ACT in Perspective - A prosocial podcast using behavioral science to address human suffering Hugh

Tom Szabo is a peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) trainer, board certified behavior analyst, and faculty member of Capella University in the masters and doctoral behavior analysis programs. Over the last fifteen years, Tom has focused his practice on teaching people ways to ignite psychological flexibility in their personal lives and with others in clinical practice, schools, board rooms, shop floors, and community centers. He has developed iterations of ACT for autistic people, their parents and caregivers, siblings, and staff members. His research focuses on the development of ACT functional analysis and treatment that addresses issues related to race, gender, class, ethnicity, neurodiversity, disability, language, and dialect.

Welcome to another episode of ACT in Perspective podcast. I’m your host Hugh Simonich.

Today we’re talking to Dr. Matthieu Villatte. Matt is trined as a cliniclak psychologist and is now an Assistant Professor at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of numerous books and chapters on mindfulness, acceptance, experiential therapies, and contextual behavioral science, including Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention (Guilford Press, 2015), co-authored by Jennifer Villatte and Steve Hayes. As a peer-reviewed trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy recognized by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), he has facilitated over a hundred clinical trainings in the US, Canada, Australia-New Zealand, South America, and Europe. Over the past few years, he has also run dozens of online trainings gathering participants from all continents.

Today, we’ll be discussing the details of his book Mastering the Clinical Conversation which provides psychotherapists with evidence-based strategies for harnessing the power of language to free clients from life-constricting patterns and promote psychological flexibility.  Techniques are demonstrated for activating and shaping behavior change, building a flexible sense of self, fostering meaning and motivation, creating powerful experiential metaphors, and strengthening the therapeutic relationship.

Please help welcome Dr. Matthieu Villatte.

Welcome everyone to another episode of ACT in Perspective podcast. I’m your host Hugh Simonich.

Today we’re talking with Dr. Thomas Szabo.

Tom is an internationally recognized ACT trainer, a practicing Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno. Over the last 10 years, Tom has focused his practice on teaching people ways to ignite behavioral flexibility in their personal lives and with others in clinical practice, schools, board rooms, shop floors, and community centers. He is particularly interested in teaching people ways to use ACT to support individuals with high functioning autism and their families.

Today Tom gives us a personal journey into his experience with recovery from alcohol. He provides us deep insights into the behavior analysis of recovery and what it means to him. We discuss his personal struggles, the power of the recovery group, prayer and his naturalistic explanation of a higher power. We discuss connections with ACT Training and the recovery program, and what the steps to recovery actually mean in behavior analytic language among other things.

We open with his journey when he was in grad school and how that led to his bottom and ultimate recovery. Please help welcome Dr. Tom Szabo.

John Astin is an internationally known scholar in the field of mind-body medicine, his research focusing on the applications of meditative-awareness practices in psychology and health care. He received his PhD in Health Psychology from the University of California, Irvine, and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford Medical School.

Dr. Astin has published over 50 book chapters and peer-reviewed articles in such journals as Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), American Psychologist, and Academic Medicine. His scholarly work has covered a broad range of topics including: the efficacy of complementary/alternative therapies, particularly mind-body practices, in the treatment of many common medical conditions; barriers to the integration of psychosocial factors in medical training and practice; and, the efficacy of mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches for relapse prevention in addiction.

Dr. Astin is the author of is  the author of four books, exploring the nature of human experience—Too Intimate for Words (2005), This Is Always Enough (2008), Searching for Rain in a Monsoon (2012) and This Extraordinary Moment (2018). He is also a professional singer, songwriter and recording artist, having produced seven CDs of original contemplative music since 1987.

Please visit: www.johnastin.com for further information about his work.

Nathan Gates, MS, LPC, and Brian Pilecki, Ph.D, discuss the benefits of psychedelics in the therapeutic process, particularly with the psychological flexibility of ACT and other process-based therapy models. We discuss the history of psychedelics, the major key players, the fears which led to government control in the late 60s and beyond, the underground psychedelic culture, and the recent resurgence of legitimate research of the past 20 years.  We discuss the exponentially growing peer reviewed research that's leading the way to treat depression, social anxiety, PTSD, the fears of those with terminal illnesses.  We are just scratching the surface of the transformative power of psychedelics when used correctly with psychological flexibility processes of behavior change.  There's an incredible amount of work left to do, but the evidence clearly shows the potential benefits that far exceed what psychotherapy and psychotropic medications could ever do alone.    Watch, enjoy, subscribe and leave a comment!  Thanks!

https://youtu.be/Wjiy5PrfOxU

Today we’ll be discussing the different ways we tend to experience the world from the perspective of left and right brain processes. Our guest today is Dr. Chris Niebauer, a cognitive neuropsychologist who is a tenured professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania where he teaches courses on consciousness, mindfulness, left and right brain differences, and artificial intelligence. He is the author of The Neurotic's Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left-Brain Plays Unending Games of Self-Improvement and his most recent and popular No Self No Problem - How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up To BUDDHISM

In this groundbreaking book, he writes that the latest research in neuropsychology is now confirming a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, what is called Anatta, or the doctrine of “no self.” Niebauer writes that our sense of self, or what we commonly refer to as the ego, is an illusion created entirely by the left side of the brain. He had found this Buddhist-neuroscience connection when he was a student in the early 1990s,, but since then, this connection has practically become its own genre in bookstores. Today, Niebauer admits that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface on the link between Eastern philosophy and the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience and what this really means for the human experience.

Please help welcome Dr. Chris Niebauer.