Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Intermediate Level Skills Training

Trainers : David Gillanders, (D.Clin.Psychol.) ACBS Peer-reviewed ACT trainer, Henry Whitfield MSc, MBACP,
Both the trainers have multiple publications in their field. See trainer profiles for full biographical details.

Dates: 10-11th Mar + 24-25th Mar 2012
4 day course run over 2 weekends
Fee: £525
Location: 2mins from Kings Cross Station, London WC1.
Prerequisite: Introductory ACT training with skills training, or experience of applying ACT to your client work.

This Intermediate Skills Training workshop, with David and Henry is designed for those who have completed our 4 day experiential Introduction and Skills training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), but is also open to those who have done comparable training elsewhere. Experience of ACT clinical skills training is expected in all students accepted on this workshop.

Learning focuses of this training:

• Monitoring your progress in terms of ACT competency tracking forms.
• Noticing holes in your ACT practice and build new repertoires.
• Practice case conceptualizations in terms of the six core processes
• Work with personal barriers that interfere with your values as a therapist
• Practice applying ACT in one-on-one “therapy” with individual feedback
• Broaden your repertoire of ‘physicalized’ techniques.

On completion of this course you will have further developed your personal style of ACT, learnt to be more ACT consistent through personal feedback from David and Henry.

Intermediate level Skills Training - Part 1 (1st Weekend):

• A new and clear framework for broadening your repertoire as an ACT therapist.
• Do you currently use multiple skills across all processes?
• Broaden your use of Functional Analysis in ACT.
• Awareness of areas in which you feel less competent or become stuck.
• Broaden your ACT repertoire in the areas you need to improve the most with hands on practice in that area.
• Micro-skills that serve multiple processes.

The workshop presenters will be completing rounds during experiential work to give individual feedback (numbers limited to 11 per trainer).

Intermediate level Skills Training - Part 2 (2nd Weekend):

•  Report on progress made between the two weekends – new interventions that have been tried + results.
•  A physicalised ACT protocol as an alternative to the bus-metaphor
•  Trouble shooting difficult clients
•  Case-formulations for specific problems.
•  Present videos of your client work (if you have one).
•  Further repertoire building practice

During this weekend the workshop representer will also be completing rounds during extensive clinical work to give individual feedback. Attendees will be given opportunity to also receive supervisory–type feedback.

After this weekend you will be also be eligible for the supervision program (only for graduates of this intermediate training as numbers are limited to 8).

Dr. David Gillanders D.Clin.Psychol , ABCS Peer-reviewed ACT Trainer

Also a clinical psychologist, David first became interested in ACT in around 2004 via the Contextual CBT for Chronic Pain work of Lance McCracken. As well as working as a clinician specialising in chronic pain, David also trains clinical psychology doctoral students in ACT.

He has led a research programme in clinical health psychology, focusing on a variety of long term health conditions. This research has investigated different theoretical perspectives on psychological factors in long term conditions. This research strategy has supported thesis projects for 8 DClinPsychol students, and 3 PhD students. David has also worked on measuring cognitive defusion (a core process in ACT).

Henry J. Whitfield MSc (CBT/REBT) MBACP

Henry founded Mindfulness Training Ltd in 2006. His research interests include the theoretical and practical integration of mindfulness with cognitive behavioural theories, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy processes and in case-formulated applications of mindfulness. After 4 years as a trauma specialist for Victim Support Lambeth, Henry is now conducting empirical research for City and Hackney Mind, investigating the process of values within different approaches to trauma counselling. He also works in private pratice, and teaches widely on the subject of Mindfulness-consistent therapies.