Skillful application of ACT - as a process-based treatment - for OCD

Please note that all registrations have to be paid in full before the event takes place - otherwise you will miss out on receiving the Zoom link. This event will be recorded for all those who are registered on the day. Recording is available for three weeks.

If you’re working with clients struggling with OCD, no matter where you’re in the treatment, and no matter how familiar you are with exposure-based interventions, this workshop will augment your clinical skills on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to guide your clients to tame OCD and fill the gap where they are and where they want to go.

All the content of this workshop aims to answer a specific question: how does ACT - as a process-based therapy approach - tackle OCD episodes that narrow a person’s life?

While exposure is the frontline treatment to tackle OCD, exposure-based interventions are not one-size-fits-all. Furthermore, the heterogeneous presentation of obsessions, degrees of fusion with obsessions, complex compulsive responses, and variability in the negative affect associated with obsessions require that clinicians take into account all these variables to facilitate a compassionate, skillful, and effective treatment for clients.

As the webinar progresses, you will train your eyes and ears to notice how the client responds and how you need to deliver “acceptance-based interventions” or “change-based interventions.” You will have an opportunity to learn all these ACT shifts and experience first-hand the flexibility of the ACT model when treating OCD and facilitating exposure work.

I will certainly do my best to present you with ACT skills in a simple, uncomplicated, unpretentious, and jargon-free manner. More importantly, I will share all the ACT skills and processes I teach my clients to make a real turn from surviving to thriving!

You will learn how to:

1. Guide your clinical work when blending ACT + ERP together to target OCD and related conditions.
2. Facilitate acceptance-based and change-based interventions through different ACT processes -hexaflex – before, during, and after values-guided exposure exercises.
3. Model for clients that fear, anxiety, worry, and nervousness are part of life; we feel them, we think about them, and they just happen.
4. Contextualize exposure exercises as values-based moves, personal choices and as a way of helping clients to choose to feel all types of experiences – including yucky ones- and stay with them with openness, curiosity, and flexibility- in the service of what they care about.
5. Introduce W.I.S.E. M.O.V.E.S to facilitate both, planned values-based exposures and values-based exposures on-the-fly.
6. Identify specific blocks that may show up when facilitating values-based exposures or WISE MOVES.
7. Identify specific processes clients are stuck with that reinforce OCD episodes and narrow their lives.

PRESENTER: Dr. ZURITA ONA (USA)

Dr. Zurita Ona or “Dr. Z,” is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in California. Her clinical work started first as a school psychologist and then as a clinical psychologist. For over seventeen years she has developed significant experience working with children, adolescents, and adults struggling with anxiety, perfectionism, procrastination, and emotion regulation problems; particular areas of expertise are Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and related conditions. Dr. Z is passionate about helping clients to get unstuck from any problem related to anxiety-based struggles.

Dr. Z attends local, national, and international conferences on a regular basis in order to present her clinical work and keep up with current clinical research to deliver up-to-date therapy services to her clients. 

In addition to her doctoral training, Dr. Z is a graduate of the International OCD Foundation Behavior Therapy Training Institute (BTTI) for the treatment of pediatric OCD and adult OCD; her clinical work is primarily based on Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), the recognized front-line treatment for OCD, anxiety and related condition disorders. Dr. Z completed a 10-day intensive training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and over the last 17 years, she has been learning, practicing, and teaching Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) applied to specific populations. In 2019 Dr. Z had been nominated a Fellow of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science.