Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Foundation and Overview - The Psychology of Doing What Matters — Even When Life Hurts

South Africa · CPD points & talks · Psychologists

Enhance your practice with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) foundations, tailored for South African psychologists. This talk by Dr Ute Liersch offers vital insights into psychological flexibility for clients facing grief and loss, covering RFT connections, core ACT processes, and differentiating ACT from CBT. Develop deeper clinical understanding and therapeutic presence for impactful client support.

This talk introduces the foundations of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for practitioners who work with clients experiencing grief and loss, supporting them to develop psychological depth and flexibility. Combining theory, clinical application, and lived insight, Dr Ute Liersch guides you through the central frameworks of ACT, including theoretical foundations and constructs as well as emotional, behavioural and cognitive processes. Insights into how language creates both meaning and suffering, how inflexibility shows up in clinical practice, and how ACT differs from CBT are explored.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe the foundations of ACT and its connection to RFT
• Identify the six key processes of psychological inflexibility and flexibility
• Distinguish between ACT and CBT in relation to cognition and belief
• Apply core ACT principles to case conceptualisation and therapeutic presence