Dr. Russ Harris presents Trauma-Focused Acceptance & Commitment Therapy: ONLINE LIVE STREAM EVENT
Event date: -
Event type: Multi-day (+2 days)
Workshop Description
Trauma-Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (TFACT) is a flexible, comprehensive approach for treating the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, moral injury, chronic pain, shame, suicidality, insomnia, complicated grief, attachment issues, sexual problems, and more.
(For a quick overview of TFACT, read chapter one of the textbook, ‘Trauma-Focused ACT’ here)
In this two-day training, you’ll discover cutting-edge strategies for healing the past, living in the present, and building a new future. With this compassion-based, exposure-centered approach, you’ll learn how to help your clients:
- Find safety and security in their bodies
- Overcome hyperarousal and hypoarousal
- Break free from dissociation
- Shift from self-hatred to self-compassion
- Rapidly ground themselves and reengage in life
- Unhook from difficult cognitions and emotions
- Develop an integrated sense of self
- Resolve traumatic memories through “inner child” work and flexible exposure
- Connect with and live by their values, and engage fully in life here and now
- Experience post-traumatic growth
Note: This is an intermediate-level training, which assumes you already know the basics of ACT. Please see “Prerequisites” section below.
You will learn:
- The neurobiology of trauma, including Polyvagal theory and Attachment theory
- How to work effectively with the limbic system
- How to bring a numb body back to life
- Why and how “talk therapy” and “supportive counselling” can keep clients stuck in trauma
- How to use movement and mindfulness to help a client’s body unlearn old adaptive responses to trauma
- How to work with a freeze response
- How to help clients find a sense of safety and security in their body
- Simple psychoeducation to help clients understand their trauma symptoms
And you’ll also learn about:
- How to reverse hopelessness and build optimism from the word ‘go’
- How to rapidly ground and centre your clients
- How to use values for post-traumatic growth
- Epigenetic aspects of trauma, and how to ameliorate them
- How to recognise and reverse emotional dysregulation
- Powerful new tools, techniques and metaphors for working with trauma
- When and where ‘mindfulness meditation’ is contraindicated in trauma work
- How to use mindfulness processes flexibly and safely (without meditation)
And this too:
- The art and science of compassionate, flexible exposure
- How to keep exposure safe by ‘Dipping in’ and ‘Dipping out’
- How to develop self-compassion, step-by-step, in the face of self-hatred
- How to revisit traumatic memories safely, without getting trapped in them
- How to use self-as-context naturalistically to help clients transcend past trauma
- How to deconstruct and overcome shame, step-by-step
And, as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also discover:
- Inner child imagery and rescripting
- Nightmare rehearsal and rescripting
- Working with body memory
- Defusion from self-hatred, self-criticism, self-blame
- Mindfulness and defusion as antidotes to worrying, rumination, catastrophising
- How to overcome common barriers to change
- Working with comorbidity
- Shifting paradigms: from the “window of tolerance” to the “window of flexibility”
- Making “homework” simple, desirable, and likely to be successful
- And much, much more!
Who Should Attend?
Helping professionals who have already been introduced to the basics of Acceptance of Commitment Therapy (see section below).
Prerequisites
This course assumes at least a beginners-level knowledge in ACT. Before enrolling, you must do at least one of the following:
- Attend an introductory level 2-day ACT workshop (with any trainer)
- Complete Russ Harris’s online ACT for Beginners course.
- Thoroughly work through a beginners-level ACT textbook from start to end such as ACT Made Simple or Learning ACT. (This means not just reading it, but actively doing the experiential exercises. An ACT self-help book such as The Happiness Trap will not suffice; it must be a textbook.)
About the Presenter
Dr. Russ Harris is a best-selling author, medical doctor, psychotherapist, life coach, advisor to the World Health Organisation, and world-renowned trainer of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy.
Russ’s background is in medicine. As a GP he became increasingly interested in the psychological aspects of health and wellbeing, and increasingly disenchanted with writing prescriptions. Ultimately this interest led to a total career change, and he now works in two different, yet complementary roles: both as a therapist and as a coach.
Russ has authored several ACT textbooks and ACT-based self-help books. His best-known book The Happiness Trap is now the most widely-translated ACT book in the world, with over one million copies sold worldwide and editions in over 30 languages. (To download the opening chapter, click here)
Russ has directly trained over 50,000 psychological health professionals in the ACT model and is known for his practical and fun style of teaching.