As I've been reading about cognitive defusion the word "honesty" keeps creeping in my head and ears. It seems to be "honesty" needs to be a value that clients need to possess and believe in in order to for them to defuse and deconstruct language in their "minds".
I am a chapter leader for the National Stuttering Association here in Bowling Green Ohio. On Wednesday we had a support group meeting and I brought up the topic of "honesty" to see what discussion would surface just from presenting the word. What was interesting is many said that "being honest is scary and may have a cost to it." The more I think about it, being honest is hard, if you are not honest you will avoid people, events and speaking situations (which is where willingness to change behaviors of avoidance comes into play). However before we can choose to change behaviors, the value of honesty much be the strongest force in our lives. For people who stutter, this honesty means doing the one thing most of us have spent our entire lives trying to hide, avoid and NOT DO...stutter... I honesty and being "open" may go hand and hand... Just a thought.
I was talking with a friend of mine who has read a lot of ACT material and he said he has replace "suffering" with " unskilled." His philosophy is such, "The term 'suffering' implies that all of life lives in is this constant dark cloud cover and we should accept that life is negative. However, if we see all life as "unskilled" meaning, we all have the skills to change and life by our values but typically choose accepting the thought that we don't have the skills, this is more optimistic" (this was paraphrased from our conversation last night during out band practice). I have to agree, this term "suffering" makes me feel more negative than hopeful. Now, if I was going to cognitively defuse this word I would tell myself "It's just a word, it means what you want it to, but should have very little impact on your behaviors..." This true, I think. So, that being said, I'm going to think of suffering as "unskilled." For now at least. I'm still a novice with ACT so I'm very open to change.
"The pursuit begins when this portrait of life...ends" -Evans Blue
Scott