The ACT Roadmap

A Guide for Getting Started with

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
by

Jim Lucas

APT in ACT openforwards.com

 Contents

1 What is the head, heart and hands of ACT?

4 Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS)

7 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

8 The Six Processes of Psychological Flexibility

10 Willingness & Acceptance

11 Undermining Cognitive Fusion

13 Present Moment Contact

15 Perspective-Taking & The Observer 'Self'

17 Values Clarification

19 Building Patterns of Committed Action

21 Treatment Guidelines

22 ACT Supervision

23 Other Resources

25 Identify Your Strengths And Areas For Improvement

26 Join The ACT Practitioners Community

27 Subscribe to APT in ACT Youtube Channel

What is the Head, Heart
and Hands of ACT?

The ACT Community Taking Responsibility for

Good Practice
The Association for Contextual and
Behavioral Science (ACBS) is a worldwide To be effective, ACT Practitioners
community of diverse professionals who require a firm knowledge of the basic
share a common vision: science that underpins the application
of the model. Without it, practitioners
"to alleviate human suffering and advance run the risk of going off-track.
human well-being through research and
practice that is grounded in contextual and One can often attend a training
behavioral science." workshop and feel invigorated.
However, humans are complex, and
once practitioners return to their
Together, we aim to work in a collegial, places of work, they can easily feel lost
open, generous, self-critical, non- after a few days or weeks of trying to
discriminatory, and mutually supportive apply what they’ve learned.
way. It is with this commitment in mind,
that I have produced this guide.

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Without a commitment to ongoing Experiential Practice: The
continuing professional development and Heart of ACT
supervision, your practice is likely to
stagnate. The commitment to learn and
improve is one that you can choose to Therapy requires a true and deep
make. You alone are the master of that connection between two or more
choice. humans. My own experience of being a
therapist tells me that many of the
problems that clients struggle with are
rooted in painful and recurring
Theory & Practice: The Head &
interpersonal disconnections. When in
Hands of ACT
the therapy room, you can impress a
client with your advanced theoretical
understandings. Similarly, you may
As a trainer, I too have a responsibility. I
have a remarkable arsenal of
have a responsibility to ensure that what I psychological tools at your disposal.
teach provides you with enough
knowledge and skills to begin that journey. These abilities may make a useful
I could, if I chose to, show you a lot of difference but will likely be limited if a
techniques from ACT. If I were to do that practitioner does not know how to
and nothing else, you would not embody the spirit of a model. In truth,
understand the theory and the science one needs to know the ‘heart’ (Personal
that tells you ‘why’ you are doing it. Qualities & Experiential Practice) of ACT
so that they may meet another person
with empathy, courage and humility. .
Similarly, if you were only to learn the
theory about ACT, you would not develop
the skills you need to help people in your
professional role. A combination of the
‘head’ (Knowledge and Concepts) and the
‘hands’ (ACT Skills training) is necessary.
However, even with these two
components, you may still be left wanting.

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A Note about Self-doubt Healthy self-doubt is a wise and
powerful ally, one that can teach you
Given the number of years I’ve worked as a many useful lessons including
CBT/ACT Practitioner, it would be flexibility, compassion and infinite
reasonable to call myself a Senior personal growth. If I can offer you one
Therapist. And despite this estimation in piece of advice as you proceed in your
my abilities, I am not without doubt and development of ACT Practice, it is this:
uncertainty. Within one day of client
appointments, I can experience feelings Do not seek to be a confident therapist,
ranging from jubilation and fulfilment to who knows what you are always doing.
frustration and shame. One is only ever as
good as your last intervention. Instead, lightly hold what you think you
know and be curious about what exists
When you learn something new, you are beyond the walls of your experience. In
profoundly aware of how little you know on my opinion, that is the soul of
the subject. ‘Conscious incompetence’ can Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
generate intense anxiety and hesitation.

On the one hand, it helps to learn the

‘form’ of practice, i.e. what the ACT Model
looks like and the tools you can teach
people. This experience provides some
certainty to what you are doing. And,
yet I offer caution at seeking too much
certainty.

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Contextual
Behavioural Science
(CBS)

Contextual Behavioural Science is the Hence, FC values usefulness above

philosophy and empirical science that ‘truth’ in the conventional sense. For
underpins the practice of ACT. Just as example, it doesn’t matter per se if a
Cognitive Theory underpins Cognitive person struggling with depression has
Therapy, CBS provides the roots to the the belief "I am weak". It only matters
practice and application of ACT. if ‘acting’ to believe this thought makes
their life worse. If that's what happens,
Functional Contextualism then you can conclude that ‘it does not
work’.
The philosophy of ACT and CBS is
Functional Contextualism (FC). As with all The metaphor in ACT is the ‘act-in-
philosophy of psychological science, there context’, which explains that you can
exists a metaphor and truth criterion inside only understand a person’s behaviour
its assumptions that describe the way that within a context. Behaviours make no
it sees people and the world. FC believes sense whatsoever outside of a context.
that the truth of ideas and human beings is This worldview is distinct from
in whether it works. ‘abnormal psychology’ and psychiatry
and the more traditional ways of
understanding human suffering.
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For example, in the latter, if a person In ACT, thoughts and feelings are
shares that they believe ‘people are treated as behaviours, too, which
watching me’, it may be concluded that the might sound a little odd. The reason is
person is experiencing paranoia. However, that a person learns patterns of
if you were to investigate the person’s thinking and ‘feeling’.
current life, including who and what is in
their environment and what has happened It is not true that ACT is only concerned
in their past, then you may reach a with behaviour and not cognition. ACT
different conclusion. believes that it is essential to target
thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The
You can read more about the philosophy of biggest difference is that the ACT
psychological science in ‘The Philosophy of model believes that you can’t change a
Science as it Applies to Clinical Psychology’ cognition. You can only add to it.
by Sean Hughes in ‘Process-Based CBT: The
Science and Core Clinical Competencies of Relational Frame Theory (RFT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (2018).
Relational Frame Theory is a theory of
WTF? - What is the Function? language based on behavioural
analysis. It can often seem complex
Traditional CBT tends to focus on the ‘form’ and difficult to understand. One can
of thought, i.e. the words that make up a be good at ACT without knowing RFT.
NAT, assumption or core belief. These However, knowing something about
words are taken to be literal statements the theory and its application to
and cognitive re-structuring targets these therapy will help you to be more
thoughts and aims to change them. In ACT, precise in what you are doing.
this does not happen.
A Very Brief Description
ACT is concerned with the function of
thought, i.e. its purpose. A functional lens There is a basis in RFT called Derived
is held up to examine all behaviour. Thus, Stimulus Relations. The way the
the ACT practitioner is always looking at human mind works is by building
the function of what is being said and done relations between different words,
by the client. sounds and objects etc. These
relations aren’t just associations; they
are more specific than that. For
example, ‘peas’ and ‘carrots’ aren’t just
associated. They have a relation: they
are both vegetables. Their relation is
being ‘part of’ the group vegetables.

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 For example, you might learn ‘anxiety is
bad’. This automatic thought (NAT)
leads to other sub-thoughts such as ‘I
don’t like anxiety, it is harmful, I must
get rid of it, I can’t control it, I am weak’.

The human mind is both a gift and a

curse. Just as you can think things and
use your words to connect with other
people, to laugh with them and to
support them, language can also take
From a young age, our minds start to you to very dark places.
form these relations, and as you get
older, they become increasingly For a more detailed look at RFT, read
sophisticated and complex. An adult ‘Learning RFT’ by Niklas Torneke.
mind can form an infinite number of
relations between different stimuli. It's
like a sponge soaking up all this
information, and then it organises the
information into a network.

Key Point
RFT shows us that there is no such process called ‘unlearning’. One cannot erase
language. It can be temporarily forgotten, but that is not the same thing. ACT
doesn’t focus on ‘changing’ cognitions. It focuses on ‘adding’ helpful behavioural
responses to unhelpful cognitions. When interventions do this, you are altering
the context in which the thinking and feeling take place. When you alter the
context, you can increase psychological flexibility.

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Acceptance &
Commitment Therapy
(ACT)

ACT aims to increase psychological It can also be measured qualitatively by

flexibility. Psychological Flexibility is a tracking your own experience.
scientific and empirically supported
phenomenon in behavioural science. What Psychological Flexibility is made up of
the research tells us is that when a person six interrelated and distinct
increases psychological flexibility, their behavioural processes. They include
wellbeing, their functioning and their mindfulness, acceptance behavioural
mental health improves. change processes. More specifically,
they are:
Psychological inflexibility is the opposite of
flexibility. When a person is inflexible, they 1. Willingness or Acceptance.
are more likely to suffer from emotional 2. Cognitive Defusion.
distress, ill-health and lower life expectancy. 3. Contact with the Present Moment.
One can measure flexibility through the 4. Perspective-Taking through an
Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II Observer Self.
(AAQ2). This short psychometric self-report 5. Values Clarification
measure captures the behavioural 6. Values-based Committed Action
processes in psychological flexibility.

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The Six Processes of
Psychological
Flexibility

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Each process has a respective opposite Hence, one needs to practice to
that shows you how to identify inflexibility understand willingness or acceptance.
in that process. It’s why the ACT practitioner moves
into experiential exercises quickly
The list below corresponds to the list above during the session.
with each number:
Breaking this down
1. Experiential Avoidance.
2. Cognitive Fusion. In the sections that follow, you’ll read
3. Inflexible attention and dominance of about each process. So that you get a
a past or future orientation. clearer picture of how this works, we’ll
4. Rigid attachment to a conceptualised look specifically at what you are trying
self, e.g. "I am (weak, bad, failure) to help your client do differently. These
5. Disconnection from life meaning. are the key targets.
6. Avoidance, delay or inconsistent
attempts of life-affirming activity. We then build on this theoretically (the
head), so you know why you are
ACT aims to shape behaviour both inside helping your client in this way.
and outside the therapy room. You can
teach clients techniques (the hands of ACT) I’ve outlined a practical approach (The
inside the session and invite them to Hands), which give you some steps to
practice them outside of the therapy in follow, including suggestions of
various and multiple contexts. This way, exercises.
they get to build patterns of committed
action. Then, we explore a little more about
the therapeutic stance (the Heart) of
It is important to help people understand the ACT Practitioner, so you can get
the processes that underpin the more of a feel for what you are
techniques. It isn’t merely an intellectual attending to at both an intrapersonal
process. It is an experiential one, which and interpersonal level.
requires a person to ‘move their feet’.

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Willingness / Acceptance
Key Targets

Help your clients to let go of the ‘control agenda’ as applied to internal

experiences
Help your clients experientially contact the costs of avoidance and control
Help your clients understand willingness to be something they can choose

Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head o What's the impact of these

responses?
Naturally, humans attempt to avoid, push o How effective are these responses in
away or control their pain. At best, this creating the life you want?·
reduces the intensity of an unwanted
private experience for a short time. At Introduce an alternative strategy to
worst, extreme suffering dominates experiential avoidance – Willingness,
people’s lives. People often arrive in because it helps you to do more of
therapy, asking for help to make them feel what matters (not less).
something more positive or to remove a
negative feeling. Your task is to help a The Heart
person identify the context for their actions
so that they can consider an alternative way As with each process, if the therapist
of approaching life. does not embody it, then it loses its
power and impact. To effectively shape
The Hands willingness in the client, the therapist
needs to embody willingness first and
Complete a Functional Behavioural Analysis second. It means being able to open
of the problem using a Creative Hopelessness up to your discomfort in the therapy
procedure: room. For example, allowing your
anxiety, your fears, frustrations, shame
o What do you care about? and guilt and hurt to be present. It
o What thoughts, feelings and sensations may mean sharing it verbally, or it may
get in the way of the life you want to have? mean privately allowing it. Either way,
o What do you do in response to these you model willingness so you can keep
experiences? helping your client to choose it.

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Underming Cognitive Fusion
Key Targets

Help clients to see thoughts for what they are (thoughts) and respond in
workable ways relative to their values.
Help clients to attend to thinking and experiencing as an ongoing
behavioural process; to look at their thoughts rather than from their
thoughts and observe thinking as opposed to being trapped in thinking.
Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head range of techniques that alter that

context, e.g. through distance, through
The comedian, Emo Philips, once said, “I song, humour or gratitude. As a
used to think my mind was the greatest organ process, cognitive defusion includes
in my body until I realised who was telling these qualities.
me”. Unlike the way we relate to other
parts of our bodies, we tend to see our The Hands
minds as who we are rather than a part of Identify unwanted or unhelpful
us. We tend not to notice that a thought is thoughts that exert problematic
something happening in your mind. This control over a person’s actions, e.g.
tendency can and does lead to a great deal predictions, self-criticisms,
of suffering. evaluations, rigid rules.
Engage an observing and defused
Your mind hooks your attention. You lose perspective, i.e. put space or
contact with the real world as it is distance between you and your
happening and you experience the world in mind.
your head and the real world as being the Play with different exercises and
same thing. They are different, and the track their impact, e.g. leaves on a
task of the ACT practitioner is to help a stream, labelling thoughts, cartoon
client take a step back from their thoughts voice, cubby-holing, thoughts on a
and observe the function of their thoughts. screen, thanking your mind.
Use the defusion process to pivot
The opportunity is to ask the question “does towards bigger life purposes and
this thought help my life to better?”. shift your attention and energy into
Invariably, in the context of struggle and ‘doing’ and leaving over-thinking
suffering, the answer is no. When this behind.
happens, there is a chance to practice a

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 Secondly, you must reinforce just the
helpful aspects of the client’s practice.
For example, you can tell a person ‘well
done’ when they switch from seeing
‘from their thoughts’ to noticing their
thoughts.

You must resist the urge to reinforce

reductions in painful emotions.
Defusion’s purpose is not to regulate
emotion. The process of willingness and
The Heart defusion are closely connected. Thus,
defusion includes allowing emotions to
The are several important points around be and welcoming them.
defusion to pay attention to in your
stance. Firstly, to model a defusing from It often takes some weeks or months for
your mind. You can do this through the clients to develop this understanding, so
use of language and hand movements, the onus is on you to undermine fusion
e.g. I’m noticing some thoughts going and emotional control.
through my mind right now. Or by
raising your hand and touching the part
where your brain is to draw attention to
it as the place where thinking is
generated.

Key Point:

ACT encourages the use of metaphor. Metaphors can be helpful because they
help you generate an image of something, which can change the meaning in
useful ways. For example, the defusion exercise ‘leaves on a stream’, allows a
person to observe a similarity between leaves floating on a stream and thoughts
occurring in the mind. In this metaphor, you can more easily imagine thoughts
gently floating by, which shows you how to let go of unhelpful thoughts.

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Present Moment Contact
Key Targets

Help clients discover that life is happening in the here and now and assist
them in returning to it from the conceptualised past or future.
Help clients connect with life as it is happening regardless of whether it is
filled with joy or sorrow.
Help clients notice what is happening in their relationships in the moment.
Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head The Hands

You can characterise ‘the mind’ by a Teach the client the distinction
tendency to problem-solve, which happens between thinking mode and
much more during moments when your observing mode.
emotions become more uncomfortable or
painful. Higher arousal states like fear, Use experiential methods by
anxiety, anger and desire can disrupt your drawing attention to the breath,
attention by speeding it up. You become body and five senses.
more vigilant to signs of threat.
Reinforce noticing behaviours,
Lower arousal states like sadness, guilt, especially in contexts where there
shame and low mood, can make your mind has been a tendency to analyse or
wander into the realm of reasoning to problem-solve.
explain away your emotions. Attention gets
narrowed and locks itself inside a room of
infinite thinking.

It can take a future or a past orientation.

Attention to the present and all that is
happening is lost. The invitation is to
practice training your attention so that you
can notice the entire landscape of what is
happening here and now in this present
moment.

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The Heart Practice a flexible approach whereby
you adjust your pace and move
The ACT practitioner can use language between a narrow focus and expansive
that models an awareness of what is focus.
happening in their own experience and
what is being acted by the client. You When you turn your attention to the
can draw attention to changes in emotions and the body, you and your
emotion, which you may observe client will have a felt experience. There
through body language, physiological you can practice noticing and labelling
changes and shifts in behaviour. your emotions and sensory experience.

Behavioural shifts are reflected in what This process is called self-as-process

is said, how it is said, or what is done. and is stepping stone to more advanced
work in perspective-taking.
One of your tasks is to prompt a client
to observe these changes. It is easy to
get lost in problem-solving mode
yourself, and when this happens, you
have lost awareness of the bigger
picture.

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Perspective-Taking & Observer Self
Key Targets

Help clients to access a self that is continuous, safe and consistent and from
which they can observe and accept the flow of internal experiencing.
Help clients to make a distinction between the content of your experience and
the self that is the context (arena, location) in which all experience happens.
Help clients to flexibly take different perspectives, to engage compassion and
empathy so that they can pivot towards values-based commitments.
Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head It is possible to experience continuity

by another means, through the
One can experience the ‘self’ in multiple observer perspective.
ways. You can characterise ‘self-as-content’
or the ‘conceptualised self’ by identification Self-as-context makes a distinction
with experience. For example, “I am my between you and your experiences by
experiences”. By nature, over-identification suggesting that you are the container
is inflexible and judgemental, which lacks for your experiences and not the
compassionate qualities. Self-as-process experiences themselves. This
shapes a different more flexible perspective ‘hierarchical relation’ allows you to
that allows a person to experience who experience the deepest of pains and to
they are as changing thoughts, feelings and transcend that pain.
sensations.
As you get better at shifting perspective
Humans like continuity, because it helps to from bottom-up to top-down, it can
predict what will happen. However, over- make it easier to choose values-based
identification with your experiences can behaviour. Hence, it increases the
cause problems as well. It can lead to flexibility of the self.
patterns of behaviour that undermine well-
being instead of furthering it. Therefore,
your thoughts govern you instead of you
choosing how to act.

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The Hands The Heart

Identify rigid self-statements or stories During conversations with clients, it is

and analyse their functions. possible to get drawn into discussions
about the content.
Introduce exercises that build an
observer perspective, e.g. experiences A problem-solving mind can dominate
change across time, place and person, during these moments. The ACT
stability in perspective. practitioner aims to return to an
observer perspective so that they can
Introduce exercises that build Self-As- support a client to do the same.
Context (top-down perspective-taking),
e.g. sky and weather, chessboard An ACT-consistent stance is one where
metaphor. you see your client as being ‘whole’.
Their suffering is not a sign of that you
Emphasis common humanity of need to fix something ‘broken’. Thus,
suffering and include compassion in you do not use challenges to the
perspective-taking exercises. evidence to undermine rigid self-
stories.

Unhelpful stories are welcomed and

permitted. It can feel awkward or
counter-intuitive, and you may feel an
urge to reassure or build an alternative
conceptualised self. A different
direction is encouraged whereby you
can hold your stories lightly, add self-
compassion, shift perspective to
explore other vantage points and be
the observer of your experiences as
they move and change throughout a
session.

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Values Clarification
Key Targets

Help clients to clarify the values that give their life meaning.
Help clients to focus on the process of living and loosen their attachment
to unworkable goals or outcomes.

Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head They are adverbs or ‘qualities of action’

that give your life meaning. Unlike
Many western cultural memes tell us a nouns or actions, they are the most
similar message - happiness is just around reliable sources of fulfilment.
the corner.
Valuing is an experiential process. In
Product advertising follows this formula all other words, life is to be lived from the
year round, e.g. get that beach-ready body, feet up. You can hypothesise or
buy that perfect gift for Christmas and snap intellectualise what you care about,
up that bargain in the sales. Do all this, and and yet, doing so will not create new
you’ll be happy. However, the satisfaction experiences.
from these purchases is short-lived.
Valuing invites you to choose day-by-
Similarly, goals that are focused on social day, moment-by-moment, how you
approval and ‘not’ feeling discomfort tend want to live. When you use your
to lack the impact of bringing meaning and awareness and openness skills, you
deep fulfilment to your life experience. can connect with bigger purposes that
Values offer a powerful alternative to goal- bring with it, vitality and well-being.
attainment.

If goals are what you do, then values are

why you do them. Values are the way you
want to do something.

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The Hands The Heart

Ask questions about what the client Early values exploration can be gentle
cares about, e.g. people, places, things, and enquiring, like going for a stroll to
ideas. You can use values cards and see what you notice and experience
questionnaires or more experiential (not intellectually, but by touching it).
exercises like the sweet spot. In exploration, you are wondering and
seeing opportunities for life and
Identify actions that the client wants to vitality. You are lifting the darkness on
take and explore how to do them. an area of your life.

Look out for statements that indicate Openness and awareness enhance the
the need for social approval, outcomes process. When you keep it slow,
or feelings. noticing and observing the experience,
you can tune in to it. You aren’t
Explore the 'workability' of valuing thinking about whether you like it; you
something outside the direct control. are feeling your way through it.

Sometimes, the values-based activity

includes discomfort and pain. When
you remain open, you find ways to take
it with you.

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Building Patterns of Committed Actions
Key Targets

Help clients to build patterns of behaviour that are in the service of values
that they choose to care about.
Help clients to choose a values-based activity and allow unwanted
thoughts and feelings to come along for the ride.

Sourced from: Luoma, Hayes & Walser (2017) Learning ACT, 2ndEdition, New Harbinger Pubs.

The Head In ACT,the aims are not to reduce

anxiety or depression per se. Instead,
Evolutionary science teaches us that for we want to increase psychological
adaptation to occur, we need to select and flexibility, which involves using values
retain more helpful patterns of behaviour. as a guiding purpose.
However, this can be tricky as we have
evolutionary flaws that predispose us to The Hands
control pain. The challenge is to side-step
these automatic responses and choose a Naturally, values clarification takes
different way. place before planning committed
actions.
Values provide a powerful alternative to
experiential avoidance and point you in a Invite the client to choose one small
better direction. The aim is to help your action they can implement that day.
client build patterns of values-based
activity. Where possible, create
opportunities for values to be acted
You can use other evidence-based on inside the session.
interventions inside this process. For
example, a client who struggles with Track the impact of these actions, so
agoraphobia can engage in exposure work. that the client can benefit from the
A client who wants to lift their mood, they experiential gains that help reinforce
can start behavioural activation. motivation to repeat that action.

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The Heart The speed at which you build these
patterns is less important than the
Many practitioners fall into a trap when quality of the actions. Take it slow,
they neglect to focus explicitly on the guide a client to choose actions that
planning of a values-based activity. One are meaningful and add in mindfulness
might assume that a client will and acceptance responses when you
automatically engage in committed-actions spot resistance.
after they have increased flexibility in the
other processes. In my experience, this is
often not true.

Practitioners enhance the process when

they ‘shape’ committed actions.
Mindfulness and acceptance processes
are used to support committed action.
Hence, sessions that include an element of
each process on the 'hexaflex' are more
likely to help a client build patterns of
committed action.

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Treatment Guidelines

As you start to learn about ACT, you may You can use a case conceptualisation
wonder, where do I begin? form found in Learning ACT 2nd Edition
or ACT Made Simple.
While you can use an ACT Protocol for a
presenting problem, the spirit of ACT is Typically, ACT therapists begin with
flexibility. creative hopelessness. It allows the
client and you to assess the functions
Be Experiential and Flexible of behaviours within a context. It
increases awareness of the costs of
The invitation is to practice ACT, not in one control and presents an alternative
way, but observing what is happening in the strategy – being open to pain so that
therapy room and trying out different you can invest time and energy into
interventions. You are working living with purpose and fulfilment.
experientially, being open and aware and
engaged, rather than to a rigid set of rules You don’t need to follow a sequence,
about how and in what order ACT ‘should’ i.e. session 3 is cognitive defusion. It is
be done. better to ‘shape’ flexibility by working
each process within the session, for
Assess Flexibility example, using acceptance and
mindfulness processes to support
The techniques support the process and behavioural change.
you aim to assess areas of inflexibility.

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ACT Supervision
UK & Republic
of Ireland

Individual Supervision Peer Group Supervision

Supervision is an important component of There are various free peer-supervision

your continued professional development. groups run by volunteers. These tend to
It coaches you through the challenges of be small practice groups, where you get
helping the people who come to see you. the chance to role-play ACT and get
feedback in real-time. I thoroughly
Given the relatively young age of ACT, it recommend getting along to one of these
can be hard finding a practitioner who can groups as they can accelerate your
supervise you. With this in mind, the learning and connect you with other ACT
UK/ROI chapter of ACBS, and I have put therapists in your region. You can
together a list of ACT supervisors. download a list through the same link

Have a look and discover supervisors in www.openforwards.com/actsupervisorsuk

your local area as well as those available
for online supervision.

Go to:
www.openforwards.com/actsupervisorsuk

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 JOIN ACBS
Other Resources www.contextualscience.org
ACBS is the global home for ACT.
For a small annual fee, you get
full access to the website and its:
library of audio / video, written
publications, teaching materials
and assessment measures.
The listserv, a forum for various
topics and special interests.
Journal of Contextual and
Beginner Books Openforwards Behavioral Science (JCBS), which
www.openforwards.com
is the premier resource in this
The following is a body of knowledge for both
list of books APT in ACT is a
practitioners and researchers.
that I’ve found Youtube channel
You can list your profile on the
useful. I would run by Jim Lucas
ACT Therapist Directory, network
recommend these that offers you a
with other professionals and
when you are Guide to becoming
contribute to your national
starting. more competent in
chapter.
Acceptance &
o Learning ACT Commitment
2nd Edition Therapy (ACT). Development Books
o ACT Made
Simple 2nd Edition Self-Help-Sat-Nav So, you now know the basics, what’s
o ACT: 100 Key is a podcast next? CBS is a deep and wide
Points focusing on psychological science and you’ve
o ABCs of effective self-care noticed that you would like to
Human Behavior for your personal understand it better. When you get
and professional to this stage, I’d recommend
lives. these titles:

o Acceptance and Commitment

Videos:
Therapy. The Process and Practice
The Unwelcome Party Guest
of Mindful Change.
Passengers on a Bus
o The Art and Science of Valuing
Empathy by Brene Brown
in Psychotherapy
The ACT Auntie
o Inside this Moment.
Podcasts
o Learning RFT.
Psychologists off the Clock
o The Heart of ACT.
People Soup Page 23
ACT in Context openforwards.com
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