Triad & Suicidality
    • Defusing from Thoughts and Taking Action
  • Personality Disorders
    • Why Personality Disorders Are So Different
    • Latest Research: Genetics & Neurology
    • Why Understanding Excessive and Missing Traits is Critical to Treatment
    • Installing Observing Ego: Making Observations and Connections
    • Finding Values and Setting Behavioral Goals
  • Clinician Self-Care
    • Applying the six principles to oneself

Copyright : 06/09/2024