Monthly Training Series

October 24, 2025

Getting Values with it! Values-Driven Exposure: Guiding Clients Toward Purposeful Action

This dynamic, skills-focused workshop provides mental health professionals and coaches with practical, experiential techniques to move beyond intellectual discussions of client values and bring them to life in session.

Do your clients often articulate their values but struggle to translate them into concrete actions or navigate real-life conflicts? This session is designed to transform abstract value statements (like "I value honesty" or "I value connection") into tangible, behavioral anchors that guide decision-making and fuel commitment.

We'll move beyond simple values identification checklists to explore creative, evidence-based methods for connecting clients to the felt sense and observable actions of their core values. This is essential for fostering psychological flexibility and deepening client engagement with exposure and behavioral change work.

What You Will Learn:

Experiential Techniques: Learn and practice hands-on activities to help clients define their values not as words, but as living directives (e.g., using physical metaphors, creative prompts, and visual mapping).

Concrete Behavior Translation: Master a framework for translating abstract values into specific, observable, and measurable "Values-Consistent Behaviors" (VCBs) that can be monitored and celebrated.

Navigating Values Conflicts: Develop strategies to help clients identify and work through internal and external conflicts (e.g., approach-avoidance dilemmas) where multiple values seem to be pulling them in different directions.

Deepening Commitment: Explore how to effectively link values work to other therapeutic models, particularly Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) to strengthen client motivation and resilience in the face of emotional discomfort

November 21, 2025
Building Awareness and Identifying Underlying Patterns

This workshop provides the foundational skills necessary to effectively treat clients struggling with anxiety, OCD, and perfectionism by first mastering a functional case conceptualization. We'll move beyond surface-level symptoms to collaboratively identify the core patterns of avoidance and compulsion that maintain your client's struggle, utilizing principles from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). You will have a practical opportunity to bring a challenging case, and together we will map out their rigid behaviors. This process centers on understanding the function of behaviors—determining whether they are workable (moving toward values) or unworkable (moving away from them)—which is the critical first step toward inspiring therapeutic change and successfully implementing ACT-consistent Exposure.

What Will You Learn?

Master Functional Case Conceptualization: Learn to analyze client behaviors (including worries, rituals, and avoidance) to determine their underlying function—what internal experience (e.g., anxiety, shame, doubt) are they attempting to avoid or control?

Identify Subtle Compulsions: Develop skills to spot the most challenging and often missed patterns, such as mental rituals in OCD (like excessive reviewing or analysis) and the control strategies that fuel perfectionism and generalized anxiety.

Create ACT-Consistent Logs: Receive a customizable log template and practice using it to collaboratively track your client's patterns of thoughts, feelings, and unworkable actions, transforming assessment into a powerful tool for client insight.

Establish Creative Hopelessness: Learn how to use this awareness-building phase to help clients recognize that their attempts to control their internal world are actually the source of their suffering, thus priming them for a willingness to engage in new, values-driven behaviors like Exposure.

Prepare for Exposure: Clearly understand how building this functional awareness is the necessary first step to designing effective, values-driven Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) assignments later in the training series.

December 19, 2025
From Autopilot to Awareness: Cultivating Present Moment Contact

Mindfulness, in the context of this integrated training, is framed not as a relaxation technique, but as the essential skill of present-moment contact and non-judgmental awareness that fuels change. Clients with anxiety, OCD, and perfectionism are often mentally fused with worries about the future or judgments about the past; this session will equip you with practical tools to interrupt that mental "autopilot" and anchor your client's attention in the present moment. We will explore mindfulness as a core Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) process, demonstrating how it directly supports effective Exposure by allowing the client to observe fear without reacting to it, and how it is the necessary observational skill that precedes a Self-Compassionate response to suffering. You will engage in experiential exercises and learn practical, brief techniques for bringing awareness into the most distressed moments of session and daily life.

What Will You Learn?

Conceptualize Mindfulness as the essential skill for Present Moment Contact within the ACT model, moving beyond its common definition as mere relaxation.

Apply ACT Metaphors (e.g., "Passengers on the Bus") to effectively teach clients how to choose a valued direction while simultaneously making room for difficult thoughts and feelings.

Master Practical Techniques: Learn and practice formal and informal mindfulness exercises (like the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding and Mindful Body Scan) to help clients disarm rumination and anxiety spikes.

Integrate Mindfulness with Exposure: Understand and explain how a mindful, non-judgmental stance is critical for successful Inhibitory Learning during ERP by preventing subtle avoidance behaviors.

Bridge to Self-Compassion: Clearly articulate and practice how non-judgmental awareness is the foundational first step to responding to distress with Self-Kindness rather than self-criticism.