We so easily juggle with emotions, cognitions, and behaviors in our clinical practice that we almost forget that CBT does not result from a marriage of love between the behavioral and cognitive approaches, but rather from a marriage of convenience!…
Airplane pilots are always so tan. Of course they are: they spend a good amount of their day quite close to the sun. It might be a bit obvious, but one must remember that whenever we fly through the clouds,…
One use of evolutionary principles in psychotherapy is to change the context in which behaviors, thoughts and emotions occur, in order to change in turn these behaviors or the impacts of emotions and thoughts. In ACT, for example, when we…
In ACT, creative hopelessness is often a dreadful moment for therapists. It is at the heart of a many supervisions because it is often the therapist who interrupts the process before it has achieved it’s goal, which is to develop…
and extract it’s essence. What if there was more than suffering in this pain ? Here is an example of transformation of function of anxiety through the use of an augmental. A good way to increase variability. John: I am really…
Although not customary, this post is a rant (good lord!). Too often, and even from ACT practitioners and researchers alike, it is stated that ACT “does not intend to make symptoms go away”. It is wrong. If this statement were…
An important part of our behaviors takes place on the internet. We buy, we work, we play, we inform ourselves, we discuss, we pay our bills on the internet. It has become one of our main contexts of action. This…
If you occasionally consult books or articles on ACT, CBT, or the behavioral approach, you may have seen references to the theory of evolution from time to time. And perhaps these references may have surprised you. What does natural selection…
You may have seen recently the numerous publications of Steven Hayes -founder of ACT and Relational Frame Theory- about the centrality of evolutionary theory to the understanding of symbolic thinking and the promotion of pro-social behavior. I myself have published…
In our everyday language, we often confuse “acceptance” with “letting-go”. For both terms, we understand that it is a question of not unnecessarily opposing the painful events that cross our path. The underlying hypothesis is that unnecessary suffering stems from…