ACT and Recovery with Dr. Thomas Szabo

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 a professor at Capella University. He graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno under the mentorship of W. Larry Williams and Steven C. Hayes. Over the last 15 years, Tom has sought to develop iterations of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy suitable to the needs of ABA practitioners and within their specialized scope of practice. He has offered ACT training to university students, parents, children, senior executives and frontline staff, and couples learning effective partner skills. With his students, Tom is currently investigating ACT and RFT strategies to promote learning and improved performance as well as Prosocial in the workplace. His ABA ACT Brief Functional Analysis lab, which students named the Not Not Yeti Lab, investigates the use of function-based ACT interventions to address issues of power, privilege, race, gender, (dis)ability, language, and dialect. Tom is also the second chair of an international non-governmental organization, Commit & Act, which teaches women, children, and couples in Sierra Leone behavior-based strategies for partnership and empowerment. He has published empirical and conceptual papers, book chapters and has written a skills manual for behavior analysts learning ACT soon to be in print from New Harbinger Press. 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.