Intervention Techniques & Strategies Flashcards
7 cards from real ACT practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Intervention Techniques & Strategies flashcards as text
An ACT therapist asks a client to write a letter from their 80-year-old self to their current self. This exercise primarily targets:
Answer: Values clarification through long-term perspective taking
The future-self letter exercise helps clients access deeper values by stepping outside immediate struggles into a long-term, life-review perspective.
Which of the following is the most accurate description of 'expansion' or 'opening up' as an ACT acceptance technique?
Answer: Making space for difficult feelings without trying to change their form or frequency
Expansion invites the client to give space to uncomfortable sensations, treating them as safe enough to hold without control or suppression.
A client with health anxiety performs repeated body checks and seeks medical reassurance. From an ACT perspective, these behaviors are best understood as:
Answer: Experiential avoidance maintaining the problem
Body checking and reassurance seeking are avoidance behaviors that reduce short-term anxiety while sustaining health anxiety over time.
During an ACT session, a therapist models radical transparency about their own values and uncertainties. This stance exemplifies which therapeutic principle?
Answer: Equitable therapeutic relationship grounded in shared humanity
ACT therapists openly acknowledge their own struggles to normalize the human condition and reduce the hierarchy between therapist and client.
Which ACT intervention is most appropriate early in therapy when a client is highly skeptical about the value of emotional acceptance?
Answer: Using creative hopelessness to surface the costs of current control strategies
Creative hopelessness builds motivation for acceptance by helping clients discover that their control strategies have not worked long-term.
A therapist uses 'physicalizing' with a client experiencing shame. In this exercise, the client is asked to:
Answer: Assign shape, color, texture, and weight to the shame as a felt sense
Physicalizing encourages contact with the emotional experience as a physical sensation, promoting acceptance rather than cognitive avoidance.
In group ACT delivery, which adaptation is most important to maintain fidelity to the model?
Answer: Using peer sharing of defusion and acceptance experiences to deepen learning
Group ACT leverages members' shared experiences of defusion and acceptance to normalize struggles and strengthen the universal human suffering frame.