TRAUMA-FOCUSED ACT (TFACT): WORKING WITH BODY, MIND AND EMOTION

Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT): an in-depth, integrated approach to helping clients heal from trauma

Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT) is a flexible, comprehensive approach model for treating the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, moral injury, chronic pain, shame, suicidality, insomnia, complicated grief, attachment issues, sexual problems, and more.

In this two-day advanced level 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

This workshop is worth 14 specialised CPD hours

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; doesn’t have to be Russ).
• Complete our 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.)

Workshop Contents

This course will help you become more flexible, fluent and creative in ACT, so you can work effectively not just with PTSD but with the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues: simple, complex, acute or chronic.

Here’s what you’ll 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!

You will receive:

• Articles, protocols, and research data on the clinical use of ACT with trauma
• An 8-week e-course after the workshop for ongoing learning
• Detailed handouts covering a wide array of useful ACT interventions
• Scripts for a wide range of experiential exercises.
• A variety of useful client worksheets
• MP3 recordings of key mindfulness exercises

Duration: workshops run from 9am–4pm on Day 1 and 9am-330pm on Day 2

ABOUT RUSS HARRIS

Dr Russ Harris, author of the best-selling self-help book ‘The Happiness Trap‘, is an internationally-renowned trainer of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT). 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.

Since 2005, Russ has run over 800 two-day workshops and provided ACT training for 80,000 health professionals. He has authored four ACT textbooks (ACT Made Simple, Trauma Focused ACT, Getting Unstuck in ACT, ACT Questions & Answers), and four ACT-based self-help books (The Happiness Trap, The Reality Slap, The Confidence Gap and ACT with Love). In addition, he has co-authored two other self-help books: The Weight Escape and The Happiness Trap Pocketbook. His best-known book, The Happiness Trap, has sold over one million copies worldwide, with translations into more than 30 languages.  (To download the opening chapter, click here.)

Russ has a unique model for training, which he calls ‘ACT Made Simple’, because it covers so much material in a short space of time. (In fact, he even has even written an introductory text book on ACT, titled ‘ACT Made Simple’. To download the first chapter, click here.) He proudly proclaims each workshop a ‘jargon-free zone’ – and bases his training on three core values: simplicity, clarity, and having fun. His highly-acclaimed ACT workshops are brief, powerful, cost-effective and life-enhancing. Participants regularly report not only major improvements in their therapy and/or coaching, but also in their personal lives – and evaluation forms frequently praise his ability to make complex ideas seem very simple. (For examples, go to testimonials )