ACT Flashcards
6 pathologies of ACT
Fusion -Defusion Avoidance - Experiential Acceptance Lost Values - Present moment awareness Attachment to self -Self As Context Uncertain Values Unworkable Action
Pathology:Fusion
When fusion is operating, you’re bonded to your thoughts and emotions. You believe that everything in your mind is the absolute truth.
Pathology:Fusion
When fusion is operating, you’re bonded to your thoughts and emotions. You believe that everything in your mind is the absolute truth. In a fused state, your thoughts OWN you.
Pathology:Avoidance
to avoid situations, people, thoughts, feelings, and experiences that are painful or otherwise unpleasant. But avoidance consumes a lot of time and energy, and it greatly interferes with the ability to live a purposeful, valued life.
Pathology: Lost Values
Being on a beautiful tropical island on a sunny day, but your instead of being in the present, you are lost in the storm of thoughts that rage in your mind.
when turbulent thoughts and emotions erase the value of your experience, to the point where you feel that you no longer even have access to the things you value most in life, you can enhance your mental health and restore your well-being simply by connecting with the moment in which you find yourself—right now, right here—in the present.
Pathology: Lost Values
Being on a beautiful tropical island on a sunny day, but your instead of being in the present, you are lost in the storm of thoughts that rage in your mind. Maybe it is a storm of guilt, or a storm of fear. Either way, it distracts you from the present moment.
when turbulent thoughts and emotions erase the value of your experience, to the point where you feel that you no longer even have access to the things you value most in life, you can enhance your mental health and restore your well-being simply by connecting with the moment in which you find yourself—right now, right here—in the present.
Pathology: Attached to self
Being attached to self, the made-up self that is nothing more than a by-product of our thoughts and feelings, means buying into every idea or belief about ourselves that happens to cross our minds.
We believe that we are what we think.
Pathology: Uncertain Values
Suppose you’re kayaking when—whoosh!—you’re suddenly sucked into a whirlpool. You spin around and around in your tiny craft, and even though you notice several ways out, you can’t say why you should or should not take any particular one. In other words, you can’t decide just how you want to escape from the whirlpool because you’re uncertain about the value of any one approach. So you just keep spinning.
Pathology:Unworkable Action
an unworkable action is anything you do to block yourself from creating a life you think is worth living.
Defusion: Labeling
The act of using words to label and categize thoughts creates distance.
Labeling is best when the theme that runs through a group of thoughts are identified and labeled. Then thoughts can be categorized like songs that belongs to the same album, or chapters that belong to the same book, or episodes of the same series.
technique: Label the series of thoughts by giving it an album, book or series title.
Defusion: Reason giver
The mind is a thought factory. A reason giver.
When the mind is faced with a situation it will give reasons for why that situation exists.
“the dog made the girl cry”
- the dog bit her
- the dog died
- the scared her
Defusion: busy street metaphor
Walking down a busy street there are a many people walking in different directions, some of them are trying to get your attention. Some are asking for donations for a charity, others are sales people trying to sell their products.
your mind is like the busy street. Thoughts are like the people walking past you. Sometimes a sales person will come up to you and try to sell you on something. When you stop and engage with that person (thought) then you become fused. To become unfused, we need to keep walking
Defusion: Fact vs Thought
Evaluating wether a thought is of value or of service, instead of taking it as a fact.
Do not struggle with or try to negate a thought, or try to ascertain if it is true or not (truth finding), but simple notice the thought and ask “is it beneficial, is it workable, is it useful?”
Techniques:
I am having the thought that ….. Is it useful? Is it workable? Is it beneficial?”
Thanx minister …
There’s the commentary box again.
Mind tweet
I’ve heard that thought before
Defusion: Survival
When fused with Survival response
Recognize, Accept, Identify and lable, Non Attachment
What is ACT?
ACT is a skillset that helps us cope with negative, painful, or difficult thoughts and feelins, by reducing their impact through mindfulness, and by clarifying what is truly important and meaningful to us and to take
action that enriches our life.
How is ACT different from conventional approaches?
ACT assumes that:
(a) quality of life is primarily dependent upon mindful, values-guided action, and
(b) this is possible regardless of how many symptoms you have—provided that you respond to your symptoms
with mindfulness.
Defusion: Radio metaphor
The mind is like a radio in that it is constantly talking
Their are a number of radio stations
- 9 “you’re a failure” Show
- 3 “Fraud”
- 1 “Guilt”
and so forth
Noticing what station you are tuned into, and when you tune into those stations.
What are thoughts?
Thoughts are coginitions that show up as:
Comments Ideas Questions Answers Opinions Images Memories Judgements Assumptions Sounds
Each of which has submodialities that can be manipulated or changed
seeing thoughts as just thoughts helps as to defuse
Defusion: Snowflakes falling
Imagery exercise: Standing on top of a mountain peak with snow flakes falling all around, some snow flakes land on you or in your hands, look at them, observe, hold them gently, put them down and let them go, watch them collect around you, some melt and run down the mountain where they form rivers, eventually they all melt
Defusion: Tug of War metaphor
We tend to fight with our thoughts, we tend to hold on so tightly that we tend to get dragged around by them, and before long we are in a war with them tuggin and pulling.
While we are focusing on fighting with our thoughts we lose sight of what is really important, we become disconnected from our values
although we cannot let go of the thoughts we can only let go of the struggle
when we stop struggling and let go, the thoughts will follow us around constantly try and tempt us into picking up the rope, inviting us into a game of tug of war, but it is up to us whether we want to accept that invite or not,
Experiential Acceptance
Experiential Acceptance is the process of practising non-judgmental awareness to internal and external events. Through this practice, one recognises that there are some things that are out of our control and that if we let go of the struggle with this, we can make decisions about the part we have control over – our actions.
Experiental Acceptance: 3 kinds of discomfort
Ordinary discomfort: Things that can’t be changed. Things that occur as a matter of life. Aging, life, death, birth, ordinary pain.
Poduced by Change: Clinging and attachment: Trying to hold on to what is desirable, or not getting what we want.
Conditioned state: Thoughts and sensations, responses to conditions or life that causes discomfort
Experiential acceptance: Pain and Pleasure
We tend to avoid pain and move towards pleasure, but Pain is unescapable
We experience pain by comparison:
when given two pieces of delicious food the one more delicious than the other by comparison, then we might develop a preference or desire for the more delicious one, and less of a preference for the other one. When we don’t get our prefered choice, we might eperience a kind of pain
We experience pain by avoidance
we avoid going to the gym because it is painful, So we choose to stay on the coach because in comparison it is much more immediatly enjoyable, however the pleasure is short lived as it is usually followed by the pain of guilt or low-self esteem and even the pain of chronic illness from not exercising. In contrast, by not avoiding the initial pain of exercise, we experience pleasure afterwards in the form of health, higher self esteem and confindence that is long lasting.
Experiential acceptance: Expansion
7 steps
- Elicit the discomfort
- Notice the most intense sensation
- Describe sensation (sub-modalities)
- Breathe
- Allow/make room/accept
- Notice again how you are hold that discomfort
- Debrief
The aim is not to change the discomfort but to hold it differently
Experiental acceptance: River of discomfort metaphor
metaphor to demonstrate what happens when we put things off because of discomfort
Draw a river with a narrow mouth at one end and a wide mouth at the other. At the narrow end the water is flowing much stronger and faster than at the wide end.
Write your values next to the river at the narrow end and imagine what life would be like if you crossed the river of discomfort to the other side with those values…
Now imagine instead of crossing the river, you avoid crossing and move downwards to the wide end. Now write the opposite of the values you wrote at the top, an d imagine what life would be like crossing at the wide end of the river where the discomfort is less intense and it is easy to cross, but it takes a much longer time.
Experiental acceptance: Willingess and discomfort
facing Discomfort can initially be very uncomfortable, bu the more we do it the more comfortable we be come with our discomfort.
like throwing water on a burning coal, the first time it makes a lot of noise and produces a lot of smoke. less the second time and even less the third time untill there is no discomfort and we can sit comfortable with the coal.
It takes willingness to face discomfort
Experiental acceptance: Promoting acceptance through validation
To defuse from negative lables
Lable - component experiences- valdate experiences- willingness to hold
anxiety - increased heart rate/ sweaty palms - explain the sympathetic nervous response - explore willingess to experience increased heart rate/ sweaty palms next time they do x
The Present Moment
the process of becoming acquainted with sensory experiences in the present moment. Through this, clients are able to develop a platform of awareness that is a crucial foundation for the exercises in ACT. It feels nice to be grounded.
Values
Are ways of showing up and being in the world. They are Guideposts for our lives
Values: Values vs Rules
Rules are stated with modals of necessity (must, mustn’t, have to, should) and modals of possibillity (can’t, can)
Eg: You have to stop at a red traffic light.
Values are stated as nominalizations, like safety. And represents the “spirit” or intention behind the rule.
Eg. Safety
It is better to focus on Values than rules as their might be times when the rules are not helpful or even self defeating.
Eg. When their is an attemp to hijack your vehicle at a red traffic light
Values: Moving from values to action
- Desire
-If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you like to
do? - Value
- What about that is important to you? What is the value
that is used here? - Room
- What thoughts and feeling would you have to make
room for? What discomfort would you have to hold? - Action
-What action can you take towards your value
- Would you be willing to experience this
discomfort/thoughts and feelings in service of your
values in order to take this action
Commited Action
About acting on the things that are important to you, instead of just dreaming about it.
Commited Action: Inspiring commited action
Start with the big desire, what they would like to accomplish about a year or more from now and work backwards by identifying milestones at 6, 3, 1 months, 1 week, untill you get to the next 24 hours. Then ask them, what are they going to do within the next 24 hours in service of their goal?
Finally ask what 5 minute action they can commit to right now, to demonstrate their commitment.
Remember to ensure that the goal is of the right chunk size
Commited Action: Concern and Control circles
Differentiate between areas of concern and areas of control, then focus on those things you can control.
Metaphor: Driving in a car on a mountain pass, as soo as you get over the hill, on the way down, your breaks fail, do you fly into a panic of concern and constantly step on the breaks, or do you take controll of the steering wheel and guide the car around the bends untill it comes to a stop?
Commited Action: Challenge Zone
Used when a specific action is deemed to hard
Draw a line or use a suds scale number 0 to 10, 0 - 3 is Too Easy, 7 - 10 is Too Hard with the challenge zone in the middle. Ask the client what identify sub-tasks or activities that falls into each of these zones and to do those things that are easy and in the challenge zone.
Commited Action: Trouble shooting for when client is stuck and not taking commited action
Taking action based on:
- Unhelpful thoughts (fusion) -defusion
- Uncomfortable feelings (experiential avoidance) -
experiential acceptance - Confusion/Overwhelm (loss of value) - present
moment - Self as content (I am not good enough) - self as
context - Rules/Unrelenting standards (unclear values) - Values
- Unmesurable/Unworkable Action - commited Action
