ACT for Anxiety Disorders

Complete clinical training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy applied to generalized anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia and social anxiety.

Every clinician knows these patients: psychoeducation has been done properly, relaxation has been taught, cognitive restructuring has been carried out by the book — and still the fear holds them captive. The more energy they pour into controlling anxiety, the narrower their life becomes. What if the real problem were not the anxiety, but the endless war being fought against it? ACT proposes exactly this reversal: instead of trying to erase fear, help the patient take back the direction of their life. This course provides the practical clinical tools to deliver ACT from the very first session to termination.

What you will learn. After completing the course, you will be able to:

• Spot experiential avoidance as the transdiagnostic engine that keeps anxiety going and makes it worse
• Use the six Hexaflex processes to formulate a case and select the most promising therapeutic entry point
• Lead cognitive defusion work so the patient can unhook from anxious thinking
• Differentiate acceptance from resignation and support a genuinely willing stance toward discomfort
• Reframe exposure as a way to broaden the behavioural repertoire rather than merely dampen symptoms
• Help patients clarify their values and link them to discomfort, giving action its meaning
• Construct graduated action plans that let the patient advance with their anxiety instead of against it
• Plan for relapse and prepare an ending in which the patient becomes their own ACT therapist

Detailed curriculum

1. Seeing anxiety differently — from control to experiential avoidance: why the fight amplifies fear, and how creative hopelessness opens the therapeutic door.
2. The psychological flexibility model — the Hexaflex and its mirror image, the Inflexahex: six processes of psychological health and their inversion in anxious patients.
3. Cognitive defusion — unhooking from anxious thoughts, the essentials of Relational Frame Theory, and four defusion techniques to master.
4. Acceptance — making space for discomfort, separating acceptance from giving up, and a fundamental rethink of exposure.
5. Present-moment contact and self-as-context — anchoring the patient in the here and now and cultivating the observing self that stands apart from mental content.
6. Values clarification — recovering a life direction beyond fear, with hands-on clarification tools and ACT’s central question.
7. Committed action — building a values-driven staircase of actions, working through barriers, and defusing the threat of relapse.
8. Clinical integration — running an ACT treatment from start to finish, illustrated by two full case studies: one panic disorder, one generalized anxiety disorder.