The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter ACBS is proud to present

Embracing Your Humanity:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Daylong Retreat 

Daylong Experiential Retreat

Friday August 9, 2024

5 CEs for Psychologists, LCSWs, and LPCCs

The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Course Description:

Join your community for an experiential ACT retreat at the beautiful Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. Whether you are an ACT expert or ACT-curious, this is an opportunity to deepen your connection to yourself by tuning your own psychological flexibility. The retreat will center around a series of experiential exercises based in the core ACT processes with opportunities for personal reflection and dyad/group debrief and sharing. In the spirit of Self-Practice/Self-Reflection (SP/SR), you will apply the ACT principles to yourself rather than client work but will likely increase your competence as an ACT practitioner in the process.

There is a cap on participants due to the venue, so we expect to run out of space. Register soon to secure your spot!

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a transdiagnostic, process based model of behavior change that has been shown to be effective for a wide variety of issues related to mental health, health, performance, and more (Gloster et al., 2020). It is a “unified model of both human suffering and human resilience” (Hayes, Strosahl, Wilson, 2011) meaning that it promotes thriving and wellbeing as much as it combats poor mental health. The therapeutic stance in ACT assumes that our clients struggle with the same kinds of challenges that we as practitioners struggle with (i.e. “we’re all in the same boat”) and attention to our own psychological flexibility is essential to mastering the model.

Self-Practice/Self-Reflection (SP/SR) is an emerging approach to enhance therapist competency through the application of evidence based skills to oneself. It has been used in CBT as well as ACT, and provides a helpful framework for considering one’s personal growth in service of therapeutic mastery. Research suggests SP/SR can promote greater therapist flexibility, self-awareness, emotional attunement, ability to take perspective of the client, and belief in the value of therapy itself (Thwaites et al., 2014).

Attendees will be invited to participate in a series of experiential exercises, one for each ACT process in addition to creative hopelessness. There will also be ample opportunities for connecting with peers and appreciating nature as part of the activities. Although not a silent retreat, there will be an invitation to participate with thoughtful intention to one’s emotional and physical needs, boundaries, and individual goals.

Target Audience:

This retreat is designed for mental health/helping professionals including social workers, coaches, counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists. It will be beneficial if:

• You have deep knowledge of the ACT model but would benefit from the time and space to apply the skills to your own life and reflect deeply on how you can grow
• You have never trained in ACT and want to get a sense of what it feels like before committing to more training or just need some space to focus on your own wellbeing
• You fall anywhere on this spectrum

Course Objectives:

After attending this retreat you will be able to:

1. Describe experientially each of the six psychological flexibility processes (e.g. defusion)

2. Share relatable, personal examples of each psychological inflexibility process (e.g. fusion)

3. Identify 2-3 personal behaviors that function as experiential avoidance

4. Assess your own personal fluency with the ACT skills

5. Identify at least one ACT process where you can develop greater mastery, which can benefit your personally and in your client work

Presenter:

Shane O’Neil-Hart, LCSW

Shane O’Neil-Hart, LCSW is an expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and serves as the President of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). He is the Clinical Director of the Mental Health Coaching Program at Lyra Health where he oversees a program serving tens of thousands of clients per year. Shane is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco where he supervises and trains psychiatry residents in ACT. He is passionate about the dissemination of evidence based and culturally responsive mental health treatments, and is also trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). Shane provides training and consultation in ACT, and is a longtime supervisee of Robyn Walser.

As member of the chapter board, Shane is not receiving compensation for leading this event

Retreat Schedule (subject to changes)

9:00 - 9:30 Check In (no CE)

9:30 - 10:00 Welcome and Building the Container (.5 hr)

10:00 - 11:00 Acceptance and Defusion (1 hrs)

11:00 - 11:15 Break (No CE)

11:15 - 12:15 Present Moment and Self-as-Context (1 hr)

12:15 - 1:15 Lunch (No CE)

1:15 - 2:15 Values and Committed Action (1 hr)

2:15 - 2:45 Nature Break (No CE)

2:45 - 3:45 Creative Hopelessness (1 hr)

3:45 - 4:00 Break (No CE)

4:00 - 4:30 Integration (.5 hr)

Fees*:

Professional Member early - By July 9	$100
Professional Member regular	$125
Professional Nonmember early – By July 9	$125
Professional Nonmember regular	$150
Student/Intern Member or Non Member	$50
CE Fee	$30

*If you have any financial barrier to participating, you can request a reduced or waived fee by sending an email to Shane O’Neil-Hart at sdoneil@gmail.com

Join the Chapter and get the member discount

for this training and for future trainings in the next year

https://sfba-acbs.wildapricot.org/Join-The-Chapter

Included in the fees: 5 hours of instruction, coffee/tea, snacks, and lunch

Disclosures:

The costs of this workshop are completely supported by participant fees

Refund Policy
If you cancel your registration:
21 or more days before the date of the event, we’ll refund all of your registration fee or give you credit to a future event;
20 to 7 days before the event, we’ll refund 75% of your fee;
Fewer than 7 days before an event, we’ll refund 50% of your fee.
If you don’t cancel before the event begins, we can’t refund your fees, but we’ll give you a credit toward a future event in the amount of 50% of your registration fee. If we cancel an event for any reason, of course, we’ll refund all of your registration fees. Continuing-education certification fees can be refunded until the day before the event. They become non-refundable on the first day of the event. Continuing-education certification purchased at an event is non-refundable.

If you have any questions about the event please contact Shane O'Neil-Hart at sdoneil@gmail.com 

References

Ciarrochi, J., Hayes, S. C., Oades, L. G., & Hofmann, S. G. (2022). Toward a unified framework for positive psychology interventions: Evidence-based processes of change in coaching, prevention, and training. Frontiers in psychology, 6374.

Davis, M. L., Thwaites, R., Freeston, M. H., & Bennett-Levy, J. (2015). A measurable impact of a self-practice/self-reflection programme on the therapeutic skills of experienced cognitive-behavioural therapists. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 22(2), 176–184.

Gloster, A. T., Walder, N., Levin, M. E., Twohig, M. P., & Karekla, M. (2020). The empirical status of acceptance and commitment therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 18, 181-192.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change. Guilford press.

Thwaites, R., & Bennett‐Levy, Melanie Davis and Anna Chaddock, J. (2014). Using Self‐Practice and Self‐Reflection (SP/SR) to Enhance CBT Competence and Metacompetence. How to become a more effective CBT therapist: Mastering metacompetence in clinical practice, 239-254.

Tirch, D., Silberstein-Tirch, L. R., Codd, R. T., Brock, M. J., & Wright, M. J. (2019). Experiencing ACT from the inside out: A self-practice/self-reflection workbook for therapists. Guilford Publications.