ACT for Physical Health Problems: Intermediate Levels with Ray Owen – Day 2

Recorded Workshop

Presenter: Dr. Ray Owen

Please note: you will have access to recording   for 6 months

Many of us have found that Acceptance & Commitment Therapy approaches helpful for physical health problems. We’ve seen people’s lives improve by identifying their Values, taking committed action in support of them, making room for unpleasant feelings and not getting tangled up in difficult thoughts. And getting better at noticing what’s going on in the present moment to help make all that happen.

But what benefits are there for going deeper into the model – how might that help the people you work with? Do those trickier ideas we read about like conceptualised-self, rule-governed behaviour , functional analysis, RFT,  deictic framing actually offer anything practical?

This Intermediate-level ACT for Health workshop is for people who are already familiar with the core ACT model (values, defusion, acceptance etc) in a physical health setting but want to take their skills to the next level and dive into the more complex aspects of the model

In this 2-day didactic, experiential, and skills-building workshop, participants will learn:

• The role an altered sense of self (“I’m just not the person I used to be…”), and powerful methods to work with self-as-context can help build a new approach to loss of identity
• Tools to work emotions connected with loss of identity
• Key techniques to work with unhelpful rule-governed behaviour and develop more helpful rules and behaviour for people with altered health,
• How to use moment-by-moment functional analysis to get unstuck from content
• Methods to use perspective-taking to enhance self-compassion
• How to  work with trauma and moral injury within physical health from an ACT perspective

To make sure we focus on these areas, the workshop will assume that participants already have a good grasp of the basics of ACT, and have some experience of applying it with people who have physical health problems, as we won’t be spending time covering these.

The experiential exercises will bring us into contact with difficult thoughts and feelings – please be aware of this in deciding whether to attend.

About Your Speaker

Dr Ray Owen is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Health Psychologist with over 30 years experience of working in Physical Health settings within the NHS. He has substantial experience of teaching and supervision in a wide range of contexts, both within the Health Service and on a freelance basis. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and an accredited facilitator in the national Advanced Communication Skills Programme for senior cancer practitioners. He is also an Association of Contextual Behavioural Science Peer Reviewed Trainer.

He has taught extensively on ACT in physical health contexts, and is the author of two successful self-help books published by Routledge – ‘Facing the Storm’ (2011) and ‘Living with the Enemy’ (2014), both of which were shortlisted for the BMA Popular Medicine Book of the Year Award.