Values play a key role in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to increase psychological flexibility. ACT emphasizes acceptance rather than resistance, and the “commitment” part of the name comes from taking committed actions in service of our values. Values as directions We live in a very goal-oriented world. Goals serve […]
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A fellow blogger wrote a while back about creating your peace, and it got me thinkng about the relationship between non-acceptance and suffering in the context of mental illness. Mental illness isn’t fun, that much is clear. How we relate to illness, wellness, and recovery can evolve over time depending on the individual illness, how
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I don’t currently do therapy and haven’t had a lot of success with it in the past, but I’m very pro-therapy in general. I’ve picked up a collection of therapy tools from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), and various others that are handy to pull out of
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The topic of dead people goals came to mind a while back when I was commenting on a post by Quiet Person Loud Thoughts. I couldn’t remember where I’d first heard of it, but with some hunting around, it looks like I got the idea from Susan David’s book Emotional Agility. The original idea is
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Stop Avoiding Stuff, by Matthew S. Boone, Jennifer Gregg, and Lisa W. Coyne, tackles avoidance using techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy. It teaches microskills that you can use as alternatives to avoidance, and suggests teeny tiny practices along the way. The book starts off with a look at what avoidance is and why we
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The ACT Workbook for Depression & Shame is written by psychologists Matthew W. McKay, Michael Jason Greenberg, and Patrick J. Fanning. It’s based on acceptance and commitment therapy and focused on addressing the defectiveness schema in depression. The book begins and ends with a series of several self-assessment questionnaires to let you see how much
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“Happiness is a choice.” It’s a message that you probably come across fairly often. While it’s probably meant to be motivational and positive most of the time, if you start to poke at it a bit, it has some fundamental flaws. I believe that happiness is not a choice, at least not when something like
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Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life by Steven C. Hayes explains how concepts from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can get you unstuck from your thoughts so you’re free to actually start living. The book takes a brief look at relational frame theory, on which ACT is based, but doesn’t get bogged
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Escaping the Emotional Roller Coaster by Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona draws upon acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) techniques to help “super-feelers” work with their emotions more effectively. What is a super-feeler? It’s someone who struggles with emotional regulation, meaning they experience intense emotions and strong emotional reactions. The book focuses on emotional sensitivity; this is
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that takes the stance that avoidance and resistance to internal experiences identified as negative is what causes cognitive distress. To resolve distress, ACT suggests that we need to employ strategies like mindfulness, de-fusion from our thoughts, and recognizing the self as the context in which
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