CHAPTER 13: acceptance and CBT

Question 1

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

Answer 1

Acceptance processes involve taking an intentionally open, receptive, non-judgmental posture with respect to various aspects of the experience.

Question 2

Radical acceptance (in DBT)

Answer 2

Fully open experience of what is, fully open acceptance without restrictions, judgement or evaluation, or trying to get rid of it.

Question 3

Experiental avoidance

Answer 3

Attempts to attenuate (verzwakken), postpone or avoid the experience (thoughts, emotions, memories). This reduces them over the short term, but is potentially disabling over the long term.

Question 4

Empirical support for acceptance as a psychological principle

Answer 4

• Thought suppression: directly avoiding increases their possibility. Associated with anxiety, depression etc.
• Experiental avoidance: high ea correlates with anxiety, depression, lower QOL etc.
• Expressive writing: helps to let go and explore your deepest emotions.
• Other coping strategies: acceptance has shown to be more effective than control-based strategies (suppression, cognitive restructuring) for a lot of things like pain, intrusive thoughts etc.

BUT: acceptance does NOT necessarily reduce stress (acceptance of distress to reduce stress is simply not acceptance).

Question 5

Form of acceptance therapy

Answer 5

• ACT
• DBT
• Integrative Behavioural Couples Therapy
• Meta-cognitive therapy
• MBCT (mindfulness-based stress reduction)

Question 6

Research issues with acceptance

Answer 6

• Distress often persists een when treatment is successful.
• Underlying mechanism is unexplained.
• Suppression predicts a variety of difficulties.