(HS Hayes 150271 2025) Psychological Flexibility for a Traumatizing World: How to Foster the Most Important Skill in All of..

Course overview

In this groundbreaking two-part workshop, Dr. Steven C. Hayes will explore how the future of therapy lies in understanding and enhancing psychological flexibility as a set of skills people can learn. He will show you that you have the skills and knowledge to begin, without necessarily having to "learn a new form of therapy" and how this approach quickly provides a powerful alternative to traditional diagnosis such as the DSM. Day one of the workshop will focus on What Matters and How to Read It. Dr. Hayes will delve into what behavioral science suggests is the most important skill set in all of mental and behavioral health: Learning how to be more flexible. He will define what that is and how we know that it's important scientifically, but will also show that both you and your clients already know this even if you do not know that you know it. Having defined the skills we need to develop, he will show you how to detect these processes in therapy and to bring attention to them. A subtext is that one size fits none, and each particular person, couple, or family is unique, but that there is a kind of alphabet of suffering and human prosperity that will make sense of it. Day two of the workshop will focus on Empowerment Processes: From Them, Toward Them, and With Them. Dr. Hayes will shift the focus to how therapists can utilize the therapeutic alliance and modern measurement and AI tools to model and support these flexibility skills, addressing modern challenges such as the ubiquity of trauma or the distress, anxiety, and sadness that global failures can engender. By personalizing intervention with a focus on empowerment processes this workshop not only begins to redefine mental and behavioral health care but also equips practitioners with the tools to use their existing therapeutic skills within a process-based framework for transformative change.