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

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 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!

For video content and additional info:

https://youtu.be/ZxynnHmR-KI

Today, I’m very excited to be sitting across from Dr. Anthony Biglan. Dr. Biglan is a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute that partners with others around the world to promote behavior change toward sustainable health and wellbeing. Their emerging areas right now include genetics, health economics, Alzheimer’s Disease and opioid addiction. Tony is Co-Director of Promise Neighborhood Research Consortium, a community-based network that works to improve wellbeing in high-poverty neighborhoods. For over 30 years, he’s been conducting research on the development and prevention of child and adolescent problem behaviors. He is former president of the Society for Prevention Research, dedicated to advancing scientific investigation focused on the causes and prevention of social, physical and mental health, and academic problems. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Prevention and of Oregon’s Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission. His books, the Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World and Rebooting Capitalism: How We Can Forge a Society That Works for Everyone. are a culmination of his life’s work that lay the framework for a model of societal change. He has also created the nonproft Values to Action to advance the reforms he calls for in his book Rebooting Capitalism, where solution-focused action circles are created around societal issues where we apply the principles of contextual behavioral science. If there is a problem you see in our society or in your community, an Action Circle is the way that you can address it to achieve concrete results. Join Values to Action.org and contribute just $47 to become a lifetime member.

Dr. Mark Solms is one of the leading neuroscientists in the world, best known for his contributions into the mechanisms of dreaming, and his use of psychoanalytic methods in modern neuroscience.  His new book The Hidden Spring:  A Journey to the Source of Consciousness offers a comprehensive understanding of why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain.    Here we discuss the dawn of consciousness, the essential role of feelings and emotions and where they come from, the role of the cortex to make predictions in an uncertain world, and how that relates to our complex behavior.  We’ll discuss the basic drives of all organisms, and how these drives relate to the development of the brain and central nervous system.  We’ll get into the elementary physics of the Free Energy Principle, entropy, and homeostasis and how this all relates back to why we behave as we do.  We’ll get into the discussion of voluntary behavior, free will and choice and how to properly conceptualize what these terms represent.  We’ll talk briefly about the origins of self, the relationship of all living things, his thoughts on the possibility of constructing an artificial mind, and much more.    Solms breaks highly complex concepts down throughout this book and synthesizes these concepts into a clear, unified theory of consciousness.    Solms is the Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town, South Africa where he lives, and honorary lecturer in neurosurgery and an honorary Fellow with the American College of Psychiatrists.     He has received numerous honors, has published about 350 journals, articles and book chapters, and authored eight books.  He is the editor and translator of the forthcoming 24-volume Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud and the 4-volume work of the Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud.    We had a lengthy conversation exploring many of the concepts in his book, but we begin our conversation with a fascinating story related to his experience growing up in the pits of apartheid in South Africa, and how this influenced him to do his part in redressing racial and class disparity in his own country.

Dr. George Diggs is a well-respected, well-researched evolutionary biologist and botanist who has taught at Austin College in Sherman, Texas for 40 years. I took my first evolutionary biology and ecology class from him over 30 years ago.  

His research interests include evolution as it relates to human health, climate change, the plants of Texas, and biogeography.  He has co-authored four books and nearly 40 scientific articles, traveling and completing research in all seven continents.

One of his latest books is The Hunter-Gatherer Within: Health and the Natural Human Diet, co-authored with Dr. Kerry Brock.  For the past 15 years he has focused on Evolutionary Medicine and Ancestral Health and recently he helped establish an undergraduate program in Public Health at Austin College

In this episode, George bridges a clear understanding between evolutionary and environmental science, public health and human behavior. We discuss how we evolved genetically and culturally from our origins in small hunter-gatherer groups to where we are today, comparing the stark differences between the two, noting very different individual and group selective pressures that not only explains why we engage in behaviors we know are harmful to us, but what we can do about them. Along these lines, he clearly explains important concepts in evolutionary and behavioral science, such as cognitive bias, evolutionary mismatch, cultural catalysis and epigenetics, and then uses this understanding as the foundation to reflect on needed policy shifts.

George Diggs is one of those great contributors to life that not only has decades of experience under his belt as a research scientist, but is at heart a well-loved and respected mentor and teacher to thousands who genuinely cares about the welfare of others.

Valerie "Val" Lovelace is the Statewide Campaign Director for the Death With Dignity National Center and the Founder and Executive Director of Maine Death With Dignity.  We discuss the aid in dying movement for the terminally ill, the history of the movement, the challenges and concerns and where it's likely to go in the near future.  There are currently 10 US jurisdictions that allow physician aid in dying, with New Mexico's senate just passing a bill on its' way to become the 11th.  We discuss our own heartfelt experiences with family members' deaths, and why this movement is important to us.  We also discuss the many individuals affected by this legislation and how it was so crucially important to them and their families.    If you would like to find out more information about the movement, go to:  www.deathwithdignity.org Other supportive organizations include:  Compassion & Choices, www.compassionandchoices.org and The Brittany Maynard Fund, www.thebrittanyfund.org  Find out what the laws are in your state and contact Val to find out how you can get involved in a grassroots effort to change the law.   Contact the main line of Death With Dignity at (503) 228-4415.  "For terminally ill patients, death with dignity means having control and the knowledge that if things get unbearable they have the option to end their life how they see fit."  -  Margaret Ervin, hospice social worker.

I am honored to sit down at length with Dr. Yvonne Barnes-Holmes out of Donegal Ireland. She is one of the main pioneers of Relational Frame Theory, or RFT, which is the psychological theory for understanding the complexities of human language and cognition, including the fundamentals of how and why we suffer.  She is world trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a clinician and researcher who has published over 150 journal articles and book chapters, presented over 500 trainings and workshops around the world, and has practiced behavioral therapy for over 22 years. She is co-founder of Process-based Behavior Therapy along with Dr. Ciara McEnteggart and co-director of a world class psychological consulting firm Perspectives Ireland where you find certification trainings of PBBT on their website perspectivesireland.ie

Process-based Behavior Therapy, or PBBT is cutting-edge behavioral science that is a clinical application of RFT that can be used for the full range of psychological problems, even the most individualistic. She’ll be breaking this down for us in terms we can understand.

However, if you want to gain a better background of what this is, go to the website go-RFT.com and scroll down to the bottom where you’ll find some excellent articles that explain everything, including a good background.

Now, If you want a visual of this podcast, you can go to the ACT in Perspective youtube channel, https://youtu.be/ql-eVz17Yxo  for this full interview, but includes multiple diagrams, web information, and transcript.

Now, in this episode, I want to apologize for my sound quality at times, but that’s only on my end due to mike issues. You can hear her just fine and that’s the important thing.

I would definitely encourage my fellow Behavior Analysts to at least look into PBBT as a way to grow professionally and expand your practice, if you haven’t already.  

Enjoy and leave comments with any questions or additional thoughts.  Thanks all.

Katie Sanford is a mental health advocate who works with the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) where she does speaking engagements for crisis intervention and mental health awareness trainings.  She is a graduate of Northwestern University out of Illinois and currently works as a legal assistant outside of Chicago where she lives with her boyfriend James.   

She started her own blog entitled Not Like The Others found at katiesanford.net in March 2020 where she chronicles her life's journey living with the diagnoses of depressive-type schizoaffective disorder, PTSD and OCD.  

Katie openly shares her experiences, struggles and successes to be a strong advocate for others going through similar struggles and to further de-stigmatize mental illness.    

You can donate to help support her blog and advocacy work at:

https://www.mightycause.com/story/Katiesanford

Or become a patron member of Katie Sanford at:     

https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=33899214&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkatiesanford.net%2Fwp%2F&utm_medium=widget

Dr. Eli Cwinn is a clinical psychologist who works out of Toronto, Canada who has been using Compassion-Focused Therapy, or CFT, with kids, teens and caregivers for the past 6 years.  He started by using CFT with teens in a secure detention facility with great effect and has also used CFT with teens with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Learning Disabilities, ADHD and high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Eli is also the co-chair of the Ontario Chapter of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) where he is a board members of a special interest group (SIG) called Applying ACT for Addictions.  

Eli and I had a very interesting and helpful discussion about what CFT is and how it is integrated with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, to provide a more technically eclectic, yet theoretically consistent process-based approach to treat complex psychological issues for children and adolescents.  This is a particularly relevant and helpful episode for parents, caregivers, teachers and other practitioners who are looking to gain better insight.