In the\ncourses and supervision I give, I regularly hear this question: am I doing ACT?\nIs what I do ACT? How do you do a full ACT treatment? I also often ask myself\nthis question. What does not help is that the ACBS, the association that ACT\nbelongs to, does not prescribe how to do ACT properly. Apart from the peer\nreview trainer process, there is no official assessment of someone’s ACT\nqualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a time\nwhen treating clients is based on evidence based treatment, guidelines and\nprotocols, the question of whether what you do is really ACT is an important\none. After all, the guidelines prescribe certain evidence-based forms of\ntreatment. We must guard against therapist drift, deviating from a form of\ntreatment or intervention without proper arguments, that makes what you do less\neffective. If you say you are doing CBT, it must be CBT. And that also applies\nto ACT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Machines\nare able to do process flawlessly and produce a perfect end product. People\nmake mistakes and guidelines and protocols are meant to eliminate these\nmistakes as much as possible. This works. At the same time, people do not learn\nto reflect on their mistakes and learn from them. And, perhaps more\nimportantly, they do not learn to use their humanity as a therapeutic tool. Our\nmission as a person is to live an imperfect life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes I\nhear colleagues say that therapists run after every new form of treatment.\nMaybe there are therapists who go for the thrill of something new. But I think\nwhat drives most of us is that we want to do our job well. That we notice that\nour knowledge is lacking. That we cannot yet connect well enough with clients.\nAnd that new \/ different forms of therapy help with this. They show us the\ncontext, and the function of behavior, in a way that we had not seen before.\nAnd even if such a form of therapy is not evidence-based, these insights can\nstill be extremely valuable. This is not the same as ignoring evidence from\nscientific research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But how do\nyou deliver quality? How do you ensure that you don’t “just do anything”?\nIf you let go of a protocol or guideline, how can you assume that you are doing\nyour job well? After all, research has shown that the intuition of therapists\nis not reliable enough to build on. We must learn to learn from our mistakes.\nWe must learn how to learn from our mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ACBS 2020\nWorld Congress made me thoroughly aware that the question of whether you are\ndoing ACT is actually not that important. The question, which is much more\nimportant, is why you do what you do. This is about the function of your own\ntherapist behavior. What do you hope to achieve with an intervention? Is this\nin the service of the client and his or her values? Do you connect well with\nthe client, so that your intervention can also land? Do you know enough about\nyour client to be able to connect? Or do you act from rigid beliefs, fears,\navoidance? The emphasis on doing something according to the rules can become a\nbreeding ground for fusion and avoidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\naddition, it is important to learn, from moment to moment, how the client\nresponds to your interventions. How does an intervention arrive? What kind of\nchange is visible? What does this mean for the process you are in with the\nclient? How does this ultimately bring the client closer to his or her\nself-chosen value-oriented goals and a value-oriented life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In order to\nproperly monitor client behavior and your own behavior, two things are very\nimportant: knowledge and presence. Knowledge is about scientific and professional\nknowledge, and about client knowledge. How do you conceptualize his or her\nrequest for help? Do you know enough to understand the functions of his or her\nbehavior? And also: do you know yourself? What are your strengths,\nvulnerabilities, struggles and values? What do you easily fuse with? What do\nyou want to stand for as a therapist and as a person? Self-knowledge is a verb,\na continuous activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By presence\nI mean that, during your therapy sessions and during moments of reflection on\nthe therapy and the client, you can reflect openly on what is there with your\nfull attention. That you can allow the suffering of the client and what it does\nto you, to its full extent. That you are aware of what is going on with your\nclient, with yourself and between you. That the client’s suffering may be in\nthe room, that there is room for his or her vulnerability and strength, and\nyours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do I ACT\nand do ACT well is a question about what you want to stand for, which functions\nof behavior you want to bring along. There are many different ways to do ACT.\nThe only wrong way is to do topographic ACT. By that I mean that you do\nsomething that looks like ACT on the outside, because you use metaphors or\nexercises or language from ACT, but stripped of the functions that they have\nwithin ACT. Because you don’t understand what those functions are, what an\nintervention is for. You can also do ACT clumsily, hesitantly, searching, as\npart of a process of getting better at it. That’s ACT. You can mix ACT with\ninterventions and insights from other forms of therapy. If you keep an eye on\nthe functions, for you and the client, within the context of his or her values,\nfocused on a valuable life, then I am convinced that what you do is of added\nvalue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want to learn more about function monitoring, you can watch the recording of a workshop from the world conference of the ACBS: Shaping psychological flexibility with realtime functional feedback. There are many more beautiful workshops and presentations that are worth checking out. We also recommend Clinical interactions and the deep feeling involved in acting in the same direction. You can look back if you register for it. There are costs involved. For more information, see: https:\/\/contextualscience.org\/wc2020online<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks to\nRikke Kjelgaard, Lou Lasprugato, Tom Szasbo, Barbara Kohlenberg, Carmen Luciano,\nKelly Wilson, Robyn Walser and Francisco Ruiz for the inspiration for this\nblog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the courses and supervision I give, I regularly hear this question: am I doing ACT? Is what I do ACT? How do you do a full ACT treatment? I also often ask myself this question. What does not help is that the ACBS, the association that ACT belongs to, does not prescribe how to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1711,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1709","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1710,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709\/revisions\/1710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}