Commitment & Acceptance Therapy

Personal Example from Dennis:

• Found himself in a small crisis: conflict of values (values as things we want or need to do)

• Stayed up until 3am connecting with others, but knew he had to present a workshop first thing in the morning

• Torn between humor, curiosity, authenticity and intimacy on one hand, and responsibilitiy, self-care, skillfulness and industry on the other

• ACT provides a framework and strategies for dealing with these kinds of situations

Connect with Present Moment — Mindfulness:

Lara led the group in an activity: started with standing in one place with eyes closed, getting in touch with breath and doing a scan from our feet up through our bodies… taking a slow, intentional step and beginning to walk around the room, slowly speeding up our pace. 

Without mindfulness we miss opportunities to use our skills: may have full intention to be there, but must be present = mindfulness

Three minute meeting: can practice anywhere

• 1 minute: focus on breath

• 1 minute: focus on body

• 1 minute: focus on brain

Thinking About Thinking:

• Anyone who’s ever taken a dance class: tendency to be all up in our heads

• Instead of being on the dance floor, take yourself to the balcony to observe self

• Recognize what we’re doing and thinking and how its impacting us

• Allows us to get out of stuck tapes and old patterns

• Our brains are constantly generating hypotheses and trying to solve problems

• This can sometimes be helpful, other times not so much

• Brain’s job is to keep us safe and alive

• Observer perspective of brain: are thoughts helpful or not helpful?

• Self-critical thoughts can keep us from doing what we want

Find Your Values:

• Thinking about values and who we want to be is a lifelong process

• Values come from lots of places: parents, school, experiences, culture, media, books, etc.

• When we grow older we can consciously question these: are the values that I have been taught in my life congruent with who I really am?

• Important to have words to describe core values, knowing that they change over time and its good to reevaluate them

• Having words for our values helps us to be skillful in the present moment: we can label values that are at play, which can help us untangle a confusing decision

Activity:

Index cards with values and definitions scattered across floor - Choose one value that is important to you.

Back to back x3:

1. When was a time when you acted in alignment with this value, how did it feel?

2. When was a time that you acted in a way that was out of alignment?

3. What is a small workable step you could take to live this value?

Value --- Behavior --- Feeling ---

Ex: Value = Adventure; Action = go to Patagonia

• Short term feelings may include uncertainty, fear, loneliness, trepidation, cold

• Living our values may cause short-term discomfort

• Choose to engage with values for long-term reward

• When we have mindfulness and observation can make intentional choices in our lives

• When aren’t clear about personal values, make choices based on comfort

• Often do things to avoid unwanted, actual, or anticipated feelings: may opt out before we have all the info

• Challenge course!

• Requires us to face fears of failure, abandonment, rejection, etc.

Defusion: thoughts do not equal facts!

• Just because we think something doesn’t mean its true

• Can engage with brain mindfully: “Thanks, brain, I know you’re trying to protect me” — befriend brain like an overprotective person trying to keep us safe

• Hack into the process, ask a different question:

• “Is this thought helpful to live my value right now?”

• “I’m having a thought that…”

• It doesn’t matter if its true

• De-fuse (separate) from the thought

• May have a scary movie running in the background, doesn’t mean you have to sit down and watch it

• Tolerate and make space for discomfort because bigger values are at play: make a deal with feelings

• Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: taking a road trip of creativity, making a deal with fear: you can come along but you can’t hold the map or change the radio and definitely can’t take the wheel

• Recognizing that uncomfortable feelings will arise when we set out to do big things: fear and courage are equal participants

• Emotions are a direct result of values: if we value honest and lie = long-term yuck (vs. short-term discomfort)

Take Committed Action:

○     Deconstruct value or goal to small workable steps

Make Space for Yuck:

• Arguing with reality can keep us from taking action

• Urge surfing: this too shall pass

• Move through emotional cycle, weather emotional storms

• Know that whatever arises is not a permanent situation

• Resting state of humans is not happiness just like the resting state of weather isn’t sunny

• Connect to present and wait for weather to change

• Natural ups and downs of emotions

• Often feel the emotion forward before we’re in it

• When we struggle with an emotion, it amplifies it (i.e. feel fear, then feel angry that we’re feeling fear, which creates exhaustion and leads to hopelessness: no longer just fear but everything else)

• Acceptance doesn’t mean you like or condone it

• Just dealing with the emotion/situation at play without amplifying it

• Breathe, find values, take committed action

Analogy: in a swimming pool, wanting to swim, there’s a beach ball there (stupid beach ball).

Think of how it feels trying to push it down into the water and keep it there.

• Suppressing it takes a ton of energy and you’re no longer swimming laps, no longer doing what you want to be doing

• Wanting to make the thing I don’t like go away, just pops back up

• Get to a place where you can swim anyway, when that thing is still there but it doesn’t stop me from doing or being what I want

• Not fighting the thought, just becoming aware of it

Questions:

• How do you facilitate finding values?

• Choose one value to work with for a day

• Synergo values games

• Values stock market

• Card sort

• Memory game

• Niky: google “value stream” = value hierarchy

• Anne: line up: if you identify with value, take step toward me (two facilitators on opposite sides); shows what’s important to individuals in a group

• Either/or game: conformity / non-conformity, etc.

A huge thanks to our awesome and committed notetakers for sending us this gem!