Ready to take your clinical work to the next level? This experiential training offers a fresh, practical approach to integrating two gold-standard therapies: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Designed for therapists working with clients who struggle with anxiety, OCD, depression, trauma, substance use, and intense emotional reactivity, this workshop shows you how to bring the best of both models into a unified, flexible approach.

ACT helps clients build psychological flexibility through mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based action. DBT offers concrete, skills-based tools for regulating emotions, tolerating distress, and navigating relationships. Together, they can be a powerful combo, but integration requires nuance.

In this dynamic workshop, you’ll learn how to:

• Use DBT skills to support ACT-based exposure work within a client’s window of tolerance
• Combine structure and spontaneity – balancing DBT’s clarity with ACT’s adaptability
• Match interventions to client readiness, values, and specific skill deficits

Through guided exercises, case-based discussion, and real-time application, you’ll leave with strategies you can use immediately to support clients in building lives they want to live, without overwhelming them.

Perfect for clinicians eager to deepen their work with emotionally reactive or avoidant clients, this training offers tools to foster both emotional regulation and meaningful, values-driven change!

Attendance and Location Details

Date and Time

**This is a 6-CE online seminar delivered virtually in real-time via an industry-standard webinar platform**

Friday, March 13, 2026 10:00am to 5:30pm CST / 11:00am to 6:30pm EST / 8:00am to 3:30pm PST

*Live Webinar Attendees: Zoom link and course materials will be made available to you 24-48 hours prior to event date

Agenda:

10:00am – 11:30am CST – Lecture: Theoretical Framing for ACT–DBT Integration

• Functional Contextualism and Dialectical Philosophy
• Acceptance as Change: A shared mechanism across models
• Common Conflicts: Distress Tolerance as avoidance vs. supporting values-based action
• Clinical Utility of Integration: When and how to blend approaches
• Considerations when working with emotional overcontrol vs. under-control

11:30am–11:45am CST – Break

11:45am–1:15pm CST – Lecture and Skills Practice: Values-based Skills Learning

• Values-Based Goals for Therapy and Life Worth Living Vision
• Using Opposite Action to Align with Values
• Skillful Willingness: Acting in line with values in the presence of emotional pain
• Values work as motivation for DBT behavioral skills

1:15pm–2:15pm CST – Lunch Break

2:15pm–3:45pm CST – Lecture and Skills Practice: Avoidance, Acceptance, and Commitment

• Identifying Workable vs. Unworkable Avoidance
• Using DBT skills to support exposure and values-based behavior
• ACT & DBT in locating the “moment of choice” from Emotion Efficacy Therapy

3:45pm–4:00pm CST – Break

4:00pm–5:30pm CST – Lecture and Group Practice: Doing What Works – Flexibly

• Wise Mind and Self-as-Context: Two pathways to “big self”
• Using ACT and DBT to foster flexible perspective-taking
• Integrating Mindfulness from both models: Anchoring and observing self
• Emotion regulation through values clarification and mindfulness

Objectives:

This training will provide participants clinical knowledge and tools to:

a). After completing this training, participants will be able to describe the core tenets, principles, and underlying theories of both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

b). After completing this training, participants will be able to identify and compare the six core processes of ACT with DBT skills.

c). After completing this training, participants will be able to illustrate how integrating ACT and DBT interventions can enhance psychological flexibility and support emotion regulation.

d). After completing this training, participants will be able to apply ACT and DBT strategies to support clients in engaging in skills-assisted exposure while remaining within their window of tolerance.

e). After completing this training, participants will be able to demonstrate how to integrate values-based action (ACT) and life worth living goals (DBT) to promote meaningful behavior change and long-term functioning.

f). After completing this training, participants will be able to describe how to use ACT and DBT frameworks to guide case conceptualization and therapist stance.

Target Audience:

The target audience for this event includes psychologists, social workers, counselors, MFT’s, psychiatrists and other clinical mental health professionals.

Instructional Level: Intermediate

Instructor(s): Emily Wharton, PsyD

Material Author(s): Emily Wharton, PsyD

Dr. Emily Wharton is a Clinical Psychologist providing psychotherapy to individuals and couples in her private practice, and a Clinical Instructor at the Cognitive Behavior Institute, where she teaches courses in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Dr. Wharton has also served in roles of Clinical Assistant Professor (Affiliated) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, and licensed clinical psychologist in the Palo Alto VA. She has provided supervision and training for VA and Stanford psychiatry residents, medical students, and psychology trainees in ACT, DBT, and MI. Dr. Wharton trained at the PGSP-Stanford PsyD Consortium, San Francisco VA, UCSF, and Palo Alto VA. Dr. Wharton has also served as the Member-At-Large Director for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Wharton has given lectures and trainings for the Palo Alto VA, Stanford University, and the Association for Contextual and Behavioral Science. Dr. Wharton has published papers and book chapters on ACT for PTSD, ACT for moral injury, mindfulness practices for anxiety disorders, and group trauma-focused CBT for parents of preterm infants. Learn more about Dr. Wharton at www.DrEmilyWharton.com/about-me.

For additional information about this course, the instructors, or the material authors, please contact Content Assistance at content@onlinececredits.com.

Course Materials & Delivery Method:

• Course Materials (including the link to view the scheduled live webinar) are made available to all registered attendees 24-48 hours before the event start time. 
• This training is interactive and provides opportunities to ask direct questions to the trainer as well as request immediate help from staff if needed. The attendee will view the presentation in real-time from their connected device via an industry-standard internet webinar platform.

CE Approvals:

Online CE Credits has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6795. Programs that do not quality for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Online CE Credits is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Mind Works Professional Education, Inc. DBA Online CE Credits, #1974, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: July 23, 2024 – July 23, 2025. Social workers completing this course receive 6 clinical continuing education credits.

Other Helpful Information:

• Registration Deadline – Please register at any time prior to the advertised start time of this live webinar training.
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• Posttest Requirements (***not applicable for most live webinars) – You must answer 80% or more of the Quiz questions correctly to pass. If you fail to pass the first time, you may attempt the quiz again until you are able to pass with a score of 80% or better. Quizzes are graded instantly and automatically by the learning management system once your attempt is submitted.
• Certificate of Completion – Certificates of completion are automatically generated – downloadable from your Dashboard and emailed to you – once you complete the code word attendance quiz and the course evaluation. Please complete these items to receive your certificate immediately after the live webinar training is concluded.
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