FREE WEBINAR: Going EPIC in ACT: Getting Experiential, Pragmatic, Integrative, and Contextual in Therapy

While stock metaphors and classic exercises from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) abound within textbooks and training events, anchoring one’s approach within a contextual behavioral framework can often go overlooked. More importantly, interventions applied without a foundation of function - that is, without an aim that is sensitive to the client’s behavior in context - can get lost in translation and lose their effectiveness.

ACT resides within a philosophy of science and a theory of language and cognition that was operationalized as a therapeutic approach in the landmark book, Mastering the Clinical Conversation (Villatte, Villatte, & Hayes 2015). We can derive four behavioral principles from the approach presented in this book: experiential, pragmatic, integrative, and contextual (EPIC). These four interdependent processes function to honor and develop the client’s own expertise in creating the life they want for themselves while effectively navigating the barriers that show up along the way; this occurs in part through evoking self-agency, efficacy, and acceptance/inclusion. An EPIC approach allows us to harness the power of human language in therapy to transform the function of private events (e.g. thoughts, feelings, perceptions) while enhancing or diminishing motivation to engage in overt behaviors.

As a result of attending this free 2-hour webinar, participants will be able to:

• Describe how contextual behavioral principles inform ACT
• Discriminate between consistent and inconsistent interventions with respect to an EPIC approach
• Demonstrate how to leverage core processes and relational frames in interventions that influence client’s behavior and transform their lives