Trauma-Focused ACT FAQs

Trauma-Focused ACT is a self-paced online course designed to help you build practical skills for working with trauma using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. You don't need to be online at a specific time!

During your course, you'll have access to:

• Entertaining video lessons featuring Dr. Russ Harris

• Realistic therapy demonstrations showing Trauma-Focused ACT in practice

• Downloadable tools, worksheets, and clinical resources - yours to keep!

• An interactive discussion forum led by Russ Harris, where you can directly interact with Russ, ask questions, share insights, and learn alongside clinicians from around the world

• Practical, bite-sized lessons designed to help you apply concepts directly in your clinical work

You'll also receive 12 months of access to all course materials, allowing you to revisit lessons, review demonstrations, and refresh your understanding as you integrate Trauma-Focused ACT into your practice.

Definitely. This course teaches you all the core principles and processes of Trauma-Focused ACT. You’ll learn how to modify and adapt it for every aspect of trauma. And if you’re keen to learn more, there are many ‘bonus modules’ and ‘optional extra materials’ to flesh out and deepen your learning.

Yes, for sure.

Trauma-Focused ACT is actually a type of somatic therapy. It’s a bottom-up and top-down approach, and often the work is primarily somatic in focus. So if you’ve trained in models such as Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi Method, or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, you’ll find much overlap with TFACT, and you can readily integrate the approaches.

If EMDR or IFS is your main approach, you can flesh it out by adding in TFACT. And if TFACT is your main approach, you can flesh it out by adding in EMDR or IFS. (Having said that, TFACT is usually used as a stand-alone model; it has its own exposure procedures for traumatic memories, and for 'working with parts', so there is no need to bring in EMDR or IFS. But if you want to, you can :))

Yes, you can. The protocol Russ wrote for the WHO for use in refugee camps was only ten hours in total: group sessions of two hours each, spaced out over five weeks. Yet even ten hours was enough for significant reductions in PTSD and depression.

Yes, for sure, Many people don’t seem to realise that ACT has always emphasised ‘working with parts’ – it just has not traditionally used that language. For example, the classic ‘Many Selves’ exercise, used in ACT trauma protocols for decades, could just as easily be called the ‘Many Parts’ exercise.

A ‘part’ is basically an emotional/cognitive/behavioural repertoire that functions to help us obtain something we want, or avoid something we don’t want, or both. TFACT helps us to understand the purpose of such parts, notice and name them, allow and accept them, and utilise them in the service of living our values.

Good question. Here’s Russ in his own words:

“This course is radically different to my textbook, Trauma-Focused ACT, in the same way that reading a travel brochure differs from going on a holiday, or reading a cookbook differs from eating a meal: reading those words doesn’t even come close to living the experience.

It's also different to my in-person TFACT workshops in two major ways:

a) it’s far more in-depth and immersive – because of the many videos of therapy sessions, the multimedia learning format, and the copious bonus materials

b) you have my ongoing guidance on a daily basis for twelve weeks. Yes, no virtual assistants or chatbots;  every day, you can ask me questions and get my direct feedback.”

Yes, absolutely. Dual or triple diagnoses are common with more severe presentations of trauma – especially depression, anxiety disorders, chronic pain, and substance use disorders.

The good news is, core TFACT processes treat multiple disorders simultaneously. For example, the cognitive content that clients are fusing with in depression may differ from that in PTSD – but the same defusion skill will work with both types of content.

16 CE/CME Credits are available for Trauma-Focused ACT. View the Learner Notification to see the boards and jurisdictions, learning objectives and speaker disclosures. 

If you need to pay the admin fee to add CE/CME credits for Trauma-Focused ACT, click here.