Trauma-Focused ACT

Help your clients rapidly progress to post-traumatic growth in this intensely practical, advanced-level course.

About the course

Start date

Starts 26 November 2024

Time

16hrs | 6 weeks

Who this course is for

For Mental Health Professionals, Health Professionals

Accreditation

16 CE | CME

This advanced-level course in Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT) is intensely practical, with a strong emphasis on skills-development.

TFACT is neither a protocol nor a treatment for one specific disorder, such as PTSD. It is a compassion-based, exposure-centered approach to doing ACT, which is: (a) trauma-informed: drawing upon relevant fields, such as evolutionary science, polyvagal theory, attachment theory, and inhibitory learning theory; (b) trauma-aware: attuned to the possible role of trauma in a wide range of clinical issues; and (c) trauma-sensitive: alert to the risks of experiential work, especially mindfulness meditation.

In this course, you’ll discover a treasure-trove of simple but powerful tools, techniques and processes that you can immediately start using to enhance your work with the entire spectrum of trauma-related dysfunction - applicable to everything from major depression and BPD to PTSD and moral injury - and help your clients rapidly progress to post-traumatic growth.

Russ will take you much deeper into the ACT model and show you how to adapt and enhance it to effectively address all the common problems of trauma therapy: hyperarousal, hypoarousal, fractured sense of self, shame, guilt, self-judgment, self-loathing, aggression, withdrawal, avoidance, dissociation, flashbacks, nightmares, helplessness, hopelessness, self-defeating narratives and schemas, social disengagement, relationship issues, self-harming, comorbidity, and so on.

As with all our courses, the online format gives you total flexibility to learn whenever it suits you and access a whole range of powerful resources that simply aren’t available anywhere else. Between 2 to 3 hours of new content will be released, week-by-week, over a 6-week period (16 hours in total). Plus, on top of that, you’ll have an extra 16 weeks of access to the whole course. This means you can watch all your favourite videos again (and if you’ve fallen behind due to sickness, or taking a vacation, or work commitments etc, this will give you plenty of time to catch up).

And as with all our courses, you’ll get to see Russ’s unique teaching style direct-to-camera, discover delightful animations that bring the model to life, watch videos of therapy sessions with a range of common trauma issues, download numerous audio exercises and reading materials, participate in online discussion forums, answer multi-choice quizzes that test your learning as you go, print out powerful resources to use with clients and a whole lot more. And for the first 8 weeks of the course you’ll have daily interaction with Russ via the forum.

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.

In this 6-week journey of courage and compassion, you’ll discover:

The neuroscience of trauma, including polyvagal theory and attachment theory
How to create hope and optimism from the word go
How to rapidly ground and centre your clients
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 without meditation
The art and science of compassionate, flexible exposure
How to develop self-compassion step-by-step in just about anyone
How to revisit memories without getting trapped in them
How to introduce self-as-context simply and naturalistically
How to deconstruct and overcome shame, step-by-step
Inner child imagery and rescripting
Nightmare rehearsal and rescripting
Defusion from self-hatred, self-criticism, self-blame
How to help clients find a sense of safety and security in their body
How to bring a numb body back to life
How to keep exposure safe
Mindfulness and defusion as antidotes to worrying, rumination and catastrophising
How to use values and self-compassion for new life-enhancing narratives and post-traumatic growth
How to overcome common barriers to change
Working with comorbidity
How to be more experiential: effectively create, modify and deliver experiential exercises
How to bring values into every session, for ongoing motivation & inspiration
How to “sprinkle” self-as-context throughout every session, to enhance defusion and acceptance
How to dance fluently and flexibly between ACT processes
How to make homework simple, desirable, and likely to be successful

If you already know your ACT basics and you want to enhance and adapt your skills to work efficiently, compassionately and creatively with the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues (not just PTSD), this is the course for you.

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.)

This course is open to any professional who works with physical or psychological health. This includes therapists, coaches, counselors, physicians, nurses, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, physios, dietitians, occupational therapists, youth workers, BCBAs, speech therapists, and any other type of health professional - as well as students and researchers in these fields.

There are 16 CE/CME hours available. Prior to registering, please visit this page to review CE/CME details, course objectives, speaker/planner conflict of interest disclosure and more.

Additional dates:

We're happy to help if you can't attend the current intake. Please contact our customer service once your enrollment is finalized, and we can enroll you in the intake of your choice.