ACT has a tradition of doing intensive, experiential training in addition to training in the core skills and competencies needed to do ACT. Why are these part of the ACT tradition?
These trainings are not training in doing ACT per se — they are more oriented toward learning what it feels like and how it works to adopt a defused, accepting, present-focused, mindful, values-based posture with regard to your own issues. These experiences are not meant to be therapy. Unlike other traditions, there is no belief that you have to somehow get fully analyzed (etc) and thus no longer be reactive in therapy in order to do good work. The point is not to be the world’s most mindful or accepting human. The point is to learn to discriminate these states of mind to a degree that allows you to track what is happening during ACT intervention, and to have some skills in sitting with the painful space of sitting with another human being in pain. We hope that doing some experiential work with yourself will humanize and level ACT work because you learn how hard it is to do the things you are going to try to establish in others through ACT. There are curently no data showing that thes
