acceptance & commitment therapy
TRANSCRIPT
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Reflection
– Think about the last time something incredibly painful, hurtful, or stressful happened in your life.
– What kind of responses did you get that made you feel truly cared for, supported, accepted, and understood?
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Typical Type of Responses
– Quoting proverbs at you: “Plenty more fish in the sea,” “Time heals all wounds,” “Every cloud has a silver lining”
– Telling you to “think positively”
– Asking about your situation but then quickly changing the subject
– Giving advice: “What you should do is this,” “Have you thought about doing such and such?”
– Trumping your pain: “Oh yes, I’ve been through this many a time myself. Here’s what worked for me.”
– Telling you to get over it: “Build a bridge,” “Move on,” “Let it go,” “Isn’t it time you got over this?”
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Typical Type of Responses
– Discounting your feelings: “No use crying over spilt milk,” “It’s not that bad,” “Cheer up!” “Stiff upper lip”
– Telling you your thoughts are irrational or that you do too much negative thinking
– Trivializing or diminishing your pain: “Put it into perspective—there are kids starving in Africa.”
– Trying to distract you from your pain: “Let’s get drunk!” “Let’s go out and have some fun,” “Let’s eat some chocolate,” or “Let’s watch a movie.”
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Typical Type of Responses
– Not coming to visit or spend time with you or even actively avoiding you.
– Playing “Mr. Fix-it”: Coming up with all sorts of helpful solutions for your problem.
– Saying they want to help but not following up
– Listening impatiently .
– Putting up with or tolerating your distress but not truly accepting it.
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Typical Type of Responses
– Reassuring you: “It’ll be all right, you’ll see,” “It’s not as bad as you think,” “You’ll get through this.”
(Note: Many people see reassurance as a compassionate act—and it can be at times—but the problem is that it easily puts the reassurer in a one-up position, like a parent reassuring a young child.)
– How is it to get these responses?
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Our Reactions
– Feel hurt Irritated Rejected
– Invalidated Unappreciated Misunderstood
– Offended ???????
– Timing
– Preceded by Caring & Empathy
– When we are hurting, all us want to feel understood, accepted, and cared for before we are ready to start looking for solutions or strategies
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Understood, Accepted, & Cared– Giving you a hug, embrace, or a cuddle
– Holding your hand
– Placing an arm around you
– Validating your pain: “This must be so hard for you” or “I can’t begin to imagine what you’re going through” or “I can see you’re in terrible pain.”
– Saying nothing, just sitting with you and allowing you to be
– Holding you while you cry or even crying with you
– Offering support: “Is there anything I can do to help?”
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Understood, Accepted, & Cared– Asking how you feel
– Sharing their own reactions: “I’m so sorry,” “I’m so angry,” “I feel so helpless; I wish there was something I could do,” or even “I don’t know what to say”
– Creating space for your pain: “Do you want to talk about it?” “It’s okay to cry,” or “We don’t have to talk; I’m happy just to sit here with you”
– Giving support unconditionally, such as making dinner for you, or taking care of your kids, or helping you out with your daily tasks
– Making the effort to visit and spend some time with you in person
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Understood, Accepted, & Cared– Genuinely listening as you tell them about what you’re going
through
– Saying something like “I’m here for you” and meaning it
– These sorts of responses all send the same message: I’m here for you, I care about you, I accept you, I understand you, I see you’re in pain, and I want to help.
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Who is the Person in Your Life:
– Who can always be there for you, in any moment, no matter what happens?
– Who can understand, validate, and empathize with your pain better than anyone else on the planet?
– Who can truly know just how much you are suffering?
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YOU ARE
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TWO ELEMENTS
– 1. BUILDING SELF-COMPASSION!!
Building a good relationship with ourselves is essential for inner fulfillment, especially when we run into a challenging problem or situation.
– 2. BEING PRESENT
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Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT)– 1. Connecting with the Present Moment (Be Here Now) – 2. Cognitive Defusion (Watch Your Thinking)– 3. Acceptance (Open Up) – 4. Self-as-Context (Pure Awareness or the Thinking-Self) – 5. Values (Know What Matters) – 6. Committed Action (Do What It Takes)
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1. Connecting w/the Present Moment (Be Here Now)
– Present means: consciously connecting with and engaging in whatever is happening in this moment. Here-and-now experience.
– Humans find it very hard to stay present, absorbed in the past or the future*
– It is easy to get caught up in our thoughts and lose touch with the world around us.
– Most of the time we tend to operate on automatic pilot, merely “going through the motions.”
– Awareness to either the physical world around us or the psychological world within us, or to both simultaneously.
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Why be Present? (Be Here Now) 3 Main Reasons
– To truly appreciate the richness and fullness of life, you have to be here while it’s happening!*
– The power to act exists only in this moment
– To act effectively
Happening, Reacting, & how we wish to respond
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Being Present Involves Connecting
– Paying full attention, with openness & curiosity– Connection is essential for effective action. – The more we get entangled in our thoughts, the
less attention we pay.
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Getting Disconnected from the Present– The more we focus on unpleasant thoughts and feelings, the more
we disconnect from the present moment.
– The Not Good Enough Story (NGE)
– The Past
– Replay old hurts and disappointments,
– We relive old losses and grievances,
– We reignite old resentments and ancient grudges, and
– We stew over painful events that can never be undone.
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The Not Good Enough Story (NGE) – The Future
– We see all sorts of scary scenarios, things that might and could go horribly wrong.
– We get bogged down in fears, worries, and anxieties:
– Fear of failure, fear of rejection,
– Fear of getting old or sick, fear of screwing up the kids,
– Fear of loneliness or poverty or injury, or
– Fear of the uncertain and the unknown.
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ACT Exercise1. Connecting w/the Present Moment (Be Here Now)
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2. Cognitive Defusion (Watch Your Thinking) – Defusion means learning to “step back” and separate or detach
from our thoughts, images, and memories.
– We watch our thinking instead of getting tangled up in it.
– We see our thoughts for what they are—nothing more or less than words or pictures.
– What is Fusion?
– A thought & the thing it refers to—the story and the event—become stuck together, as one.
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What is Fusion?
– We become fused with our thoughts. – Thoughts may seem to be the absolute truth, or
– Commands we must obey, or
– Threats we must eliminate, or
– Something we have to give all our attention to
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What is Fusion?
– When we defuse from our thoughts, they lose all their power over us.
– Negative stories are not seen as a problem or the enemy in their own right.*
– The aim is to increase our self-awareness & acting.
– Whether a thought is true is not that important.
– Suppose you are making some serious mistakes in your work
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Thought Discernment
– Does it help me to be the person I want to be?
– Does it help me to build the sort of relationships I’d like?
– Does it help me to connect with what I truly value?
– Does it help me, in the long term, to create a rich, full, and meaningful life?
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Cognitive Defusion
– Control Strategy Vs. Acceptance Strategy
– Acceptance: uncomfortable thoughts and feelings*
– Stop the struggle & refocus on something useful
– Defusion means we separate from our thoughts
– Thoughts may or may not be true
– Step back from our thoughts & disentangle ourselves from them*
– If our thoughts are helpful then we make good use of them
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Cognitive Defusion Paradox
– The aim of defusion is not to get rid of unpleasant thoughts, but rather to see them for what they are—just words—and to let go of struggling with them
– Helpful We Use; Unhelpful We Defuse
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ACT Exercise2. Cognitive Defusion (Watch Your Thinking)
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Cognitive DefusionName & Label Your Thoughts
– For example, we could silently say to ourselves, “Thinking”
– Naming the process of thinking helps us to separate a little from all those words—to step back and get a little distance
– The & Story
– Create a distance by producing a title that begins with the word “The” and ends with the word “Story,” for example,
– “The ‘My Life Is Over’ Story” or
– “The ‘Old and Lonely’ Story.”
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2. Cognitive Defusion (Watch Your Thinking)More Practice
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3. Acceptance (Open Up)
– Acceptance means opening up and making room for painful feelings, sensations, urges, and emotions.
– We drop the struggle with them, give them some breathing space, and allow them to be as they are.
– This doesn’t mean liking, wanting, or holding them
– Fighting or avoiding our feelings does not create room for them; expansion does.
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3. Acceptance (Open Up)
Observing-Self– In practicing expansion connect with
our emotions through the observing self.
– This enables us to experience our emotions directly, to see them as they actually are, rather than as the thinking-self claims they are.
– View negative emotions for what they are: relatively small and harmless (even if they’re ugly)
Thinking-Self– Views negative emotions as giants,
and dangerous demons that must avoided
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3. Acceptance (Open Up)When We Take a Look We Learn that:
– it is not as big as it seems—that we can make room for it.
– it cannot harm us, even though it feels unpleasant.
– it cannot control our arms and legs, even though it may make us shiver and shake.
– there is no need to run and hide from it, nor to fight and struggle with it.
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ACT Exercise3. Acceptance (Open Up)
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The story LineDefusion
– A bunch of words & pictures inside our head:
– beliefs, ideas,
– assumptions, reasons,
– judgments, impressions,
– images, memories,
– & interpretations,
What Our Body SensesExpansion
– All the different feelings and sensations inside our body.
– We observe the negative feelings and sensations and make room for them.
5. Self-as-Context Two major components
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5. Self-as-Context Qualities of the Observing-Self
– Can’t be judged as good or bad, right or wrong, because all it does is observe.
– Sees things as they are, without judging, criticizing, or doing any of the other thinking processes that set us up for a struggle with reality.
– Therefore, it gives acceptance in its truest, purest form.
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ACT Exercise4. Self-as-Context
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5. Values (Know What Matters)
– Deep in your heart, what do you want your life to be about?
– What do you want to stand for as you use your time on this planet?
– What do you want to do with your brief time on this planet?
– What truly matters to you in the big picture?
– What sort of personal qualities do you want to cultivate?
– How do you want to behave toward yourself, others, and the world around you?
– What personal qualities do you want to cultivate?
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5. Values (Know What Matters)
– Purpose gives our life direction, and presence allows us to make the most of our journey.
– Values are about how you want to behave
– Values describe how we want to behave on an ongoing basis.
– Are your “chosen life directions.”
– Values are like a compass because they give us direction and guide our ongoing journey.
– Help us find vitality through meaningful action despite all the pain.
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6. Committed Action (Do What It Takes)
– Taking effective action, guided by our values.
– Committed action means “doing what it takes” to live by our values even if that brings up pain and discomfort.
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ACT ExerciseSelf-Compassion
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Thank You
Josue Guadarrama
Go Cougs