Hi everybody, I wanted to let you know of the existence of the Babuschka. It’s a tool that can be used in ACT. Vince Vijsma (artist/designer) and I have developed it to support the therapy process. The Babuschka can support the application of ACT principles and interventions. It can be used to physically embody ACT concepts. Each therapist can use the Babuschka according to what fits them and their client best.
In the attachment you can see some photos.
I would love to hear reactions.
What follows are examples of ways the Babuschka can be used within ACT:
THE CONCEPTUAL SELF AND SELF AS CONTEXT
The Babuschka can express a human being, surrounded by, identified with and entangled in all the layers of conditioning or concepts that have been build through his or her life. It visualizes the conceptual prison, the prison of language, we often live in, without us being aware of this.
The glass can be written or drawn on and the client can write all of their thought content on the layers of glass. The different layers of glass, from inside out, can express the different ages from young to old from where the client has picked up certain ideas or concepts.
The Babuschka visualizes the difference between the conceptual self and self-as-context. It illustrates the difference between being completely identified with the conceptual self, and being aware that concepts are just concepts.
To be free from the conceptual prison, we first have to become aware that we are in a prison. Most people are not aware that they live in a conceptual prison; the Babuschka can be useful here.
When the different layers of glass are put side by side on the table, this can be seen as ‘conceptual suicide’. Depending on what fits client and therapist best, a little face can be drawn on the inner, smallest glass, to express the ‘me as perspective’. It can also be suitable, that the drawing of the face on the inner glass is left out, then the ‘me as context’ is the space, with no real boundaries, in which everything appears.
Across the ‘me as perspective’, or within ‘the me as context’, are the glasses with all the writing on them, expressing all the different thoughts, feelings and sensations.
The concepts and thoughts don’t define me anymore, but can be seen for what they are, concepts and thoughts. The thoughts or concepts are still there but they don’t convince me as being me anymore, and there’s no need to protect them with my life.
COGNITIVE FUSION AND DEFUSION
The client can write their (disturbing) thought content on the layers of glass. The therapist can ask the client to imagine being inside the Babuschka and looking through all the layers of words, ideas and convictions at the world. What is this like, does it feel comfortable, what do you see? Etc. This is what its like to look at the world through literal meaning, this is what its like to “buy a thought”.
When we are fused with the content of our thoughts, we are stuck and inflexible. The image of the Babuschka expresses this, it shows how heavy life gets if you constantly have to drag around and protect all the concepts you have about yourself, try to move with all these layers of glass around you!
The client can then take the layers of glass off each other and put them side by side on the table. This shows the shift, from looking at the world through literal meaning, to a deliteralized look at literal meaning. From looking from your thoughts, to looking at your thoughts.
When we can see that concepts are just concepts, and thoughts are just thoughts, then there’s room to move again. When we are defused, we are light, we can move our feet again and we can go to where our values are.
EXPERIENTAL AVOIDANCE
The Babuschka visualizes the distinction between an open and undefended contact with the present moment and a willingness to experience what is there, versus a closed and experiental avoidant way of living. The image of the Babuschka shows, that there’s no real contact possible between you and another human being, between you and life, when all these layers of concepts are surrounding you. The Babuschka shows, that when we look at the world through are thoughts and when we are fused with psychological content, we can’t at the same time be in contact with whatever is going on right now. All these layers of words and concepts are between us and what’s going on.
The different layers of glass can represent the walls/defences someone has put up as ways of trying to protect themselves, and at the same time experientially avoiding what’s going on.
The client can write or draw the different ways he or she protects himself on the glass.
On the second smallest glass a red spot can be drawn, to indicate pain or trauma. The layers around it have the function of protecting yourself from the pain, or to stop anything or anyone in the outside world from getting to close to the pain, or to touch the pain. The Babuschka shows the prison that has been build around the pain, to safely tuck it away. But by tucking away the pain, by trying not to feel it you have put yourself in your own prison. The pain tucked away in this way has no possibility to move or change, it’s stuck and solid, it can get no air, and nothing can happen.
Questions can be asked like: How have you tried to protect yourself against the pain?
The client can write his or her ways of avoiding pain on the layers of glass, and put the layers of glass over the red spot. The therapist can ask: and how does this work for you?
Stopping the avoidance behaviour is illustrated by the Babuschka, when we put the glass with the pain in front of us and we start looking at it, to see what it really is. We can find out that at the core of it, when we are willing to dive into it, there’s nothing, it’s empty.