Using ACT to support adjustment to chronic health conditions
A skills-based training for health professionals
Living with a chronic health / long term health condition often brings profound emotional and identity challenges. As health professionals, it’s vital to have tools that not only address these complexities but also empower clients to live meaningful lives, even in the face of ongoing illness. This workshop offers a practical, skills-based introduction to using acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to support psychological adjustment in individuals managing long-term health conditions. Participants will explore how ACT processes can be applied across a range of clinical scenarios, equipping you to respond to clients with greater clarity, empathy, and effectiveness. Through this engaging and accessible training, participants will leave equipped with strategies to bring greater psychological flexibility into their clinical work
Background to the workshop
Chronic and long-term health conditions encompass a wide and diverse range of presentations, from persistent musculoskeletal pain, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, and neurodegenerative conditions like MS and Parkinson’s, to metabolic illnesses such as diabetes, and post-viral syndromes including long COVID. These conditions often intersect with mental health and social care needs, meaning that clinicians across a range of settings, from physical health teams to primary care and adult mental health services, are likely to encounter them.
While the specific diagnoses may vary greatly, the psychological impact of living with a chronic condition often shares common themes: grief for one’s former self, loss of functioning, shifts in identity, ongoing uncertainty, and sometimes, a fundamental renegotiation of what a meaningful life looks like. Clinicians may face complex questions: How do we help someone live in line with their values while facing a progressive or relapsing condition? How can we hold space for both hopelessness and hope? How do we work systemically, acknowledging the impact on relationships, roles, and family dynamics?
These clients may also bring with them a complex relationship with the healthcare system, experiences of invalidation, misdiagnosis, or gaps in care, yet they remain reliant on that same system for their ongoing wellbeing. Such experiences can lead to mistrust, frustration, or disengagement, adding another layer to therapeutic work.
This workshop offers an ACT-informed approach to working with the unique challenges that arise in this context. With its emphasis on psychological flexibility, values-driven action, and compassionate engagement with suffering, ACT provides a powerful framework for supporting clients to reconnect with meaning and agency, even in the face of ongoing limitations.
What you will gain from this workshop
By attending this workshop, you will:
- Deepen your understanding of the diverse psychological impacts of chronic and long-term health conditions, including anticipatory grief, shifting identity, and the ongoing tension between acceptance and hope through an ACT-informed lens.
- Learn how to use specific ACT techniques to support clients navigating uncertainty, such as:
- Exercises to help clients relate differently to relapsing/remitting patterns
- Present-moment anchoring to manage fear of future deterioration
- Creative hopelessness to work with stuckness and loss of control
- Develop practical ways to use ACT processes flexibly in your clinical work, including:
- Values clarification tools for clients facing reduced function or changing roles
- Self-as-context exercises to help decentre from illness identity
- Brief ACT interventions for use in time-limited or multidisciplinary settings
- Enhance your own psychological flexibility as a practitioner through reflective exercises that:
- Clarify your role and values when working with long-term distress
- Build capacity to hold space for uncertainty, suffering, and non-fixable problems
- Help you stay grounded, especially when clients’ progress is non-linear or ambiguous
About this workshop
This 2 hour workshop will focus on experiential exercises that will allow you to personally engage with ACT processes and understand their application. Case examples will bring theoretical concepts to life, illustrating practical ways to support clients navigating chronic illness. Live demonstrations will further enhance learning, providing clear, actionable insights into how ACT strategies can be effectively used in real-world clinical scenarios.
Who will benefit from this workshop?
This workshop is ideal for psychologists, counsellors, mental health professionals, allied health workers including OTs, physios and SLTs, and other practitioners supporting individuals living with chronic health conditions. Whether you’re working with clients managing pain, fatigue, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, or functional syndromes, this training will provide you with valuable insights and practical strategies.
Attendees are expected to have a basic working knowledge of ACT. For those seeking introductory ACT courses, explore our ACT essentials course here.
At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Identify common experiential challenges faced by individuals with chronic health conditions and explore how ACT principles can guide compassionate, context-sensitive responses.
- Apply specific ACT techniques to support clients facing uncertainty, including present-moment anchoring, creative hopelessness, and strategies for working with relapsing/remitting patterns.
- Demonstrate flexible integration of ACT processes into clinical practice, including values clarification, self-as-context exercises, and brief interventions for varied treatment settings.
- Explore how relational and existential themes—such as loss, uncertainty, and changing roles—can be addressed through ACT processes that foster connection, meaning, and psychological flexibility.
Continuing education credits are available both for attending the live workshop and for completing the workshop by viewing the recording of the live event.
APA psychologists: This program is sponsored by Contextual Consulting and is approved for 2 CE credits for psychologists. Contextual Consulting is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Contextual Consulting maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
Nationally certified counselors: This workshop is available for 2 credit hours. Contextual Consulting Ltd. has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7578.
To find out more, including attendance requirements and how to access your certificate, go to our continuing education information page.
If you have disability and require adjustments or accommodation, please email us at admin@contextualconsulting.co.uk to discuss your needs and we will do our best to help you.
Booking cancellation
The registration fee will be refunded minus a administration charge if cancellations are received at least two weeks before the workshop date.
Cancellations within two weeks of the event date are charged the full registration fee, other than in exceptional circumstances that can be verified.
Event cancellation
In the event of cancellation of the course outside of our control we will not be held accountable for travel and/or accommodation costs incurred. However, the workshop fees will be refunded.
All workshops will be subject to minimum delegate numbers being met; in the event that a workshop should be cancelled delegates will be given no less than 2 months’ notice.
Replacing delegates
If a delegate is unable to attend and a replacement is nominated there may be a charge depending on the individual circumstances, this will be advised at the time. Please contact the us to request a replacement of delegates at least a week before the workshop date.
Contextual Consulting is committed to the identification and resolution of potential conflicts of interest in the planning, promotion, delivery, and evaluation of continuing education. Potential conflicts of interest occur when an individual assumes a professional role in the planning, promotion, delivery, or evaluation of continuing education where personal, professional, legal, financial, or other interests could reasonably be expected to impair their objectivity, competence, or effectiveness.
There was no commercial support for this event. None of the planners or presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s) to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Konstantinou, P., Ioannou, M., Melanthiou, D., Georgiou, K., Almas, I., Gloster, A.T., Kassianos, A.P., & Karekla, M. (2023). The impact of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) on quality of life and symptom improvement among chronic health conditions: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 29, 240-253.