Level up in ACT

Please note: this is very much an intermediate level workshop and is unsuitable for beginners.

This workshop is designed to support experienced ACT practitioners who want to become an outstanding, elite practitioner. Lou will introduce participants to the ACT Fidelity Measure, which integrates cutting-edge principles from contextual behaviour and evolutionary sciences to deepen and sharpen your clinical skills.

It’s a myth that the longer you practice the better you become as a therapist. Yes, you will build up years of experience, but this alone does not guarantee that your clients will receive better quality therapy. Growing as a practitioner is not an automatic process. In fact, a recent study examining the clinical outcomes of 6,591 patients for 170 therapists found that their effectiveness actually decreased slightly with years of experience (Goldberg et al., 2016).

Another change that happens over time as a practitioner is that we often develop particular areas of strength. And one practitioner’s area of strength might be a deficit for another. So, with regards to the psychological flexibility model, practitioners can become outstanding in targeting some processes whilst struggling to effectively shape others. When this happens, we can unwittingly slip into overlooking the therapeutic stance that lies at the heart of acceptance and commitment therapy.

What the workshop covers:

Lou teaches you how to use the proven ACT Fidelity Measure (ACT-FM) to personalise your practice, getting participants to detect consistent and inconsistent interventions, which will enable you to constantly improve. Following a brief overview of the ACT-FM and practice format, he will focus on four key clinical domains: therapist stance, openness (defusion/acceptance), awareness (present moment/self-as-context), and engagement (values/committed action).

The workshop will have participants inhabiting different roles/perspectives within small-group breakouts designed to enhance learning through observation, practice, and feedback in a reinforcing, team-based environment.
You’ll also learn practical methods for utilising observed and verbalised feedback with clients, equipping you to constantly improve within your own practice.

At the end of this workshop you’ll be able to:

1. Self-assess clinical skill level and deficits with respect to the ACT Fidelity Measure
2. Describe how to strengthen the therapeutic alliance through a respectful, experiential, and pragmatic approach
3. Demonstrate increased proficiency in working with the three ACT pillars of openness, awareness, and engagement
4. Apply fundamental principles from contextual behavioural and evolutionary sciences to increase precision, scope, and depth of therapeutic interventions
5. Utilise therapeutic adaptation through variation, selection, and retention of new behaviours with respect to the client’s goals and contextual factors
6. Effectively make use of competency assessment and peer feedback to shape clinical skill development