
The Advanced ACT Coaching Programme
Become a confident and effective ACT practitioner, achieving a greater impact with clients.
Take your ACT knowledge and skills to the next level.
What if becoming a more skilled ACT therapist…
Could deliver better outcomes for more of your clients…
And gave you the confidence you seek…
Was mapped out for you…
Step-by-step
And I helped you make it happen…
Introducing…

The Advanced ACT Coaching Programme (Adv-ACT)
Starting in March 2025!
I would like to help you become a highly skilled ACT therapist.
A proficient ACT therapist understands that practice, patience, and persistence lead to success.
My Goal:
Elevate your client outcomes to an 80%+ success rate by turning you into a proficient ACT Therapist.
- No more getting stuck in old patterns
- No more hoping for the best
- No more feeling paralysed by inadequacy
- No more drowning in complexity
When you complete the Advanced ACT Coaching Programme, you’ll know:
- What to do.
- How to do it.
- And get personal guidance to hold yourself accountable and implement the process.
take your first step
Book a Coaching Discovery Call
Book a no-obligation discovery call with Jim.
Jim will get to know your practice, walk you through his process, and answer questions, and together, you’ll discover if you are a good fit.
How it works
Here are the nine steps to the first Advanced ACT Group Coaching Programme.

The first thing we do is get to know your context by identifying your therapist’s values and struggles.
It may seem unconventional to start with you, but in many ways, your context is more significant than the client’s for improving your skills. It’s like we say to our clients; “the biggest limitations are usually the ones your mind places upon your behaviour.” Therapists are no different.
Our programme begins by exploring your professional values, e.g. what qualities you hope to embody as a therapist. We’ll identify the emotional and cognitive struggles that inhibit your effectiveness and develop your understanding of relevant behavioural principles so you can think like a functional contextualist.


In step two, we’ll get deeper inside your self-stories.
This isn’t therapy, but if you’re going to make progress, you need to see your self-stories so you can step outside them. Without awareness of the narrative pulling the strings, progress will be limited.
We’ll spend time identifying self-stories and judgements. You’ll learn to analyse themes and patterns in self-relating. By learning to spot these processes in you, you’ll have a significant advantage in helping your clients do the same.
Finally, you’ll practise spotting coherence in your stories to develop analogies that help you step outside them. Analogies are a powerful tool for building non-reactive awareness and creating the basis for psychological flexibility.

In step three, you start applying ACT skills to yourself in the therapy room.
You’ll build a self-practice/self-reflection routine, a powerful developmental tool in behavioural therapies.
You’ll learn to cultivate greater openness through cognitive and emotional flexibility exercises. And, we’ll experiment with breaking the ‘rules’ in therapy that have held you back.
Those first three steps constitute what Jim calls your Foundations.
Without developing a clear picture of the therapist you want to become and the inflexibility that stunts your progress, you’ll remain confined to the halls of mediocrity.
Once your foundations are complete – generally taking 4 to 5 weeks – you’ll move into the ‘Systematise Layer’.

We’ll start by creating systems that optimise your client’s chances of success.
You can only improve with what you measure, which is why you’ll learn to assess, nurture and track your client’s progress. We’ll help you implement a psychological flexibility measure called the CompACT-10 at the start and end of therapy so you can measure change.
Having practised psychotherapy since 2003, I’ve learned so much about helping people change their behaviour quickly and sustainably. I’ll share my best practices for optimising recovery and allow you to adopt a change-culture in your clinical practice using the 3 Ps framework.

Step five shifts the focus to your ACT knowledge and skills.
We’ll complete a Skills Assessment and establish an ACT-consistent baseline. You’ll learn to use the best self-assessment rating scales and submit a video recording for review. I’ll give you constructive feedback to help you identify your strengths and developmental targets.
By the end of step five, you’ll understand how to do ACT with fidelity and skill.

Once you’ve completed a comprehensive skills assessment, you have to ensure you can advance your practice. Consistently, incrementally and efficiently.
You’ll learn to implement a more sophisticated system for advancing your skills by building a culture of deliberate practice in your continuing professional development. Using role-play in small groups, you’ll practise experimenting with real-time feedback.
Following the Portland Peer Consultation format, you’ll support each other’s development by learning to spot ACT-consistent interventions and missed opportunities.
At the end of the Systematise Layer (which takes around three months + to implement correctly), your capacity to work more effectively will have changed markedly.

The next step is to become more proficient.
You can feel uncertain about what to do when you don’t have a manual. While following an intervention sequence is possible, it stops you from becoming an agile practitioner.
The ACT Process Cycle illustrates a roadmap for developing a consistent and effective approach from start to finish. You’ll learn to visualise the arc of ACT interventions and refine your functional analysis skills.
You’ll improve your ability to disrupt aversively controlled patterns and shape psychologically flexible responses through ongoing guided practice.

One of the significant challenges for therapists is applying a model to real-world settings.
In this step, you’ll improve your capacity to see through complex client interactions. You’ll expand your understanding of the therapeutic relationship in ACT and learn to respond to ruptures in the alliance from a CBS perspective.
Guiding principles are the allies that allow you to see the processes behind chaos and defensiveness, leading to a more effective set of responses in your toolkit.

And then you’ll reach step nine, the point at which you really are a more proficient ACT therapist.
We close our programme through reflective practice. ACT and CBS invite us to adopt a process-oriented approach to life and therapy in which we let go of the need for unattainable outcomes. It’s a counter-cultural philosophy, which, in Jim’s experience, often leads to greater life fulfilment and professional advancement.
We’ll explore the process of successful client engagement and ending in therapy. We’ll draw on your personal experiences of interpersonal loss and change to inform an effective therapeutic relationship that can resolve conflict.
After completing six months in our Advanced ACT Group Coaching Programme (Adv-ACT), you’ll have gone from doubtful to confident.
You’ll be well on the way to achieving an 80%+ success rate for your clients.
take your first step
Book a Coaching Discovery Call
Book a no-obligation discovery call with Jim.
Jim will get to know your practice, walk you through his process, and answer questions, and together, you’ll discover if you are a good fit.
Becoming a highly skilled ACT therapist takes more than building a toolkit of interventions.
The Advanced ACT Coaching Programme (Adv-ACT) takes you on the shortest possible path from where you are now to being confident in your abilities, navigating complexity and having strong client outcomes.
It’s a 9-step programme that will transform your practice and turn you into an agile ACT therapist.
If you’re ready to go from inconsistency to knowing how to help whoever comes through the door – the way a resourceful ACT therapist is, then the Advanced-ACT Coaching Programme is for you.
Since working my way to ACBS peer-reviewed trainer status many years ago, I’ve helped 1000s of therapists integrate ACT into their clinical practice. While many short courses are available worldwide, this is the only coaching programme for advanced beginners who want to develop their knowledge and skills.
Self-directed courses have an average completion rate of just 5%. Without the input of an expert coach, you’re highly unlikely to get a return on your investment. Our coaching programme gives you the structure, interaction and accountability to achieve your goals.
Cohort-based programmes like ours reach a staggering 85% average completion rate, making them the wiser choice for advancing your knowledge and skills.
We know how challenging it can be to generalise what you’ve learned on a course or from a textbook into real-world settings. People are different and bring unique struggles, which can leave you floundering. It’s rarely possible to become proficient without the ongoing support of a specialist and a peer group.
Since 2022, I’ve run an online community for ACT therapists, and I’ve been consulting 1:1 for many years before that. One of my big discoveries during that time is that nothing slows down ACT therapists more than one pesky question:
“What should I be doing?”
Well, having consulted with 100s of therapists, one thing I know for sure is that you need to practise the Head, Heart and Hands of ACT to become highly skilled. Once you learn to integrate these three elements, you can move forward to becoming one of the best in your field.
Your clients stop dropping out, and they do the work. The confusion, doubt and uncertainty dissipate, and you start to feel confident, grounded and competent.
That’s what the Adv-ACT Coaching Programme is all about.
We start with your context (the heart), allowing you to apply ACT from the inside out, giving you a more profound sense of its principles (the head) and practices (the hands). We support your development by establishing systems for developing therapy skills and optimising your client’s progress.
Finally, you learn to engage clients in a process-driven approach, adopting a humble, brave and grounded stance, giving you the knowledge and skills to work with complexity and in-session behaviour.
It’s the most comprehensive support programme I’ve ever created.
We give you the roadmap, the support, the accountability, the training – everything you need.
Just so you know, you only need to work with me to follow the steps successfully.
You can see the nine steps of our Adv-ACT Coaching Programme above.
Who’s it for?
The Adv-ACT Coaching Programme is IDEAL for therapists who:
The Adv-ACT is NOT for therapists that:
Your Investment
Your investment to join the Programme and become an effective ACT Therapist – equipping you with the knowledge, skills and systems that will serve you throughout your career – AND at the same time transform the lives of at least 80% of your clients is just £395 per month for six months.
That’s a total investment of £2370.
You’ll get dedicated coaching from Jim Lucas, an ACBS Peer-reviewed ACT Trainer.
How does it work?
- Six Months of Group Coaching following the 9-Step Programme
- Video Lessons & Syllabus materials.
- (Almost) Weekly Group Practice: every 3 out of 4 weeks per month.
- Unlimited 1:1 Support from me; book as many 15-minute sessions as possible.
- Peer support from fellow programme participants
- Access to the Openforwards ACT Practitioners Community
- Limited to Five People per month
take your first step
Book a Coaching Discovery Call
Book a no-obligation discovery call with Jim.
Jim will get to know your practice, walk you through his process, and answer questions, and together, you’ll discover if you are a good fit.