- Empirical support for treatment across diagnoses
- Functional Contextualism
- Relational Frame Theory (RFT)
- Limitations of the research & potential risks
- When anxiety, social comparison, and avoidance of uncertainty are helpful
- How trying to problem solve our emotions leads to challenging behavior
- What client’s pain tells us about their values
- The difference between pain and suffering
- Avoid the trips and traps of language that result in challenging behaviors
- Rely on experience over language to get desired outcomes
- Ways of getting experiential with your clients
- Role-play: Asking questions in an experientially focused way
Experiential Exercises to Teach Clients the Function and Cost of Experiential Avoidance
- What clients get out of problematic behavior
- The cost of experiential avoidance and its impact on values
- Walking clients through ‘creative hopelessness’ (function/cost of behaviors)
- Make space for the experience of discomfort
- Fun ways to practice willingness, mindfulness, awareness, and acceptance
Family of Origin Triggers that Lead to Unworkable Behavior
- Origin of the patterns
- How they protected then
- How they hurt now
- Case studies: Child abuse, overinvolved parents, narcissistic parent
Experiential Exercises to Help Clients Let Go of the Fight Against Pain
- Know firsthand the difference between
- Emotion avoidance and emotion acceptance
- Thought suppression and thought defusion
- Change client’s relationship to their thoughts, self-limiting beliefs that stall treatment
- Choices, processes, and steps that keep clients in the moment
Experiential Exercises to Help Clients Identify and Live their Values
- Experiential practice for identifying client values
- Overcoming obstacles to valued living
- How to hold outcomes lightly in-service of committed action
