Resources for Learning ACT
I pulled together a list of resources for those seeking ACT training or who want more direction in what to do next in terms of learning ACT.
On your own
Read Get Out of Your Mind, an ACT self-help workbook, and do all the exercises to get an experiential sense for the work. This is no substitute for the experiential workshop, but a great start.
Read the core ACT text: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. This will give you an overview of the basic theory and body of techniques behind ACT. This book can be pretty dense, so if you have problems with understanding it, don’t worry about it, and just chug along. You can always come back to it later.
Read Learning ACT: A Skills-Training Manual for Therapists Learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for an approach to ACT that focuses on learning the Core Competencies of an effective ACT therapist. The website learningact.com goes with the book and is a resource for people who are interested in learning ACT. The Learning ACT forum provides a place to discuss ACT for people new to the approach and wanting to learn more.
Read A Practical Guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for many different chapters with applications to particular settings and disorders.
Read Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders for perhaps the most accessible ACT work, particularly for people with a CBT background, which shows how to mix ACT processes into a brief therapy for anxiety disorders.
Check out the continually evolving list of clinical resources, including treatment manuals, measures, audio recordings, videos, visual aids, powerpoint presentations, and film recommendations at contextualpsychology.org at http://www.contextualpsychology.org/en/clinical_resources.
Read other ACT books targeting various more specific problems. Many more are coming out within the next couple years. Also check out Context Press (775) 746-2013 or (888) 4CP-BOOK or www.contextpress.com for additional books on theory and application related to ACT and contextual psychology. New Harbinger is coming on very strong lately in the ACT area: www.newharbinger.com
Peer consultation
Check for peer consultation groups in your area on http://www.contextualpsychology.org/act_peer_supervision_groups. If there isn’t one already available, consider posting something to the ACT listserv or to one of the discussion forums on the website and developing your own group in your local area.
Online consultation
Join the ACT listserv for generally collegial conversation about ACT (acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@ yahoogroups.com). There are also threaded discussion boards on the website where you can post questions and receive responses from the ACT community. Soon there should be online events and online supervision groups forming, but this is still in the works. Keep an eye on www.contextualpsychology.org for more info.
The website http://www.learningact.com has a forum that is intended to be focused on discussion for those wanting to learn more about ACT and how to use it with their clients.
Workshops
Consider coming to a training workshop. Particularly useful are the weekend experiential training workshops which will give you a much better sense for the ACT “space” and what it is like experientially to do this work. There are also large yearly training events with hundreds of people where you can really get into the meat of this work and learn it much more thoroughly. Workshops are regularly scheduled at the Annual convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the Association for Behavior Analysis. ACT trainers are located all around the world. A list of trainers is posted on the ACT website, along with the values statement ensuring that this whole process is not money focused or centrally controlled. All of these resources are listed on http://www.contextualpsychology.org/act_training.
Phone Consultation
Consider phone consultation. I’ve done phone consultation as both the consultant and the consultee. It can be surprisingly powerful. I’m currently collecting data in an RCT to see if this bears out empirically. This can be an excellent method for learning ACT if there is no one available in your local area. Most of the ACT trainers listed on the ACT website would be able to do phone consultation (http://www.contextualpsychology.org/act_trainers).
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science website: www.contextualpsychology.com.
This website forms the nexus of what is called an “online community.” The whole community of ACT developers and researchers contribute to this website by adding webpages, files, multimedia presentations, voting, and holding discussion groups. New materials are being added on a daily basis. You can find forms to improve your practice, help tune your case conceptualizations, and a great deal of other information that might be helpful in learning ACT. In order to contribute your own material to the website, you need to be a member of ACBS.
Use the ACT Core-Competency Self-Rating Assessment. This form can help to guide you to areas where you might need more work. Try it out!
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- Experiential Introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Part 1 (of 2) London, UK(Event)(5 days)
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- A Path Out of Anxious Suffering and Into a More Vital Life Using ACT: A One Day Intensive Workshop - John Forsyth - Ottawa(Event)(39 days)
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- Experiential Introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Part 2 (of 2) - London, UK(Event)(40 days)
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- Experiential Introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Bristol, UK(Event)(60 days)
- Portland, Oregon Introductory ACT Weekend Experiential Workshop(Event)(60 days)
- 2-day Advanced Workshop: Transforming Anxious Suffering Into a Vital Life Using ACT- John Forsyth - Sydney(Event)(67 days)
- Core ACT Processes and their Techniques- series of 6 workshops with Mary Sawyer in Sydney(Event)(68 days)
- 2-day Advanced Workshop: Transforming Anxious Suffering Into a Vital Life Using ACT- John Forsyth- Perth, Australia(Event)(70 days)
- 2-day Advanced Workshop: Transforming Anxious Suffering Into a Vital Life Using ACT- John Forsyth - Brisbane(Event)(74 days)
- Portland, Oregon Introductory ACT Weekend Experiential Workshop(Event)(88 days)
- ACT Oceania II: 2008 Christchurch New Zeland - Pre-Conference Workshop, Mindfulness and Acceptance(Event)(94 days)
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- ACT Oceania II: 2008 Christchurch New Zeland(Event)(96 days)
- Core ACT Processes and their Techniques- series of 6 workshops with Mary Sawyer in Sydney(Event)(96 days)
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- ACT 3-day workshop w/Kelly Wilson; Bath, UK(Event)(144 days)
- Introductiecursus ACT in Blooming te Bergen (NH)(Event)(144 days)
- Using Mindfulness & Acceptance to Create a Powerful Therapeutic Relationship - Tempe, AZ, Steve Hayes(Event)(165 days)
- Brief Therapy Conference - San Diego(Event)(213 days)
