Taking perspectives & valuing: Using clinical RFT to enhance therapy
Tracks
Track 7
| Saturday, May 16, 2020 |
| 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM |
Presenter(s)
Dr Eric Morris
BAppSc GradDipAppSc MAppPsych PhD
La Trobe University
Taking perspectives & valuing: Using clinical RFT to enhance therapy
10:30 AM - 5:00 PMAssumed knowledge of attendee
Beginner (casual familiarity with topic area e.g., treated one case)
Level of learning
Intermediate
Outline
The use of language is one of the few universals across different therapeutic traditions. However, limited attention has been given to the deliberate use of language based on scientific principles to affect change in therapy. This workshop will introduce participants to clinical principles based on Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a modern behavioural account of language acquisition. Based on a research literature developed over the past 20 years, RFT provides a of an account of how language can be both humanity’s most useful tool, and its greatest source of suffering, based on the unique human ability of being able to relate anything to anything else.
RFT’s “selection by consequences” approach, allows for the functions of language to be understood and influenced. RFT can help to enhance the precision of psychological intervention, regardless of therapeutic modality. This workshop provides an opportunity to discover how RFT principles strengthen two areas important to effective psychological therapy:
• Enhancing meaning and motivation - by promoting connection with personal values
• Promoting a resilient sense of self - by strengthening flexibility in perspective taking toward experiences and narratives about the self and others
A deliberate focus on values allows clinicians to work with clients to build purpose in their lives through linking behaviours with sources of meaning derived from language. The workshop will present multiple ways to strengthen valuing as a source of motivation.
Flexibility in using interpersonal, spatial and temporal perspectives (I-HERE-NOW) allows a person to develop a balanced sense of responsibility about what influences them, and what they can influence. The workshop will present various methods of promoting these skills to help clients learn from their own experience, and where useful, gain distance and transcend self-limiting narratives about themselves and others.
We will use demonstration, skills practice and case examples throughout the workshop.
RFT’s “selection by consequences” approach, allows for the functions of language to be understood and influenced. RFT can help to enhance the precision of psychological intervention, regardless of therapeutic modality. This workshop provides an opportunity to discover how RFT principles strengthen two areas important to effective psychological therapy:
• Enhancing meaning and motivation - by promoting connection with personal values
• Promoting a resilient sense of self - by strengthening flexibility in perspective taking toward experiences and narratives about the self and others
A deliberate focus on values allows clinicians to work with clients to build purpose in their lives through linking behaviours with sources of meaning derived from language. The workshop will present multiple ways to strengthen valuing as a source of motivation.
Flexibility in using interpersonal, spatial and temporal perspectives (I-HERE-NOW) allows a person to develop a balanced sense of responsibility about what influences them, and what they can influence. The workshop will present various methods of promoting these skills to help clients learn from their own experience, and where useful, gain distance and transcend self-limiting narratives about themselves and others.
We will use demonstration, skills practice and case examples throughout the workshop.
Learning outcomes
At the conclusion of this workshop, participants should be able to:
• Describe how principles drawn from clinical Relational Frame Theory can inform goal-setting and working with (inter)personal narratives
• Identify client problems maintained by various deficits in perspective taking and consider various ways to increase self-awareness and integration through the deliberate the use of language
• Identify client problems maintained by lack of connection to personal values and consider various ways to help clients construct personal values and develop daily ways of acting upon them, learning from personal experience
• Engage clients in therapeutic conversations that enhance the process of therapy by emphasising flexible perspective taking and commitment to personally-chosen life directions
• Describe how principles drawn from clinical Relational Frame Theory can inform goal-setting and working with (inter)personal narratives
• Identify client problems maintained by various deficits in perspective taking and consider various ways to increase self-awareness and integration through the deliberate the use of language
• Identify client problems maintained by lack of connection to personal values and consider various ways to help clients construct personal values and develop daily ways of acting upon them, learning from personal experience
• Engage clients in therapeutic conversations that enhance the process of therapy by emphasising flexible perspective taking and commitment to personally-chosen life directions
Biography
Dr Eric Morris is a senior lecturer and director of the Psychology Clinic at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He has over twenty years’ experience working as a clinical psychologist in Australia and the United Kingdom, engaging people with complex mental health problems and their families using contextual cognitive behavioural therapies. Eric researches acceptance and commitment therapy as an individual- and group-based intervention for recovery from psychosis, anxiety disorders, insomnia, OCD, to support caregivers, and as a workplace resilience training. He is a co-editor of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness for Psychosis, co-author of the self-help guide, ACTivate Your Life, and co-author of the group treatment manual, ACT for Psychosis Recovery. He is a Past President of the ANZ Chapter, and a Fellow of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science.
Dr Daniel Simsion
Taking perspectives & valuing: Using clinical RFT to enhance therapy
10:30 AM - 5:00 PMBiography
Dr Daniel Simsion MAPS FCCLP is a clinical psychologist with the Victorian government specialist forensic mental health service, Forensicare. He is also the current president of the Australia and New Zealand chapter of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (ANZ ACBS). Daniel completed undergraduate studies in law and psychology before completing a Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Melbourne’s La Trobe University. His career has focused particularly on assessment and intervention with ‘low prevalence disorders’, most recently within a forensic psychiatric inpatient context. He has an interest in improving psychological service delivery, as well as advocating for broader systemic change. He primarily practices using an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model, incorporating the application of ACT’s underlying theory of human language, Relational Frame Theory (RFT).
