ACT Book Summary: Pages 81-86

Contributed by: Francis De Groot Part II: The clinical methods of ACT Chapters 3 to 9 present the ACT concepts and strategies. ACT = Acceptance and Commitment Therapy = Accept, Choose and Take action Goal: to move in the direction of chosen values, and accept the automatic effects of life's difficulties. Barriers: experiential avoidance & cognitive fusion Source of these barriers: verbal Act stages focus on shift from content of experience to context of experience Why?: to enable clients to pursue valued goals in life. During treatment metaphors, paradoxes, and experiential exercises are frequently used to undermine the traps of literal language and pliance. Metaphors:

• are not specific & proscriptive (less pliance)
• are more like pictures (more experiential)
• are easily remembered

Therapeutic paradox:

• not the classic therapeutic paradox to eliminate certain sympoms: e.g. "don't obey me". They rely on pliance
• = inherent paradox: functional contradictions between literal and functional properties of a verbal event: e.g. "try to be spontaneous"

Experiential exercises: To help contact potentially troublesome thoughts, feelings, memories, ...

• experience in a different context
• allows experience to be observed & studied experientially
• superior to discussing

Summary: More:

• pursuing of valued goals
• direct experience
• acceptance of negative experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations, ...)

Less:

• literal language
• pliance

Use of: less "literalizing" verbal modalities: metaphors, paradoxes, experiential exercises Focus on: WHAT DOES YOUR EXPERIENCE TELL YOU? This also goes for therapists? Let's go for some tracking, not for pliance!