OCD often demands certainty, control, reassurance, avoidance, and endless attempts to eliminate fear before life can fully move forward. Even when individuals understand exposure and response prevention (ERP), many still struggle with motivation, doubt, emotional exhaustion, or feeling trapped in cycles of fear and compulsions.
Join Nate Gruner, LICSW, to explore how acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) helps individuals build psychological flexibility, strengthen recovery, and reconnect with meaningful living—even when intrusive thoughts, uncertainty, and anxiety remain present.
Why This Training Matters
Many individuals living with OCD spend years trying to eliminate uncertainty, suppress intrusive thoughts, or avoid emotional discomfort before allowing themselves to fully engage in life. Over time, this struggle can shrink relationships, identity, confidence, routines, and long-term well-being.
ERP remains one of the most effective evidence-based treatments for OCD, but treatment itself can feel emotionally overwhelming, exhausting, or difficult to sustain without additional psychological support and flexibility.
This is where ACT offers important insight.
Rather than focusing solely on symptom elimination, ACT helps individuals change their relationship with these same internal experiences while strengthening values-based decision-making, resilience, and long-term recovery.
This training explores how ACT complements OCD treatment by helping individuals move toward meaningful lives even when anxiety remains present—emphasizing courage, flexibility, and willingness to engage with discomfort rather than perfection or certainty.
What You’ll Learn
- How ACT helps individuals respond differently to intrusive thoughts and the uncertainty and discomfort that drive OCD cycles
- Why psychological flexibility plays an important role in OCD recovery and treatment engagement
- How ACT complements ERP and other evidence-based OCD treatments
- Practical ways values-based living can strengthen motivation and long-term recovery
- How individuals and families can support meaningful progress even when anxiety remains present
About the Expert
Nate Gruner, LICSW, is a behavioral therapist at McLean’s OCD Institute, where focuses on improving OCD treatments. He received a McLean Hospital fellowship to study acceptance and commitment therapy-enhanced exposure therapy for OCD.
He is a founding board member of the New England Chapter of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.
Two Ways To Join Us! Sign Up Now
Note: Continuing medical education credits are not available for this training
Event Details
- Date: August 18, 2026
- Time: 12pm ET
- Length: 60 minutes
- Presenter: Nate Gruner, LICSW
- Format: Virtual Training
- Cost: Free
Recovery from OCD is not about eliminating every intrusive thought or waiting until fear disappears completely. Join us for this thoughtful and empowering training to explore how ACT can help individuals build flexibility, resilience, and meaningful lives beyond OCD.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this training, participants should be able to:
- Describe the role psychological flexibility plays in OCD recovery
- Explain how ACT and ERP work together within evidence-based OCD treatment
- Identify ways intrusive thoughts, avoidance, reassurance seeking, and fear-based behaviors maintain OCD cycles
- Recognize how values-based approaches can strengthen treatment motivation and resilience
- Apply recovery-oriented perspectives when supporting individuals living with OCD
Who Should Attend
This training may be especially valuable for:
- Individuals living with OCD
- Family members & caregivers
- Mental health professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, therapists, social workers, nurses)
- Health care professionals
- Graduate students & trainees
- OCD specialists & anxiety clinicians
- Community mental health advocates
- Individuals interested in ACT and OCD recovery
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