Integrating ACT and EMDR
Working flexibly across models
Join us for an innovative and process-based exploration of integrating acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR). In this workshop you’ll learn how to integrate the two models in a theoretical coherent way, using them fluidly and flexibly, tailoring interventions to meet your clients where they are. Whether you’re an ACT practitioner curious about EMDR or an EMDR therapist looking to deepen psychological flexibility in your practice, this workshop will equip you with practical strategies to work more effectively with avoidance, unprocessed experiences, and core memories that hold clients back.
Background to the workshop
Therapists often find themselves navigating the complexities of trauma, avoidance, and meaning-making, wondering how to seamlessly integrate different therapeutic approaches to better support their clients, particularly with trauma-related content, distressing memories, or deeply entrenched emotional barriers which can make them feel stuck. ACT provides a rich framework for changing how clients relate to their inner experiences, but there are times when unresolved content remains. EMDR, with its focus on processing and restructuring memory traces, offers a complementary way to help clients move through these barriers. Bringing the two approaches together requires a thoughtful understanding of how ACT’s process-based flexibility and values-orientation can align with EMDR’s structured and transformative interventions. This workshop will help you work confidently and ethically across these two models, improving outcomes for clients
What you will gain from this workshop
By participating in this workshop, you will:
- Learn when and how to integrate EMDR into an ACT framework, especially when clients are stuck in avoidance or trauma-related barriers.
- Understand the theoretical alignment between ACT and EMDR, using ACT to normalise intrusions and build psychological flexibility while employing EMDR techniques to loosen the grip of unresolved memories.
- Explore clinical scenarios where integration is particularly helpful, such as avoidance of trauma narratives, post-processing distress, or shame-based identity fusion.
- Gain practical strategies for adapting ACT processes to EMDR phases, from preparation to closure, using specific tools like values clarification, defusion, and willingness exercises.
- Discover how ACT can be used to address blocks or avoidance during EMDR, with metaphors, functional analysis, and creative interventions to keep clients engaged.
- Learn key tips for integrating ACT and EMDR to ensure that therapeutic gains are anchored in values and embedded into a meaningful sense of self.
About this workshop
This 2-hour workshop is designed to be engaging, interactive, and directly applicable to your practice. It will include:
- Mini lectures to set the theoretical foundation for integrating ACT and EMDR.
- Client vignettes to illustrate common clinical challenges and how to navigate them using both approaches.
- Practical demonstrations, including a brief overview of how ACT processes can align with EMDR phases.
- Experiential exercises to explore ACT tools for working with avoidance and blocks in EMDR.
Throughout the workshop, you’ll have opportunities to reflect, ask questions, and consider how this integration can benefit your specific client population.
Who will benefit from this workshop?
This workshop is ideal for:
- Therapists and psychologists with foundational training in either ACT or EMDR who wish to broaden their skills by integrating both approaches.
- EMDR-trained clinicians looking to incorporate ACT principles to enhance psychological flexibility, both before and after reprocessing.
- ACT practitioners who want to explore how EMDR can help clients process core trauma-related content and overcome barriers.
- Mental health professionals working with clients facing trauma-related avoidance, unresolved memories, or shame-based identity issues.
No prior experience in both models is required, but participants should have at least a working knowledge of one approach to gain the most from this workshop.
After this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe the theoretical rationale for integrating ACT and EMDR, highlighting points of alignment between the two models.
- Identify clinical situations where an ACT–EMDR integration can address trauma-related avoidance, unprocessed memories, and stuck points.
- Apply ACT processes within EMDR phases to support client engagement and memory processing.
- Evaluate how values-based interventions can consolidate therapeutic gains from EMDR and strengthen clients’ psychological flexibility
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.