Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

This three day workshop will be held at Oregon Research Institute in Eugene. For workshop details and online registration go to the ORI site, For more details regarding workshop content email Kelly Wilson.

This is a relatively new workshop format. The workshop will begin with an introduction that will make the workshop accessible to anyone regardless of familiarity with ACT. The presentation will be carried out in such a way that even experienced ACT therapists will get a different window into the ACT model.

Friday will begin with an introduction to ACT and the hexaflex model of "diagnoses," assessment, and treatment. This fully dimensional model allows clinicians to examine psychological difficulties across a wide range of presentations. After our orientation, we will spend the balance of our time on a series of experiential and skill building exercises. Initial exercises are completed in dyads in foursomes and the results are processed within the smaller group and in the larger group as a whole. We begin with relatively simple tasks aimed at illuminating core ACT processes. We will then move to more complex iterations of these exercises that will include increasingly challenging content and also increasingly complex tasks for the participants. Finally, we will work on experiential case conceptualization skills.

In early exercises discriminating vital versus nonvital and avoidance versus values-based interactions will be learned. Through successive iterations we will make these discriminations in ourselves, then in our exercise partners, then, eventually, we will make these discriminations while coaching our partners. We will move to experiential client role-plays that are extremely close to actual clinical interactions. Ultimately we will use these exercises to generate case conceptualizations that can orient us to the work without losing contact with the most human and humane aspects of the work.

This workshop will contain significant use of mindfulness and present-moment focused work. Although formal mindfulness meditation practice is not necessarily emphasized in ACT, mindfulness processes are central to the work. These exercises will show how we can bring the values directed, present moment focus directly into interventions-what I have sometimes called mindfulness for two.