“Do I need motivation to keep working, Without love can’t I go on?Do I have to make sure I get what I want to move on?These are familiar phrases that we all talk about at some point. and indicate a deep discomfort. Acceptance and engagement therapy can help us.
The above expressions are harmful and do not help solve our problems: they indicate that there is a requirement and that without complying with it we will not be able to move forward. We give explicit causal value to the content of thought and feeling, as well as indicate that certain private content or events are negative.
- “Do you remember those moments when your belief that the situation didn’t make sense was what allowed you to live it freely.
- Intensely.
- And learn from experience?L.
- Wittgenstein?.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is not a new or recent technology, although it is a third generation therapy, it has been developed for almost 25 years, although its popularity is recent.
Acceptance and engagement therapy is a form of experimental cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy based on the theory of the relational framework of human language and cognition; represents a perspective of psychopathology that emphasizes the role of experimental avoidance, cognitive fusion, the absence or weakening of values, and the behavioral rigidity or inefficiency resulting from its appearance and course.
According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, one of the patient’s problems is that they confuse the solution with the problem. The affected person follows a lifestyle in which he deliberately avoids private events (thoughts and sensations) with aversive verbal functions (classified as suffering, discomfort, anxiety, depression, etc. ) and thus only achieves the amplification of symptoms.
What does all this mean? The reader familiar with psychology topics will understand these terms without problems, however, it can seem complicated for other people. We will try to clarify the terms as much as possible.
Pain is an inseparable part of human life, but suffering is “another song. ” Feeling bad is a condition that anyone wants to avoid or, if it already is, escape. That is why we work hard to eliminate negative emotions and feelings as quickly as possible. possible.
We all tend to avoid suffering to a greater or lesser extent (unless there are very powerful secondary rewards: someone might want to be “a little sick” for care), and that makes sense and is desirable. However, there are times when the price of achieving, because we are wrong in the way we do things, becomes very high.
Is it all about it? Perceiving when escaping suffering is not a valid solution. Once this is done, we will be available to learn how to make a ‘psychological vacuum’. For private negative-looking reactions, if this leads to what we appreciate in life. That is, once we understand that there is no point in continuing in life by dedicating all our resources to avoiding suffering (which does not mean that we seek it), we will be able to accept it when we feel it.
“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of a principle: some things are under our control and some things are not. Only after facing this fundamental rule and learning to distinguish between what we can control and what we cannot control will it be possible to have inner tranquility and external ?????????
Cognitive fusion is the most abstract concept we will discuss in this article related to acceptance and engagement therapy. To understand this, we can regard our mind (thought thread) as a radio. A radio that can tell us how we feel or whether or not to do is enough to achieve a certain goal. It can also damage our self-esteem by declaring that we’re not good enough for someone to like. Many of our radio stations send such messages.
When does the problem appear? We merge this kind of message with reality, when we give ourselves that status, when we think that what our radio says is correct, hence the importance of meta-thinking, thinking about how we think and adjusting it, to understand that what our inner voice tells us is always a voice, like those that exist in a radio debate.
On the other hand, this radio can be useful to us in the sense that it can give us information (on the radio there are not only opinion debates, there is also information: in our minds the same thing happens). Tell us if it’s going to be hot, especially giving us your opinion on whether to go out or not, but it’s always a recommendation, whether we can go on or not. This radio, returning to psychology, can tell us that during an evening there will be tensions, especially for advising us not to go, but in the end it is we who decide, in this sense in therapy it is very important to separate the fusion that occurs between what the radio says and our possibilities of action.
Acceptance and commitment therapy attaches special importance to people’s values. The fact that a person evaluates, for example, a particular object as ugly or beautiful is, for the most part, a question of that person’s historical context in the corresponding culture.
We are seeing changes in these assessments, both in different cultures and over time. It’s good to start realizing that many of our qualifying answers (ugly/beautiful, good/bad, funny/boring, for example) might have been completely different if we had been born somewhere else or elsewhere. The same goes for values and especially when we look at their limits or face moral dilemmas.
This term is easier to define. It consists of always performing the same acts because it does not have a wider repertoire. In other words, we often revolve around the same problem and never find an effective solution. According to acceptance and engagement therapy, is this because we no longer have?Solutions deal with problems and we are not looking for them either.
We have previously defined what experimental evasion is, many people try to avoid what causes them chronic and widespread discomfort and, as a result, live very limited lives, this pattern eventually increases suffering in many facets of life.
These people live surrounded by this avoidance scheme at a very high personal cost, for example, preventing them from achieving many of their goals; in these circumstances, it is called experimental avoidance disorder.
Do Western culture and its main transmitters, families, encourage private events (thoughts, feelings or sensations)?or “fit” to live. For example, it is encouraged that to function well and succeed, you need a certain state of motivation or emotion, or a way of thinking about yourself.
The problem arises when the person’s experience is successful and yet he tries to look for those private states that taught him that they were decisive in achieving what he had already achieved, to set a somewhat extreme example, imagines a man who won the lottery. he was a kid, he’s been taught that money comes from work and that if you want to be rich you’ll have to work hard. Well, despite his wealth, he keeps committing suicide every day to try to meet the first one. part of the partnership.
Thus, it is as if for many success, what they seek, is only valid if suffering exists before, so that when they reach it they seek it or continue to seek it. , would happen in another type of circle, in this case the person wanted to succeed, but won the lottery, however for him the work represents a suffering from which he wants to escape, so he renounces success because he understands that Working (suffering) is the only way to achieve it, so another suffering would be installed: that of not having what you want.
Unfortunately, however, the facts show that the result obtained is contrary to the objective pursued by the person: whatever effort he makes to avoid suffering, the fact is that he continues to suffer, so this model of avoidance becomes paradoxical.
Having said that, we would face a solution which, in fact, is the problem. This is the real issue: a standard of living that deliberately avoids discomfort, suffering and anxiety and only discomfort, suffering and anxiety appears.
“Love involves suffering because we can lose it, but denying love to avoid suffering does not solve the problem, because one suffers because one does not have it. So, if happiness is love and love suffers, then I say that happiness is also suffering. love ??? W. Allen?
Experimental avoidance disorder occurs when a person is unwilling to make contact with their private experiences of negative valence (whether bodily states or sensations, thoughts or memories). A concrete example of negative private experience may be “undesirable” emotions, such as boredom or sadness.
Thus, in experimental avoidance disorder, the person tries to change the origin, shape, or frequency of such experiments so that they do not occur, for example, imagine the person who is in an emotional state where sadness predominates. this situation is to treat sadness like a fly: try to slap it. Faced with such an impulsive and false strategy, the fly will remain there; unfortunately the same thing will happen.
In that sense, we give ourselves permission to feel that. We often forget that people should feel sad from time to time simply because they are people. When we avoid this experience, it becomes more intense, because everything we avoid or resist persists.
This pattern of behavior often seems effective in the short term because it mitigates negative experience, however, when they appear chronically and generalized, negative experiences increase and even cause a limitation in a person’s life.
In other words, a person ends up going against what is precious to him, with suicide being the representative of an extreme experimental avoidance case. The paradoxical nature of experimental avoidance disorder lies precisely in the fact that the person with the experimental avoidance disorder is involved. what he or she believes he or she needs to do to eliminate suffering (using time and effort for that purpose).
What we get in the long run, however, is that what makes a person suffer is increasingly present and his life is increasingly closed, which is unable to move forward to achieve the goals and values he loves.
An analysis of published studies on acceptance and engagement therapy seems to show that the groups of disorders where a larger scientific body has gathered are, in this order:
Is it entirely possible that this differential efficacy is related, on the one hand, to ACT’s emphasis on acceptance, an undeniably necessary component of experiences associated with emotional pain (anxiety, depression, bereavement, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. )?And on the other hand, in the assessment of personal commitment, which on the other hand seems crucial to combat disorders that involve health risk behaviors (risky sexual practices, alcohol and drug use, etc. ).
Getting the patient to distance himself and question his thoughts and ideas can be a fundamental aid in the treatment of any psychotic rupture, it is important to note that, in all cases, the population suitable for this therapy is limited to verbally competent adults.
Kelly G. Wilson, Mr. Carmen Luciano Soriano, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Madrid. Pyramid.