Functional Analytic Psychotherapy

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) is a powerful contextual-behavioural approach that utilises the therapy relationship as a vehicle for change. If you are an ACT practitioner, then learning about FAP is crucial!

About this workshop

Each day as clinicians we face a stream of meaningful, many-sided interpersonal challenges. If athletes have games where everything is on the line in real time, we have sessions where we ask:

• How do I connect with a client who seems distant or hard to like?
• How do I motivate a client grappling with anxiety to take meaningful risks?
• How do I course correct when treatment bogs down?
• How do I give powerful feedback to a client I fear cannot hear it?
• How can I be challenging without being rude?
• How do I collaborate with a client who speaks on and on as if I were not there?
• How do I set limits with clients who push past them over and over again?
• How do I overcome my own invisible fences as I face these challenges?

These challenges are not generic. They are as unique as our clients—and as unique as us, the clinicians. These challenges are not exceptions. They are the work. Through these challenges, our clients expect to be understood AND nourished to stretch and grow. How do we bring all our creativity, compassion, and skill to this work?

What will you learn?

In this webinar, following the lead of Process-Based CBT (e.g. Hayes, Hoffman, & Ciarrochi, 2020), we take the idea that the therapeutic relationship sits firmly together with technique or theory. We will build on the framework of Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP; Holman, Kanter, Tsai, & Kohlenberg 2017) – a contextual behavioural account of therapy process – to look at the process of navigating interpersonal challenges as core to our work—to clinical outcomes and to our sense of mastery and meaning.

Building on a simple process model of the therapy relationship, we will explore four fundamental evidence-based practices for effective therapy relationships:

1. Self-awareness: How our own strengths and limits shape our work
2. Case formulation: How and why to formulate process/relationship issues
3. Interpersonal skills: How to show up for hard, honest, important, graceful conversations
4. Treatment process: How to build a foundation from the beginning of treatment and course correct adaptively

We will explore each practice not in the abstract, but as a body of high impact skills to be practiced deliberately when you see clients this week.

Who is this workshop for?

This training is for anyone who uses ACT in their practice including psychologists, therapists, coaches, medics and counsellors.