Melody Sylvain, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Could you please tell us a little about you and your background?
I am a BCBA and have 11 years of experience in the field. My clinical interests include strengthening psychological flexibility and working with children & adolescents on the autism spectrum.

How did you become interested in CBS?
ACT and RFT have been wonderful in terms of the contribution to my skills and knowledge as a professional. I believe that it is very important for behavior analysts to be more and more concerned with the application of ACT within our work.

Could you tell us about your research and application interests?
Adolescents and young adults with autism, conducting ACT functional analyses, supporting parents of individuals with autism, and using ACT in supervisory and mentoring relationships.

Could you tell us about your experience at the World Conference this year?
It was phenomenal. I learned a great deal and truly enjoyed presentations from Emily Sandoz, Tom Szabo, and Evelyn Gould. 

Was there anything that stood out to you about the CBS community?
I enjoy the fact that the majority of the CBS community is open, vulnerable and exemplifies what it looks like to apply behavioral science to their own lives. I would like to see more diversity and representation among the
speakers and more people of color at the next conference. 

What did you take back from your experience that has been helpful to you?
Clinical applications particularly from the interbehaviorism perspective. 

Do you have anything else that you would like to share with the community?
No. Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend. I have truly enjoyed it.

Deirdre James, Houston, TX, USA

Could you please tell us a little about you and your background?
Hello my name is Deirdre James and I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I am originally from Philadelphia but I am currently practicing in Texas. I work full time in an academic setting and also provide therapy to clients in my private practice. I have spent some time working as a behavior therapist with children in multiple environments. I also enjoy working with people coping with trauma, grief, women's issues, couples, and individuals with anxiety and depression. I hope to continue to enhance my therapeutic skills to help as many people as possible manage the challenges of life. 

How did you become interested in CBS?
I originally became interested in Contextual Behavioral Science through a professional therapist social media group. They introduced me to my first official Acceptance and Commitment Therapy training. In that group I joined a cohort and was able to learn more about the application of ACT with clients. The mentor group lead me to the ACBS website and suggested I attend the conference. 

Could you tell us about your research and application interests?
I hope to write and publish a book about feelings for elementary students using ACT and RFT as a basis for the book. I would like to highlight release activities for children to see ways they can physically express their emotions appropriately. I am also interested in researching how ACT can be helpful with Perinatal mental health and grief.

Could you tell us about your experience at the World Conference this year?
I really enjoyed the conference. One of my favorite parts was the small interest group meetings that gave me the chance to talk to some leaders in the ACBS community. One of my favorite quotes was "Just because you said it once doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it again. You don’t always need something new. Educate your clients to see. Keep repeating. Keep singing the same songs until the client sings along. Repetition is the mother of learning." I believe that has helped me grow as a therapist and know that sometimes you do have to encourage clients with the same information. Before I felt the need to always give them something new to try in fear of sounding like a broken record. It just gives me comfort in knowing that repetition is important. The meditation/yoga sessions were also a great addition to a virtual conference. It allowed me to get movement and stay engaged in the learning and community.

Was there anything that stood out to you about the CBS community?
The thing that stood out to me the most was how welcoming everyone was during the conference. People were willing to share resources to help further my knowledge of contextual behavioral science. There is an abundance of information in the CBS community. I look forward to continuing learning from the people I met and the resources they shared.

What did you take back from your experience that has been helpful to you?
I honestly learned more about Relational Frame Theory and contextualism. But one of the most helpful things I learned from the conference is to incorporate writing time into my sessions. I now prompt my clients to write letters of compassion to themselves when they find it difficult to be compassionate. I have facilitated multiple experiential exercises for clients to notice what they are feeling and to separate themselves from the feeling.

Do you have anything else that you would like to share with the community?
I really appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow from the conference and look forward to being a part of the community. I would love to volunteer in some capacity if there are opportunities available to do so.

William Hwang, Milwaukie, OR, USA

Could you please tell us a little about you and your background?
I am a clinical psychologist practicing in the Portland Metro Area in Oregon. I received my Psy.D. degree in Clinical Psychology from the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver. Before my graduate school training, I worked at a behavioral health facility for at-risk children and adolescents in Leesburg, Virginia and spent some summers working as a camp counselor at a summer camp for children who needed extra help with emotional and behavioral challenges.

How did you become interested in CBS?
I was exposed to ACT, really for the first time, during my graduate school training at the University of Denver and was immediately drawn to it. In 2014, I attended the ACT bootcamp in Reno, Nevada (perhaps you were at the Eldorado too!) which furthered my interest in all things CBS. Afterwards, I continued to further my understanding of concepts like RFT and helped other students grasp these ideas as a graduate assistant for our program's ACT course. I have continued to utilize CBS throughout my work, primarily with individual clients in an outpatient setting.

Could you tell us about your research and application interests?
My interests lie predominantly in the application side of things as opposed to research - you would understand why if you viewed my grades in my past statistics courses. I am interested in helping people let go of limiting beliefs and living freer, fuller lives. CBS has been a wonderful organizing framework by which change has been possible both for the clients I work with as well as myself in being able to relate to ourselves with more kindness, courage, and confidence. I believe there is still a lot of work that can be done to help us humans, especially with nondominant identities, discover and defuse from the subconscious messages we have internalized about what society says we can and cannot be in this world. Values work in ACT has been extremely helpful in giving my clients the motivation to overcome stigma and self-doubt.

Could you tell us about your experience at the World Conference this year?
It was amazing to attend the World Conference this year and engage in workshops led by ACBS practitioners around the globe. The virtual nature of the conference allowed for access in a way that may have been prohibitive in another year due to travel limitations. I appreciated being able to get a more intimate glimpse into what life might be like for fellow ACBS members and presenters by seeing people in their personal milieu during the video conference meetings.

Was there anything that stood out to you about the CBS community?
I loved to see the CBS community's great sense of humor be showcased throughout this year's World Conference. It touched my heart and made me quite proud when multiple presenters paid homage to the native and indigenous peoples who have been displaced from the land on which the presenters' very institutions are situated. This spoke to how deeply embodied and enacted the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are in the culture of ACBS. Lastly, it inspired me to see a multitude of mental health practitioners of different races, ethnicities, and other diverse backgrounds serving not only as attendees but as presenters. This sort of role modeling and representation is what has given me the confidence to become a psychologist myself and I imagine it means the world to other burgeoning therapists and researchers as well.

What did you take back from your experience that has been helpful to you?
These annual conferences help remind me of the reasons I chose this calling in the first place and help me connect to a shared cause bigger than myself or another one ACBS member. I learned so much this year from how we can experience guilt and do it anyway to the way to conceptualize attachment as a form of psychological inflexibility to how to gamify therapy. These ideas have been poignant ones that I have been able to incorporate into my subsequent work with clients.

Do you have anything else that you would like to share with the community?
Keep on changing and inspiring the world! Hope to see you next year!

Bianca R. Augustine, Norfolk, VA, USA

Could you please tell us a little about you and your background?
I identify as a Black, French-Creole female, originally from a small town in the Acadian area of Louisiana, USA. Throughout my upbringing, I was often one of few, if not the only, person of color in many spaces that I occupied. This continued throughout college, my master’s program, my doctoral program, and now in my professional spheres. Additionally, I am a first-generation college student and recently completed my Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision at a large university in Virginia, USA. Now that I have completed my studies, I work as a Resident in Counseling in Virginia, specializing in trauma and sex/sexuality concerns. ACT is my primary modality for treatment and has been beneficial in serving my clients, most of whom belong to minoritized populations. Additionally, I teach master's counseling courses for two universities in the USA as an adjunct professor. Sadly, many of the students I have taught were not familiar with ACT, nor other CBS modalities of counseling. It brings me so much joy to introduce ACT, CFT, and other CBS.

How did you become interested in CBS?
During my master's and Ph.D. programs, none of the faculty in my departments studied, researched, taught, or utilized ACT, leaving me to learn about this modality independently with limited mentorship. Fortunately, two of my peers in my master's program independently attended an ACT workshop, and shared their newfound knowledge with me. This ignited my interest and passion for ACT, fostering my exploration of ACT modalities, books, research, and trainings and later CFT!

Could you tell us about your research and application interests?
My clinical and research interests revolve around two broad areas- trauma and sex/sexuality concerns. More specifically, within the field of trauma counseling, I am especially interested in and specialize in traumas unique to individuals identifying within historically oppressed and minoritized populations, especially those identifying within the Black diaspora. I am also very passionate about and specialize in counseling sexology, or counseling issues related to sex, sexuality, and gender. I have found ACT very useful in helping my clients engage in valued living as a means to healing from and/or coping with trauma, including race-based traumas, while further developing their resilience. Similarly, ACT has been extremely beneficial in my work within the field of counseling sexology, as I aim to help clients identify and live within their sexuality-related values, defuse from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, and live a fuller life!

Could you tell us about your experience at the World Conference this year?
My experience at the 2021 World Conference was nothing short of amazing! I attended numerous workshops that were very beneficial for my personal and professional growth. At this year's World Conference, I was also introduced to CFT!!

Was there anything that stood out to you about the CBS community?
An aspect of the CBS community that stands out the most to me is its dedication to social justice and multiculturalism. Of the multiple professional organizations I belong to and numerous conferences I have attended, CBS continues to not only discuss social justice and multiculturalism, but also puts these discussions into action.

What did you take back from your experience that has been helpful to you?
There were so many concepts and ideas I took back from the World Conference 2021! At this year's conference, I was exposed to CFT. As a result, I have begun integrating CFT into my clinical work and have begun teaching my master's counseling classes about it. Furthermore, the conference provided me with further information regarding the implementation of ACT that I have infused into my clinical work. Workshops I attended at the World Conference also strengthened my overall knowledge of and passion for ACT and provided me with valuable information that I was able to share with my students, mentees, and colleagues. Furthermore, workshops I attended inspired me to develop workshops/presentations on the use of ACT with the populations I am most passionate about, including individuals within the Black diaspora, those in romantic partnerships, and individuals identifying as affectionate or gender expansive.

Shatangela Gibbs, Southfield, MI, USA

Could you please tell us a little about you and your background?
I am Shatangela Gibbs, I am currently work as a high school counselor and Psychotherapist in Michigan. I have been in the field for the last 3.5 years and it has been very rewarding as well as an educational journey.

How did you become interested in CBS?
I became interested in contextual behavior science after taking a training in ACT.

Could you tell us about your research and application interests?
I am interested in doing more research in ACT with women of color experiencing trauma. Learning how mindfulness could be implemented to assist with managing triggers. 

Could you tell us about your experience at the World Conference this year?
My experience with the World Conference this year was very interesting. Once i figured things out it was exciting to participate in the different sessions and meeting other professionals from different parts of the world was refreshing and inspirational to a new clinician like myself.

Was there anything that stood out to you about the CBS community?
Diversity and the willingness of the professionals who participated in the conference to impart knowledge and to assist with connecting me to other professionals who had similar interest that could mentor me and help me to explore CBS much deeper than I had imagined.

What did you take back from your experience that has been helpful to you?
Learning about different techniques that can be used to assist clients with deescalation, understanding of self, and coping strategies that can be adaptive to any client. It was an overwhelming amount of knowledge and I am
grateful that I had this opportunity to connect with so many professionals.