Enjoyed your post. I am a long time follower of ACT. Suggestion, get yourself set up on feedburner. I tried to subsribe with RSS and nothing seems to show up. If you haven’t already already, all you have to do is go to feedburner.com and register your blog and then put the info in your blog options.

Just a thought

I am so warmed by your comment. Last week I watched as a whole room full or people experienced the kind of caring that emerges in the context of an ACT workshop. I look forward to seeing what happens when we extend this pragmatic orientation beyond the clinic. Of course your clients are already doing that. But suppose they went out into families, schools, workplaces, and organizations that shared this pragematic, caring culture.

Scott,
I think you are right about the issue of attachment to the “good” things that happen to us. I suspect that the way it works is that if you really, really like feeling good, you are, to that extent, unwilling to feel “negative” things. And, in that context, we step out of the present moment.

One thing that has struck me, teaching about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy all over the world has been my sense of the latent longing people have for connection and kindness. I have watched literally thousands of individuals come into workshops guarded. And, I have watched a few in the group open up, make plain their own vulnerabilities and values, and show acceptance towards themselves and others. What inevitably follows is a pouring forth from the group.

Again and again I have seen a sort of synergy. A few make a place where acceptance and kindness can blossom in others. It seems very clear that the desire people have to participate in such a community is fundamental.

I grew up during the Vietnam era, have lived through two wars in Iraq, and countless lesser conflicts. As I reflect on all that, I wonder if perhaps I gave up a bit on communities and brought my attention to individuals, where I could see the impact of my efforts clearly.

This last year has been an eye opener for me in a lot of ways. I was inspired by our soon-to-be president. I had thought that the 60’s had killed off my capacity to be inspired by anything or anyone in the political realm. I was wrong about that. Perhaps it is time to return to the aspirations of my youth. Perhaps I am seeing in myself the reemergence of a hope for community that has been armored up in me for a long time. Perhaps the longing for community that I have seen in thousands of individual faces at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy workshops is opening me up to the possibility of broadening my own efforts.

I look forward to an ongoing dialogue. Maybe, just maybe, we have another “Yes we can” in us.

Peace to all in the new year.

Kelly

First, thanks for starting this blog. It is very nice to have more frequent access to your good thinking, and the topic (and the way you’ve taken it up) is very engaging, important, and timely. I look forward to what it will bring!

Regarding today’s note on acceptance: I too have been drawn to this idea for some time. There’s an interesting overlap between recent attention to mindfulness and acceptance in a variety of behavioral treatments (Dialectic Behavior Therapy, ACT, and depression relapse to name a few) and the long-standing and well-articulated features of Buddhism.

But when considered from Buddhism’s perspective, another wrinkle arises: In the same way we should accept the transitory way of unpleasant events as you describe in your post, we should accept the transitory nature of pleasant ones too. This latter feature is sometimes described as avoiding “attachment,” but it seems to me to have a good number of similar features.

And that, I think, presents an important dilemma — can we be joyful and nurturing while being accepting of both negative and positive events? I think so….but I know it takes practice on my part, and may warrant a bit more thought about the role of acceptance in creating and sustaining nurturing environments.

Thanks again!