Emotion Efficacy Therapy: A Brief, Exposure-Based Treatment for Emotion Regulation Integrating ACT and DBT

by Matthew McKay, Aprilia West

Overview

In this groundbreaking guide for clinicians, psychologist Matthew McKay and Aprilia West present emotional efficacy therapy (EET)—a powerful and proven-effective model for treating clients with emotion regulation disorders.

If you treat clients with emotion regulation disorders—including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder (BPD)—you know how important it is for these clients to take control of their emotions and choose their actions in accordance with their values. To help, emotion efficacy therapy (EET) provides a new, theoretically-driven, contextually-based treatment that integrates components from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) into an exposure-based protocol. In doing so, EET targets the transdiagnostic drivers of experiential avoidance and distress intolerance to increase emotional efficacy.

This step-by-step manual will show you how to help your clients confront and accept their pain, and learn to apply new adaptive responses to emotional triggers. Using a brief treatment that lasts as little as eight weeks, you will be able to help your clients understand and develop a new relationship with their emotions, learn how to have mastery over their emotional experience, practice values-based action in the midst of being emotionally triggered, and stop intense emotions from getting in the way of creating the life they want.

Using the transdiagnostic, exposure-based approach in this book, you can help your clients manage difficult emotions, curb negative reactions, and start living a better life. This book is a game changer for emotion exposure treatment!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626254039
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	06/01/2016
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	272,803
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Matthew McKay, PhD, is a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. He has authored and coauthored numerous books, including The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, Self-Esteem, Thoughts and Feelings, When Anger Hurts, and ACT on Life Not on Anger. McKay received his PhD in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, and specializes in the cognitive behavioral treatment of anxiety and depression. He lives and works in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

Aprilia West, PsyD, MT, is a psychotherapist and emotion researcher based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she specializes in treating anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and trauma. She became interested in the concept of emotion efficacy working as a former advisor, organizational consultant, mediator, and executive coach to members of Congress, Fortune 500 companies, entertainment industry professionals, and international advocacy campaigns.  West holds a PsyD in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and a master’s degree in teaching from the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

1 Emotion Efficacy Therapy 1

2 Emotion Awareness 13

3 Mindful Acceptance 29

4 Emotion Surfing 43

5 Values-Based Action, Part 1 59

6 Values-Based Action, Part 2 75

7 Relaxation and Self-Soothing 89

8 Coping Thoughts and Radical Acceptance 103

9 Distraction and Time-Out 123

10 Pulling It All Together 139

Appendix A Outcome Measures for Assessment 149

Appendix B Research and Results 159

Appendix C EET Eight-Session Protocol 165

EET References 261

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

“McKay and West have developed a brief, practical, and penetrating therapy that helps clients become more skillful with their critically important emotions. On a foundation of scientific evidence, they offer a structured program rich with useful tools, handouts for clients, clinical examples, and guidance for specific issues. This is an extremely well-considered, conceptualized, and thorough book—useful for clinicians at any level. Highly recommended.”
—Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Buddha’s Brain and Hardwiring Happiness

“This book is a must-read for any therapist who wants to work with emotionally dysregulated clients in a time-effective fashion. The brief, structured, highly practical emotion efficacy therapy (EET) approach is clearly described—step by step—and integrates mindfulness, acceptance, and emotion processing strategies drawn from different therapy models in a masterful way. Each facet of EET is demonstrated via therapist-client dialogues, which make the concept come alive clinically. There are tons of patient handouts, worksheets, and other useful clinical tools. This book is so well organized that any clinician could use it off the shelf to deliver a highly effective emotion regulation treatment!”
—Kirk Strosahl, PhD, cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and coauthor of Inside This Moment

“In this excellent text, McKay and West present EET, a well-crafted treatment protocol that combines techniques from effective, emotion-focused, and transdiagnostic treatments. This well-written eight-week program gives concrete guidelines for the therapist to help their clients enhance their emotional awareness, utilize mindful acceptance and coping strategies to regulate emotions, and choose adaptive and value-based actions. Using concrete examples, monitoring forms, and summary points, this valuable book will provide clinicians with a powerful and much-needed clinical tool. It will help countless clients suffering from emotional distress. It is a must-read.”
—Stefan G. Hofmann, PhD, professor of psychology at Boston University, and author of Emotion in Therapy

“Based on sound, evidence-based principles, this book presents a straightforward approach to helping individuals who struggle with intense emotions with few resources or skills to manage them. I highly recommend this book.”
—Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, licensed psychologist; codirector of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy; assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley; diplomate and founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy; and author of Anxiety and Avoidance

“I learned a ton of super-helpful things from reading this book! Written by truly brilliant clinicians, it provides an easy-to-use set of concepts and tools. I love the progress monitoring scales, the transcripts of delivering the interventions, and especially the description of emotion exposure procedures. We often tell our patients to ‘sit with’ their painful emotions. I’ve frequently wondered what that meant and how to do that exactly. This book’s description of the skills of emotion surfing gives me the information I’ve been seeking. This book is a gift to me—and to my patients.”
—Jacqueline B. Persons, PhD, director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Science Center in Oakland, CA; and clinical professor in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

“This highly practical and timely treatment flows naturally from the transdiagnostic literature, and offers therapists a clear, step-by-step guide to helping clients improve their awareness of and ability to cope with strong emotions—an important aspect of successful therapy outcomes. Every page is clear, concise, and to-the-point, allowing clinicians to quickly grasp the treatment rationale and master the protocol. The illustrative dialogues and accompanying worksheets reflect the authors’ expertise in translating techniques into practice with actual clients, which is supported by the robust initial outcome data. A ‘must’ for therapists, supervisors, and trainees attempting to treat multiple problems simultaneously using a transdiagnostic approach.”
—Rochelle I. Frank, PhD, assistant clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

“This is a refreshingly straightforward and practical resource for clinicians seeking to integrate components from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to target specific transdiagnostic mechanisms underlying problems with emotion regulation. Instructive handouts and sample therapist-client dialogues bring treatment components to life. Clinicians now have a resource that strategically guides them when helping clients increase awareness and acceptance of emotions, choose value-based actions, and practice distress tolerance skills, all within an exposure-based model. This is the book that clinicians have been waiting for!”
—Joan Davidson, PhD, codirector of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy; assistant clinical professor in the clinical science program at the University of California, Berkeley; coauthor of The Transdiagnostic Road Map to Case Formulation and Treatment Planning; and author of Daring to Challenge OCD

“EET combines strategies from several proven approaches for dealing with distressing emotions.  The strategies laid out in this well-written, accessible, and practical guide will show clients how to experience a full range of emotions while reducing their pain and suffering. Each chapter is filled with illustrative case examples and practical worksheets that make it easy to deliver the program.”
—Martin M. Antony, PhD, ABPP, professor of psychology at Ryerson Universityin Toronto, ON, Canada; and coauthor of The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook and The Anti-Anxiety Workbook

From the Publisher