Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a Form of Process-Based Therapy: Why it Matters in Your CBT Practice
By
Steven C. Hayes, PhD
Foundation Professor, University of Nevada
Friday, April 1st, 2022
10AM - 2PM EST
Non-Member Price $150
Members save $50
Students save $60
Student Members save $75
Topic Description:
Process-Based Therapy is not a new form of therapy, but a new way of thinking about what practitioners and the public should expect of evidence-based interventions. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a good test case for a PBT approach because its underlying model has been examined, not just in over 850 randomized trials, but in thousands of basic and applied studies of processes of change and intervention kernels that move them. In this workshop, I will show how a focus on processes of change in PBT can vitalize your clinical work when applied in an idiographic way and how ACT and its psychological flexibility model can be used to accomplish that end.
Learning Objectives:
Describe at least one known process of change in each of these areas: Affect, cognition, self, attention, motivation, and overt behavior.
List the key components of evolutionary theory as they apply to processes of change.
Explain how to pick an intervention target when that target is a process of change.
Speaker Biography:
Steven C. Hayes is a Nevada Foundation Professor in the Behavior Analysis program at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 46 books and nearly 675 scientific articles, he is the developer of Relational Frame Theory, an account of human higher cognition, and has guided its extension to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or “ACT.” ACT is a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods and has been shown to be helpful in a wide range of areas. His popular book, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, was featured in Time Magazine among several other major media outlets and was the best-selling self-help book in the United States for a time. His new book, A Liberated Mind, has been recently released to wide acclaim. Dr. Hayes has been President of several scientific societies and has received several national awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Google Scholar ranks him as among the top 1,100 most cited living scholars in all areas of study in the world (http://www.webometrics.info/en/node/58).
Some interesting facts about Dr. Hayes: He decided to be a psychologist in high school because of his love for art and science. His early psychology interests were in peak experiences and Maslow, and he became a behaviorist as a result of Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. In his spare time, Dr. Hayes enjoys his expansive collection of grown-up recreational vehicle toys, which includes a boat, jet skis, motorhomes, and a former beloved motorcycle. He also plays acoustic guitar. He is married to his Brazilian wife, Jacque, a recently retired DBT/ACT researcher and Director of Counseling at UNR, and has four bright, successful children. Dr. Hayes’ favorite music includes trance, techno, and chill. He is the oldest raver in town. Before trance music, his favorite music was punk. He has severe tinnitus as a result, and it actually drove him to suicidal thoughts until it occurred to him to apply his life’s work to it. ACT solved it 100% in a few days and it has remained solved in the several years since. His ears still ring constantly, of course, he just does not care, so most of the time he hears nothing because he is not listening. His wife says he is now “too good” at not listening!