ACT Core Competency Self-Assessment for Clinicians

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The file below (see the attachment at the bottom of the page) contains the ACT Core Competency Self-Rating Form. This was created and used at the first ACT Summer Institute. The original ACT core competency items were taken from A Practical Guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. You can use the following ACT Core-Competency Self-Rating Form to help you in your learning of ACT. The self-assessment describes the primary behaviors that a therapist would be engaging in if they were consistent with the ACT model. If you are learning ACT, you can use this form to forward your learning.

I’d recommend you rate yourself on this form periodically and then consider the following questions in relation to your self-ratings (these are just suggestions, you could always add others). Engaging in this process can help you in determining what areas to focus on next in terms of learning ACT:

  1. Notice what areas you rated yourself low on. Do you understand what the competency means? If not, you may want to consider figuring out what it would mean to engage this competency. What reading materials would you need? Could you post a question to the ACT listserv asking for advice?
  2. Outline what you are doing that is inconsistent with those areas you are rated low in.
  3. Consider some options on how you might change you behavior in relation to a competency. What might you do to improve your skills in that area? Is there something you need to read about? Is there some skill you need to practice? Are you willing to make room for the possible failure and sense of inadequacy or incompetence that might go along with practicing a new technique or skill, and still do it? Perhaps you could rehearse whatever it was with a colleague before you went into a session? Perhaps you could focus a whole session on that one process so that you have a chance to practice? Perhaps you post a question on the ACT listserv about how one could improve their practice in that area. What areas might you come up with to learn to improve your practice of ACT?
  4. A great place to start is to just pick one action, commit to it, and get started on it. Which one could it be?
  5. Go back and repeat this with other competencies where you have scored low.

This form could also be adapted to be an other-rating form and used in supervision. If anyone adapts it and uses it this way, I'd love to know how it went ( If you want to have your tapes rated by experts, some ACT trainers will do this for a fee. Contact them through the trainer pages. Phone or Skype supervision is also available in the same way.
