We are in a hurry to escape from negative experiences – and we do not know how to accept them as part of our life. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy does not see anxiety or depression as the problem, but rather our desire to get rid of them as soon as possible.
This summer, my friends and I came to the Archstoyanie festival in the Kaluga region. Taking out a tent taken from my friends, I suddenly realized that I had no idea how to set it up. After half an hour of fruitless attempts, it sounded in my head: “I, too, am a traveler, some kind of laughing stock.” Soon I began to feel completely helpless, mixed with the classic: “You’re a psychologist! Be more confident, find a way out of the situation. At the same time, for some reason, there was no more confidence. At some point, I decided: “What if we try to just keep putting up a tent without trying to feel confident?”
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In cognitive therapy, we are used to dealing with negative automatic thoughts. There are many methods for this. But relatively recently, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)* has emerged. She considers the problem not anxiety or depression, but our desire to get rid of them as soon as possible, she sees one of the main problems of modern man in our unwillingness to accept negative experiences as part of life. For many of us, the pursuit of comfort becomes an end in itself. Imagine that you feel sad for no reason. What will you do? Perhaps you will try to have fun and start listening to yourself: “Do I have more fun? Why am I still sad? I don’t have to show anyone that I’m sad.” AST suggests simply being with your sadness, not running away from it or being afraid of it. If you are bitten by a mosquito and you do not scratch the bite, the itching goes away faster. It’s the same with negative thoughts. They are just words that we say to ourselves. It is not necessary to respond to them. If the thought flashes through your head that it would be nice to fly to the moon, you don’t rush to call the nearest spaceport.
Another principle of ACT is the patient’s ability to make commitments. The therapist asks, “Why is it important for you to get well? What are you willing to do for this?” Instead of the usual: “I have depression, help me get rid of it” – the patient, at the initiative of the therapist, focuses on a goal in the future, for example: “I want to get rid of depression in order to continue working. To achieve this goal, I am ready to perform the necessary exercises, not paying attention to my experiences. It helps us to stop demanding that we recover immediately, to stop endlessly “scanning” our condition and to accept the fact that discomfort is part of our existence.
By the way, we finally pitched the tent.
Yakov Kochetkov – clinical psychologist, director of the Center for Cognitive Therapy selfhelp.ru