Table of contents hide 1 So what is ACT or Acceptance Therapy and commitment? 2 What do I mean by this? 3 How is this? They will ask me. 4 And how is that living in hell, then? 5 Why? 6 Do you suffer any psychological problems? Like depression, anxiety, addictions, trauma, stress, job dissatisfaction, chronic pain, smoking, anorexia, etc. 7 Principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy 8 Theoretical Framework: Reference Frameworks

In this article we will tell you what we mean when we talk about the therapy of acceptance and commitment and the fundamentals of it to overcome several basic psychological disorders. As the word implies, it is a psychological therapy, which is based on cognitive behavioral theories, but that goes a little further than that.

It is a therapy that recognizes that the human being suffers, and not only for issues that concern physical pain, but also and fundamentally psychic pain. It seeks its origin and helps those who need it to transform and transform into the passage of suffering to commitment to their own lives . Its main objective is to help the person in question to face their internal struggle, so that they can begin to live the reality of life, teaching them tools to learn to live with the past, with memories, with sadness and with fears and not in spite of them. In other words, it teaches you not to be a victim of your past but the protagonist of your present and conscious creator of your future.

So what is ACT or Acceptance Therapy and commitment?

It is a new modality of psychotherapy that has the scientific endorsement and is part of what is popularly called today "the third wave" or in more eloquent words such as "third generation of behavioral and cognitive therapy."

The scientific theoretical framework on which it is based and based, suggests that when we have a problem we use tools that instead of helping us, produce the opposite effect. That is, they become traps that instead of lessening the suffering, increase it . Therefore, our mind, instead of being our best ally, ends up being our worst enemy .

And here I would like to make a parenthesis and relate it to what we hear today from many transpersonal ideologies and that several ancestral oriental traditions have taught for centuries. Surely they will have heard, or maybe it is the first time that, hell really, as the Judeo-Christian tradition calls it, a place that places it below (let me know below that) and which is full of monsters, atrocities, characterized by containing the worst creatures and scenarios imagined by man, in which it is believed is the place where the human soul will lodge after his death. This destiny is assured in the case of people who have committed many sins or a serious one throughout their lives. We have believed that, and they made us believe for many decades and even centuries, but today, by luck or by divine grace, we are allowing ourselves to think and even believe that hell is really the destiny of the soul after the death of the physical body, does not exist as such . But this hell to which the Holy Scriptures referred, then misunderstood by those who carried out the institutions, referred to hell, the feeling of living a nightmare, we created . That is, one on earth can live in hell or in heaven, or even in limbo, depending on nothing more or nothing less than ourselves.

What I mean by this?

Taking this scientific argumentation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we realize and check more and more what the ancient millenary wisdoms taught us, about which hell is created by the mind . The mind has the power to make you live in the best of paradise or in the worst of hell.

How is this? They will ask me.

Sure! We human beings are like computers, obviously much more complex, but to understand this, we are going to take this simple example, and very criticized but the truth is that we work, not forgetting, obviously, that we are more complex than that but, in the base, that is the structure basically. So, our mind is like a computer, its entire environment is information it receives and processes. That is, listening to a music is information that enters through your ears, is processed by your mind and transmitted to your body. All the things he sees, is information that comes in, is processed and then adapted and expressed in the body, through a verbal or behavioral response, which can be perceived or not to the human eye. So, we go through life collecting information and processing it.

Depending on how we process that information is how we act, how we respond. In other words, the way the brain interprets the information that enters, is the order that will be sent to the body. Faced with a stimulus or information that indicates danger, the brain will send the body the order to prepare to flee or to be paralyzed. From this complex situation, until when someone tells us something, we are receiving information and depending on the information processing is how we will respond.

And how is that living in hell, then?

In this way if my way of processing the information is wrong, because it is “full of viruses” (irrational beliefs, dysfunctional beliefs, cognitive biases), then my way of responding will be wrong . When our way of processing information is plagued by "viruses" or dysfunctional beliefs, the perception of the world becomes terrifying.

Why?

It is as the philosopher René Descartes said "I think, then I exist". First, I interpret reality later, according to how I interpret it, I exist, that is, the quality or content of my reality depends on that thought . So if all the information I receive is processed and that processing results in a content full of viruses, irrational beliefs, then my perception of life is biased. In this way, my life becomes a constant and chronic suffering, in a nutshell I am making my life, hell, literally.

For example: If a person has green glasses, then everything they are going to see is going to be green. As much as one tells you that it is actually red, that person who has green glasses will see it green. This is how our mind works.

Do you suffer any psychological problems? Like depression, anxiety, addictions, trauma, stress, job dissatisfaction, chronic pain, smoking, anorexia, etc.

Current research on these psychic problems, returning to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, has shown that ACT therapy, precisely, is the most suitable for these common disorders.

Some of the central ideas of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, involve the following conceptualizations (taken from the book Hayes, SC (2013). Get out of your mind, enter your life. Descée de Brouwer)

• The psychic pain is normal . It is important and everyone experiences it .
• You cannot free yourself from the pain of psychic pain ; What you can do is do something to avoid increasing it artificially and unnecessarily.
• Pain and suffering are two different states.
• You do not have to identify with your suffering.
• Accepting pain is a step towards liberation from suffering.
• You can live a valuable life from this moment but, for this, you will have to learn how to get out of your mind to enter your life.

The main mechanism underlying the therapy of Acceptance Therapy and commitment is to be able to make a change in perspective, a change in the way of processing information and how one experiences personal experience.

The procedures offered by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy therapy seek to change the function of the most common psychological disorders which are like barriers that stand in front of us and do not let us move forward. So through this technique it is possible to change the very essence of those and lessen or end their effects on one's life.

“Metaphorically, the distinction between the function of a psychic disorder and the form it takes in the life of a person can be compared with someone who is on a battlefield, fighting in a war. The war is not going very well so the subject fights more and more hard. Losing would have a devastating effect and whoever is engaged in combat believes that, unless that war is won, it will not be possible to live a worthwhile life. So the war goes on and on ... What that person doesn't know, however, is that, at any moment, he or she could leave the battlefield and start living his life right now. The battle was still going on and the battlefield would still be there, in sight. The landscape may still be very similar to what it was while the fighting was taking place. But the result of the war is no longer too important and the seemingly logical need to have to win the war before starting to live really will have been ruled out. ” (Hayes, p. 23; 2013)

Principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance: allow to feel unwanted emotions, sensations, impulses and other private and denied experiences; allow them to flow, be in the body, in the sensation without fighting or fleeing or being indifferent towards them

I-observer: this theory recognizes the transcendental aspect of being. So he considers that both our thoughts, emotions, memories, impulses and sensations are peripheral, dynamic and non-essential aspects. In this way, we seek to experience the de-identification with those (thoughts, emotions, memories, impulses or sensations).

Present moment: the search and maintenance of attention in the present experience, with interest, receptivity and commitment, focusing voluntarily on the here and now becomes fundamental and fundamental.

Values: it aims to help the individual to recognize and clarify what is really important for him, for his being, from the bottom of his heart. Issues related to identity, the desire to become, the truly meaningful and valuable for life, etc. are worked on.

Committed Action: it has to do with the establishment of goals that are based on certain values ​​and the commitment to carry forward the actions required to achieve them.

Cognitive Defusion: learn to observe thoughts, images, memories and other types of cognitions such as what they are - language traces, words and images - as opposed to what they claim to be - threatening events, rules that have to be obeyed, objective truths and facts.

Theoretical Framework: Reference Frameworks

The conceptual basis of acceptance and commitment therapy is the Theory of Relational Frames which has important contributions for cognitive behavioral clinic with children and adolescents.

This theory is a contemporary development based on Skinner's theories regarding language . The idea that starts from is that verbal behaviors constitute cognition and that this is a product of linguistic interactions (Coyne and Cairns, 2016). In other words , thoughts are the product of the linguistic relationships we have with others. And it is this thought that largely determines our suffering and psychic pain, according to this theory. Researchers such as Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche (2001) propose that human beings have the ability to learn by relating certain stimuli, both directly and indirectly. This process of relating stimuli arbitrarily and based on the verbal context is called FRAME (framing). This is a specifically human capacity and is what determines the development of cognition and language (Torneke, 2010).

From this perspective, our cognitive categories, our assessments, assessments, judgments and attitudinal rules are behaviors learned from the linguistic relationship and transformation between stimuli .

It has been proven that the training of parents of children with ADHD, in addition to the aid of the public work and other aspects, are effective alternatives to promote their well-being.

REDACTORA: Gisela S., editor of the great family of the White Brotherhood.

SOURCE: Hayes, SC (2013). Get out of your mind, enter your life. Brouwer's Descree
https://www.psyciencia.com/terapia-aceptacion-compromiso-act-padres-ninos-conductas-disruptivas/
Torneke, N. (2010). Learning RFT: An Introduction to relational frame theory and its clinical applications. Oakland: New Harbinger.