Posted by alexandra_k on May 12, 2005, at 21:49:06
In reply to Dryden, Ellis, ACT » pedrito, posted by badhaircut on May 9, 2005, at 10:44:04
> If you're casting around for a slightly new approach, you might also want to look at "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" (ACT), which has some overlap with CBT but goes in a different direction. It emphasizes accepting bad thoughts & feelings since (it says) trying to manage them is self-reflexively doomed.
> Albert Ellis recently gave ACT enormously positve endorsements, which is surpising to me since it doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts. It deliberately leaves them alone.It doesn't follow from ACT's focusing on ACCEPTANCE rather than CHANGE that it 'doesn't care very much if a patient has irrational thoughts'.
The focus is CBT is changing the thoughts.
The notion is that if you change the thoughts then you will thereby change how you feel (which is the problem).
The trouble is that sometimes people don't seem to be able to change their thoughts.
Hardly suprising since thoughts tend to 'occur' to one rather than being 'chosen' in the first place...
So if they just do continue to occur to you but you want to change how you feel then you could always try to ACCEPT your thoughts. Not accept that your thoughts are true, just accept that you are in fact having the thoughts that you are in fact having. If how you feel is produced by you judging yourself negatively for having the thoughts you do then accepting is removing negative judgement - which is itself a change in thought.Sometimes people are distressed because they judge themselves for being upset. If you accept the fact that you are upset without judging yourself for it then you may continue to be upset - but you won't be SO VERY upset.
Acceptance... Is itself change.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:492810
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20050501/msgs/497088.html