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No Pain - No Gain
by Paul Chippendale
Thanks to Yaro Starak for
alerting me to an exciting article titled, "Happiness Isn't Normal"
(Time, February 13, 2006 / No. 6, pp. 50-55) by John Cloud.
In the article, Cloud describes a new therapy, used by third wave
psychologists1, which is having amazing results. The new
therapy is called ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), ACT's predecessor, asked people
to identify negative thoughts, challenge them, and work to
habitualize new behaviours to live out the new thought patterns. ACT
on the other hand, asks people to accept that negative thoughts and
feelings are normal and suggests that to dwell on them, even through
CBT processes, only serves to magnify their impact. ACT asks people
to diffuse the power of negative thoughts:
Instead of saying "I'm
depressed," ...[ACT] proposes saying "I'm having the thought that
I'm depressed." Hayes [a major proponent of ACT] isn't saying
people don't really feel pain..., but he believes we turn pain
into suffering when we try to push it away. ACT therapists use
metaphors to explain acceptance: Is it easier to drag a heavy
weight on a chain behind you or to pick it up and and walk with it
held close? (Cloud 2006. p. 52)
The commitment part of
acceptance and commitment therapy is about identifying your
values and then living them. In his book, Get Out of Your
Mind & Into Your Life, Hayes suggests a simple exercise to
see how well you have committed to your values:
...give yourself a score of
1 to 10 each week for 16 weeks to show how closely your everyday
actions [are aligned] with your values. If you really enjoy skiing
with friends but end up watching TV alone every weekend, you get a
1. (Cloud 2006, p. 53)
Cloud (2006, p. 53) summarises
an impressive body of research that shows ACT is producing
remarkable results:
In the January edition of
the journal of Behavior Research and Therapy, Hayes and four
co-authors summarize 13 trials that compared ACT's effectiveness
to that of other treatments after as long as a year. In 12 of the
13, ACT outperformed the other approaches. In two of the studies,
depressed patients were randomly assigned to either cognitive
therapy or ACT. After two months, the ACT patients scored an
average of 59% lower on a depression scale. ... In a 2002 study,
Hayes and a student looked at 70 hospitalized psychotics receiving
the standard medication and counseling. Half were randomly
assigned to four 45-min. ACT sessions; the other half formed the
control. Four months later, the ACT patients hade to be
re-hospitalized 50% less often. They actually admitted to more
hallucinations than those in standard care, but ACT had reduced
the believability of their hallucinations, which were now
viewed more dispassionately. Hayes likes to say ACT effectively
turned "I'm the Queen of Sheba" into "I'm having the thought that
I'm the Queen of Sheba." The psychotics still heard voices; they
just didn't act on them as much. They learned to hold their
thoughts more lightly, increasing their psychological
flexibility.
ACT has also shown promise
in treating addiction. In one study, drug addicts reported less
drug use with ACT than with a 12-step program. And ACT worked
better than a nicotine patch for 67 smokers trying to quit. ACT
encourages addicts to accept the urge to do drugs and the pain
that will come when they stop -- and then to work on figuring out
what life means beyond getting high...
Cloud quotes other examples of
ACT's amazing results too, however, I'll leave you to read his
article for those.
Some Minessence eZine readers
may have by now recognised the incredible parallel between the
Minessence Group's values model and that of acceptance and
commitment therapy. If you are not yet one of the thousands who
have taken an inventory of your values via the AVI, I suggest you
contact one of the accredited consultants listed at: http://www.minessence.net/aspx/consultants.aspx,
and, make sure you also get a copy of Michael Henderson's award
winning book, Finding True North to help you work through
committing to living the values you identified through the AVI
process.
A final word, don't let the
word therapy put you off. Just as William Glasser uses reality
therapy with people who don't need therapy per se, but want to make
changes in their life (in the later case he talks of reality
management and uses the same processes as reality
therapy), so too you can look at Finding True North as
using ACT style techniques to enhance your everyday
living.
Footnotes
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First-wave therapy: behavioural therapy
(devised in part by B.F. Skinner). Second-wave therapy:
cognitive therapy (based on the work of Beck and Ellis).
Third-wave therapy: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
(ACT).
References
Cloud, J. 2006 'Happiness Isn't Normal' in
Time, February 13, 2006 / No. 6
Henderson, M. 2003, Finding True North: Discover
your values, enrich your life, Harper Business, Auckland
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