One Flashcards
The big challenges we all have to face in life.
Three parts
A. Life if difficult
B. A full human life comes with a full range of pleasant and painful emotions.
C. A normal human mind naturally amplifies psychological suffering.
How can ACT help?
Two main takeaways
Clarify Values
Teach psychological skills
Vitality
A sense of being fully alive & embracing the here and now regardless of how one feels in the moment.
The ACT Triflex
- Be Present
- Open Up
- Do what matters
Components of Being Present
Self-as-context & contact with the present
moment
- Early steps in unhooking skills often include grounding & centering, noticing, naming, & acknowledging the thoughts and feelings present
Components of Opening Up
Defusion & Acceptance
- Later steps in unhooking often include active use of defusion, acceptance, & self-compassion skills.
Components of Doing what matters
Committed Action & Values
- Connecting with values facilitates unhooking and vice versa.
- Values then guide subsequent action
Unhooking Skills (i.e., all four ACT mindfulness processes)
- Defusion
- Acceptance
- Self-as-context
- Contact with the present moment
The two core processes of being hooked
- cognitive fusion
- experiential avoidance
Cognitive Fusion
Basic Meaning
Getting dominated by our cognitions
Experiential avoidance
basic meaning
the ongoing struggle to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings.
The word “mind” in ACT
an incredibly complex set of interactive cognitive processes
* a metaphor for human language
Cognitive Fusion
Deeper definition
when our cognitions dominate our overt or covert behavior in a self-defeating or problematic way
Cognition
Tricky Terminology
any and all categories of thinking as well as to aspects of feelings and emotions
The two main ways fusion shows up
1 Cognitions dominate our physical actions in problematic ways
* i.e., canceling plans in response to a thought around social avoidance (“Nobody likes me, so I’m not going.”)
2 Cognitions dominate our awareness in problematic ways
* getting “pulled into” or “lost in” cognitions that reduce awareness
* i.e., losing focus to rumination or worry such that one makes a lot of mistakes or forgets important tasks
Absorbtion
A response to cognitions that is not ineffective or self-defeating.
* Basically, fusion but in a good way.
A quick summary of fusion and defusion found on page 22
The two main purposes of defusion
- to engage fully in our experience
- to enable us to effective action
Recognizing a thought for what it is: a group of words or pictures inside our heads.
Workability
The key concept for which the ACT model rests upon.
* An examination of one’s behaviors in terms of working towards effectively solving a problem and moving towards one’s valued ends.
* Exploring whether one’s thoughts help and whether one could use the thoughts as a means to resolution.
See different questions we can ask on page 24