ACT Book Summary: Pages 148 - 154

Building Acceptance by Defusing Language

Here are some nuts and bolts followed by questions and critiques:

1. The distinction between process and content: language is a learned set of derived stimulus relations, while languaging is the action of deriving those relations.

2. Humans (therapists, clients, etc.) often don't make this distinction and often relate on (and become connected to) the content level. Taking these contents at "face value" (i.e., literally, tangibly) in turn, leads to powerful and predictable behavior patterns (that are often destructive) on the part of the client.

3. One of the main paradoxes in ACT is that language cannot be weakened by more language; however the essence of deliteralization is to take advantage of loopholes in the way language functions (by teaching the client to see that thoughts and feelings are just that-thoughts and feelings).

4. Page 152 contains a table (6.1) of ACT goals, strategies, and interventions to use regarding deliteralization.

5. One of the ways to begin addressing the paradox and function of language is to demonstrate to the client the limits of language in deciphering human experience (and to elicit their own examples). For example, there are two metaphors (found on page 153) that communicate how describing something is different from experiencing it. One metaphor is "finding a place to sit," which essentially describes how talking about a chair (its features, uses) does not help when one wants to actually sit down. In other words, one cannot "sit" in a description of a chair. One can only sit IN an actual chair. A corollary of this metaphor is that one can describe the experience of swimming (how the water feels moving through it, its temperature, etc.). However, one cannot learn to swim in or by a description.

6. There is an assumption in ACT that "your mind is not your friend." Extrapolating from pre-human experience, one can see that the (human) mind was not developed to make humans or "prehumans" feel good. It was developed to keep humans from danger and was mostly comprised of negative content. Explain to clients the paradox "your mind is not your friend AND you cannot live without it."

7. Another assumption is that language is arbitrary and that once it is learned, it becomes relatively independent of immediate environmental support. This reminds me of my nanny's (successful) efforts to train my 20 month-old son to say "bling-bling" when he sees jewelry-now without her having to label it.

8. There is a provocative quote related to the usefulness of nonverbal (experiential?) knowledge at the end of this section on page 154: "If we suddenly had all nonverbal knowledge removed from our repertoires-we would fall to the floor quite helpless."

Comments/questions:

9. It has been my experience that, while clients appear "fused" to a lot of different ideas/contents, a great share of them come to my office without having specific terms/language to describe their experience. In fact they come ONLY with experience, which they have a difficult time describing in words. For example, an extremely anxious patient I had (with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) wouldn't ever label himself as "anxious," rather he just knows he feels bad.

10. I don't know if behavior patterns follow from the premise that one does not make a distinction between the process of thinking and actual thought, and becomes fused with actual thought content, thereby leading directly to ingrained behavior patterns. I suppose one could explain this as troublesome behavior patterns becoming automatic due to conditioning (i.e., not being aware of the interaction pattern itself); however, I'm not sure if this is because one is fused to a verbal event.

11. Have any of these hypotheses been evaluated using individuals with various types of brain injuries (resulting in apraxia, aphasia, acquired deficits in language versus acquired deficits in motor ability, etc.)?