Dancing around the hexaflex: Using ACT in practice 1

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can be slippery to describe. It’s an approach that doesn’t aim to change thought content, but instead to help us shift the way we relate to what our mind tells us. It’s also an approach focused on workability: pragmatic and context-specific analysis of how well a strategy is working to achieve being able to do what matters. Over the next few posts I want to give some examples of how non-psychologists (remember ACT is open for anyone to use it!) can use ACT in session. Mindfulness – messing about with attention Thanks to Kevin Vowles, I’m adopting the term ‘messing about with attention’ for the ‘present moment awareness’ or ‘mindfulness’ part of ACT. We can get caught up in how we define mindfulness – they all have value – but make the doing of mindfulness less practical. Why use present moment awareness? Paying attention, on purpose, and without judgement (one of many definitions! This one from Kabat-Zinn, 2003) serves to disentangle us from thoughts about the past and predictions for the future; has been shown to reduce cortical arousal (Day, et al., 2021); and importantly for this post, comes in many forms. We know that repeated practice, especially over extended periods of time (say, for 20 – 40 minutes or longer) results in alterations in how parts of the brain respond both when anticipating pain, and during painful experiences (Lutz, e...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Back pain Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Low back pain Occupational therapy Physiotherapy Psychology Research Resilience Resilience/Health Science in practice mindful movem Source Type: blogs