ACT for Interpersonal Patterns: Treating People-Pleasing, Boundaries, and Relational Conflict On-Demand CE Webinar for therapists, counselors, psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists
 

ACT for Interpersonal Patterns: Treating People-Pleasing, Boundaries, and Relational Conflict - 5 hours


To access the discount form for registering for multiple workshops or participants, please click here.

  • CE Hours Included: 5 (please see below for details)
  • Format: On-Demand Webinar (“Asynchronous”, Non-Interactive) ~ At your leisure this recorded video is to be viewed at your own pace. You may pause, rewind, and fast forward at any point during the videos. You are in complete control of how you view this workshop. It also comes with a PowerPoint and references. There is a quiz at the end to ensure viewing and required by all CE approval organizations.
  • Investment: $120 (provides lifetime access!)
  • Presented by: Melissa Stringer, LPC and Diana Garcia, LMHC (see bios below)
  • Date of Recording: November 18, 2026
  • Instruction Level: Intermediate
  • Target Audience: Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists
  • This workshop is not yet available; by pre-registering, you will receive immediate access when it becomes available in December.

Learning Objectives:

After completing this workshop in its entirety, you will be able to:

  • Analyze the short-term functions and long-term costs of people-pleasing, approval-seeking, and conflict-avoidant behaviors.
  • Explain how ACT's six core processes apply to people-pleasing and boundary difficulties.
  • Apply present-moment, acceptance, defusion, and self-as-context techniques to the guilt, fear of rejection, and self-stories that block boundary-setting.
  • Demonstrate three session-ready interventions framing boundary-setting as values-based committed action.
  • Compare values-based boundary interventions with traditional assertiveness training approaches.

Workshop Description:

How many of your clients can describe their people-pleasing with perfect accuracy and still find themselves unable to say no? People-pleasing, approval-seeking, and conflict avoidance are among the most common and most stubborn presentations in clinical practice, and insight alone rarely shifts them. This workshop maps ACT's core processes onto these relational patterns, treating boundary-setting not as a social skill to rehearse but as values-based committed action. We will examine what these behaviors do for clients (the short-term relief they provide and the long-term costs they exact) and how a functional, non-judgmental lens opens the door to change where insight and willpower have stalled.

The emphasis throughout is on concrete, Monday-morning interventions: defusion and acceptance strategies for the guilt, fear of rejection, and avoidance that keep clients stuck, and session-ready methods for building values-based boundary work into treatment. Note that this is individual therapy work, addressing one client's relational behaviors; it is not couples therapy. The workshop is designed for clinicians who are already comfortable with ACT fundamentals and want to apply the model with greater precision to interpersonal problems.

Workshop Agenda:

  • Understanding the Patterns: A Functional Analysis of People-Pleasing, Approval-Seeking, and Conflict Avoidance (60 mins)
    • Common clinical presentations and how these patterns show up in the therapy room
    • Functional analysis: short-term relief, long-term cost
    • Why insight alone rarely produces behavior change
  • Mapping ACT Core Processes onto Relational Patterns (60 mins)
    • Experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion in interpersonal contexts
    • The six core processes applied to relational case material
    • Case conceptualization practice using clinical examples
  • Working with Internal Barriers: Guilt, Fear of Rejection, and the Self-Story (60 mins)
    • Acceptance and willingness work for guilt and fear of rejection
    • Defusion and self-as-context work for fused self-stories ("I'm the nice one") and attachment to the conceptualized self
    • Teaching two processes at once: accepting what boundary-setting evokes while loosening the self-story that forbids it
    • Experiential exercises for use in session
  • Boundary-Setting as Values-Based Committed Action (75 mins)
    • Clarifying relational values as the foundation for boundary work
    • Designing graded committed-action plans and boundary experiments
    • Demonstration and practice of session-ready interventions
  • Integration and Clinical Decision-Making (45 mins)
    • Comparing values-based boundary work with assertiveness and social-skills training approaches
    • Maintaining an individual-therapy frame; distinguishing this work from couples therapy and when to refer
    • Troubleshooting stuck points and responding to returns to old patterns

Presented by: Melissa Stringer, MA, LPC, and Diana Garcia, MS, LMHC

Melissa Stringer, MA, LPC, and Diana Garcia, MS, LMHC, are clinicians specializing in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Both have completed extensive training in the ACT model and have presented numerous workshops on its clinical application. The relational patterns at the heart of this workshop (people-pleasing, boundary difficulties, and relational conflict) are ones they treat daily in their own clinical practices, and the interventions presented are drawn directly from that work. In addition to their clinical practices, they co-lead an ongoing ACT consultation group for clinicians seeking to conceptualize and treat their clients in ACT-consistent ways.

5 "Asynchronous" CE Hours Included - Details by License Type Below:

  • PSYCHOLOGISTS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company maintains responsibility for this program and its content. For more detailed information on the current CE ruling in Georgia, or if you are licensed in another state or country, please click here.
  • COUNSELORS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP), ACEP No. 7153. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
    • GA: Counselors in GA will receive 5 Core Hours for completing this course. Please click here for more detailed information.
  • SOCIAL WORKERS: The Knowledge Tree, a Summit Professional Education Company, provider #2470, 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: 1/14/2026-1/14/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 5 clinical continuing education credits.
    • GA: Social Workers in GA will receive 5 Core Hours for completing this course. Please click here for more detailed information.
  • MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPISTS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Association for Marriage & Family Therapy (GAMFT). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.

Registration: To register for individual workshops, we recommend purchasing the course directly on the workshop's page on our website. If you would like to register for multiple workshops at once and receive our multi-workshop discount (detailed below), you may either complete the Multi-Workshop Registration Form (available HERE) and email it to our Customer Service Team at theknowledgetree@summit.zendesk.com or call them at 404-913-2005 to register over the phone. Workshops worth fewer than 3 CE hours are not eligible for the multi-workshop discount and are therefore not listed on the registration form. Workshop registration for live webinars is open until the time the workshop begins, unless otherwise specified.

Multi-Workshop Discount: There is a 10% discount when registering for two workshops, a 15% discount when registering for three or four workshops, and a 20% discount when registering for five or more workshops. To receive this discount, you must use the Multi-Workshop Registration Form (available HERE). The discount only applies to courses purchased in the same transaction; the discount cannot be applied to courses purchased directly on our website, and cannot be applied retroactively to courses previously purchased. As stated above, courses worth fewer than 3 CE hours are NOT eligible for the multi-workshop discount and are therefore not listed on the registration form.

Refund/Cancellation Policy: If you can no longer attend a workshop you have registered for, you can either receive a credit for another workshop or receive a refund if you are within the refund policy period. Refunds will be given for cancellations received at least five days prior to the workshop. More information about refund/cancellation can be found here.

Attendance Policy: 100% attendance, completion of a course evaluation and passing a post-test with a score of 70% or higher (you will have 2 retake opportunities) is required at any asynchronous CE program in order to receive credit for that CE program. No partial credit is given. Certificates of completion will be available in each attendee’s account once these completion requirements have been met.

ADA Requests: We will make every effort to accommodate any reasonable ADA request. Please call or email us at least two weeks prior to the event. Payment and registration are required to fulfill an ADA request.

No Conflict Policy: Neither The Knowledge Tree nor its speakers have received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program. 

System Requirements: Live Interactive Webinars are facilitated via Zoom. System requirements for the Zoom platform are linked at our FAQ page.

We are an approved vendor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for easy reimbursement of educational expenses for VA employees.


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For information about our Continuing Education Workshops, please contact our Customer Service team at:

404.913.2005

theknowledgetree@summit.zendesk.com

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The Knowledge Tree, a Summit Professional Education Company, offers courses that provide continuing education hours as required by many national, state and local licensing boards and holds Approved Continuing Education Provider/Sponsor status with professional organizations including APA and NBCC. Each licensee should check our detailed CE information page and ensure courses taken meet their specific state board requirements.