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
“Thinking does not make anything good or bad, but…”
* The ACT stance about problematic thoughts and feelings
“…fusion with your thinking creates problems.”
* when we respond to thoughts and feelings rigidly and in inflexible ways (i.e., fusion and avoidance), problematic effects ensue.
Six Broad Categories of Fusion
Why I started writing flashcards in the first place
Fusion with…
- the past
- the future
- self-concept
- reasons
- rules
- judgments
Six Broad Catagories of Fusion
Fusion with the past
All types of past-oriented cognition
* rumination, regret, & dwelling on painful memories
* ➡️ failure, hurt, & loss, for example
* blame & resentment
* idealizing the past
* ➡️ My life was wonderful before X, Y, and Z happened.
Six Broad Catagories of Fusion
Fusion with the future
All types of future-oriented cognition
* worrying or catastrophizing
* predicting the worst, hopelessness
* anticipating failure, rejection, hurt, loss, etc.
Six Broad Catagories of Fusion
Fusion with self-concept
all types of self-descriptive and self-evaluative cognition
* negative self-judgment
* ➡️ I am bad/unlovable/worthless/dirty/damaged/nothing/broken
* positive self-judgment
* ➡️ I am always right and better than you.
* overidentifying with a label
* ➡️ I am borderline. I am depressive. I’m an alcoholic. I’m a runner.
Six Broad Catagories of Fusion
Fusion with reasons
“Reason Giving” for why we can’t change, won’t change, or should not have to consider changing.
I can’t do X because…
* I’m too Y
* Z might happen.
* It’s pointless.
* I am B.
* C says I shouldn’t (C = parents, religion, the law, etc.)
Six Broad Catagories of Fusion
Fusion with Rules: subscriptional
What we subscribe to about how I, others, or the world should be.
Revealed by the words “should,” “have to,” “must,” “ought,” right,” “wrong,” “fair,” or “unfair.”
* I mustn’t make mistakes
Fusion with Rules: conditional
“can’t until,” “shouldn’t until,” “shouldn’t unless,” “mustn’t because,” “must do this in order to,” “will not tolerate,” or “refuse to allow.”
* She needs to change before I do.
* I can’t go to work while I feel this way.
Fusion with Judgments
Any type of positive or negative evaluation
Experiential Avoidance
A desire to avoid or get rid of unwanted private experiences and the actions one takes in trying to make that happen.
Private Experience
Any experience one may have that no one else can know about without one communicating it.
* thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations
* memories & images
* urges, desires, & impulses
The Brain as a Problem-Solving Machine
- A problem is an unwanted circumstance.
- Solutions to problems consist of avoidance and getting rid of the problem.
- In the physical world, this works well.
- In the mind, not so much.
- When our private experience becomes the problem the solution of ridding or avoidance creates additional problems!
Experiential Acceptance
A core component of most ACT protocols…
Getting the client in touch with the costs and futility of experiential avoidance.
The Two Circumstances that underlie ACT’s advocacy of Experiential Acceptance
- When avoidance of thoughts and feelings is limited or impossible.
- When avoidance of thoughts and feelings is possible, but the methods used make life worse in the long term.
When experiential avoidance assists a person to live by their values, then it’s cool.
The two forms of fusion that facilitate experiential avoidance
The equation of EA
- judgments
- rules
- The mind judges something as “bad” and formulates a rule to get rid of it.
Two different hooked modes
- automatic
- avoidance
Automatic Mode
In the state of fusion, when one automatically obeys one’s thoughts and feelings and do whatever the cognitions tell them to do.
Avoidance Mode
Taking whatever efforts during a state of fusion to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings.
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Fusion
When one’s thoughts dominate one’s physical actions and awareness to problematic extents.
Inverse of Defusion
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Experiential Avoidance
The ongoing attempt to get rid of, avoid, or escape from unwanted private experiences such as thoughts, feelings, and memories
* Short bursts of relief highly reinforces and increases the chances the behavior will occur again.
Inverse of Acceptance
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Inflexible Attention
A wide range of deficits of full conscious contact with inner and outer worlds.
- The 3D’s:
- ➡️Distractability, Disengagement & Disconnection
Inverse of Contact with the Present Moment
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Remoteness from Values
- The loss, neglect, or forgetting of values to fusion and experiential avoidance.
- Inability to contact values, preventing one from using them as effective guides for actions.
- Vauge or unclear definitions of values.
Inverse of Values
A contradiction to ACT’s aim of bringing behavior under the influence of values rather than fusion or avoidance.
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Unworkable Action
- Away moves.
- Patterns of behavior that pull you away from mindful, values-based living.
- Impulsivity, reactivity, or automatic behavior
- Fusion and EA guided behavior rather than values guided behavior.
- Inaction or procrastination towards something that requires effective action.
Inverse of Committed Action
Six Core Pathological Processes of Psychological Rigidity
Fusion with Self-Concept
Affixing to your story as genuinely descriptive about your very essence
Inverse of Self-As-Context
Flashback
Extreme fusion with a memory–to such an extent that it seems to be reality and happening right here and now.
Inflexible Attention
Distractability
Difficulty sustaining one’s attention on a task or activity.
Attention slips to irrelevant stimuli.
Causes poor performance.
Inflexible Attention
Disengagement
Disengage
Disengaged
Disengaging
The loss of conscious interest or involvement in an experience.
* Boredom
* disinterest
* absentmindedness, or
* going through the motions.
- She cut herself off and totally ____‘ed with the assessment
- Absentmindedness: An inattentive mental state & forgetfulness from unawareness of one’s surroundings or becoming lost in thought.
Inflexible Attention
Disconnection
- One’s inability to notice how one thinks or feels and overall lack of self-awareness.
- Promotes emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, reactiveness, and mindless behavior.
Remoteness of Values
Three potential conditions
- Motivated by fusion
- ➡️ I have to do this bc it’s all I’m capable of doing!
- ➡️➡️ Fusion to self-concept, for example
- Motivated by Experiential Avoidance
- ➡️ Motivated to avoid feeling like a loser or escaping unpleasant feelings due to marital tension
- Motivated by Values
- ➡️ Motivated by caring, connection, and contribution.
