From an interview with Steven Hayes, PhD, developer of ACT therapy. ACT therapy stands for acceptance and commitment therapy and the letters are pronounced as one word, ACT.
"We view anxiety is a problem of psychological inflexibility. It's an inability to come into the present moment and open up to your emotions, to see your thoughts as they are, and to focus on what's really of importance to you. The goal of ACT is to help people develop a sense of self that's larger than the limited story they are used to telling about themselves and others that's getting in the way.
When ACT works, it helps people get more in touch with their thinking and feelings as they are – – not what they are supposed to be. And instead of experiencing emotions as accidents or obstacles, people can understand their meaning and use them to move toward what gives them more energy and purpose in life. ACT isn't a panacea or cure, but it's a way to organize your life around a fuller sense of purpose and meaning, one step at a time."
From: "Point of View" by Ryan Howes, PhD in Psychotherapy Networker November/December 2017
Jun 5, 2024
Jan 30, 2024
Mindfulness Meditation Approach to Overcoming Addictions
Justin Brewer PhD, at Yale Medical School, studied how meditation can be used to deal with addictions. His premise is that meditation quiets the default mode network. "Modes" are the evolutionary parts of our brain that work independently, concurrently, and sometimes in opposition. That is why at times it feels as if there is an internal struggle with one part of the mind wanting something and another part of the mind wanting something else. In fact, that is what evolutionary psychology proposes: different parts of the brain developed at different time points in evolution, were geared to respond to different environmental demands, and thus, some of the brain modes end up in conflict. Nevertheless, these conflicts overall worked (the proof is that we survived) in supporting the core and ultimate reason for evolution-- which is survival of the species and the passing of the genes to the next generation.
The default mode network is a primitive one. It is founded on raw, primitive emotion, it is impulsive, and quick to take action. Addictions are often created and maintained in the default mode. Even the person with the most hard-core addiction will admit, when clear of the substance, that the substance is not logically helping them to live a good life. Nevertheless, the person with an addiction, when he is fully in the substance, can only feel controlled by it, directed by it, and almost as if he or she had no power over it. That is the power of the default mode.
Mindfulness meditation is a way to deal with the default network. In order to step out of the default mode, one must find a way to quiet that mode of the mind. Think of your own experience when dealing with a powerful, primitive urge or impulse. There is a great deal going on in the default mode of thinking, it is loud and commanding an urgent. In order for change to occur, in order for one to step outside of the default mode and create a new behavioral pattern, the mind must be quieted and that is what the practice of mindfulness meditation is able to do.
The acronym R.A.I.N. is what Justin Brewster, PHD uses to describe his technique to use mindfulness meditation to overcome addictions:
R: Recognize the feeling.
A: Accept the feeling rather than try to drive it away.
I: Investigate the feeling and its relationship to your body.
N: Non-attachment or non-identification-- as you look closely at the feeling you gain a critical
distance from the urge and the grip loosens. If it loosens enough, it is no longer a part of you.
From: Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
The default mode network is a primitive one. It is founded on raw, primitive emotion, it is impulsive, and quick to take action. Addictions are often created and maintained in the default mode. Even the person with the most hard-core addiction will admit, when clear of the substance, that the substance is not logically helping them to live a good life. Nevertheless, the person with an addiction, when he is fully in the substance, can only feel controlled by it, directed by it, and almost as if he or she had no power over it. That is the power of the default mode.
Mindfulness meditation is a way to deal with the default network. In order to step out of the default mode, one must find a way to quiet that mode of the mind. Think of your own experience when dealing with a powerful, primitive urge or impulse. There is a great deal going on in the default mode of thinking, it is loud and commanding an urgent. In order for change to occur, in order for one to step outside of the default mode and create a new behavioral pattern, the mind must be quieted and that is what the practice of mindfulness meditation is able to do.
The acronym R.A.I.N. is what Justin Brewster, PHD uses to describe his technique to use mindfulness meditation to overcome addictions:
R: Recognize the feeling.
A: Accept the feeling rather than try to drive it away.
I: Investigate the feeling and its relationship to your body.
N: Non-attachment or non-identification-- as you look closely at the feeling you gain a critical
distance from the urge and the grip loosens. If it loosens enough, it is no longer a part of you.
From: Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Nov 10, 2023
Suffering from Anxiety? Find Out If It Is Natural or an Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety is a natural, adaptive survival mechanism that helps us to focus and react in a useful way to the environment. Anxiety disorders, however, are an exaggerated response to an imagined external cue or trigger. This disorder can cause an enormous amount of suffering.
Social anxiety is the most common of all the anxiety disorders and reflects a persistent fear of social and performance situations. People who have social anxiety are constantly and self-consciously aware of their behavior and how that behavior may appear to others. They are constantly assessing how their behavior meets to meet socially-determined criteria and societal expectations. The fear is that if they fail to meet those criteria/expectations, they will be exposing themselves to potential shame and a sense of humiliation. Yet, in most situations, the person with social anxiety is not confronted by another person and shamed or made to feel humiliated or told that their behavior was inadequate, wrong, or ridiculous. There is no societal response to the person's presumed fear of an inappropriate response. Over and over again, the person with social anxiety holds on to the fear of being shamed, being wrong, and yet nothing in the naturalistic world supports that fear. The question for therapists and researchers is: why isn't the person with social anxiety learning that their fear is not based on reality and why is the person not able to extinguish their fears?
Clark and Wills (1995) wrote an article called Why Fears Persist in which they were able to identify the two main reasons why people with anxiety disorders, specifically social anxiety, persist in keeping the anxiety even in the face of dis-confirming societal feedback. First, Clark and Willis discovered that people with social anxiety shift to an internal locus of attention. They begin to "notice" all the negative internal signs that confirm the fear. They notice that their heart may be beating faster than normal, they may notice that their hands are sweaty and clammy, they may feel crushing pressure on the chest, they may notice they are having difficulty in taking deep breaths, they may notice the coiled knot in their stomach, and that they have difficulty speaking. They focus on all of those internal negative signs and use them as evidence that something terrible is about to happen.
Secondly, people with social anxiety use this internal information to infer how they appear to others… they take on the "observer" perspective and believe that observers (other people) are seeing their internal experience of fast beating heart, clammy hands, pressure on the chest, knot in the stomach, the difficulty in speaking and breathing. They are VISUALIZING their fears and PROJECTING them onto other people.
The third step in understanding why fears persist is that once the fears have been visualized and projected onto the minds of other people, the person with social anxiety begins to implement "safety behaviors." The most common safety behaviors is to withdraw in some way from the experience, either physically or emotionally, and no longer be present in the experience. When the person withdraws from the present moment, they are trapped completely in their internal awareness and are unable to receive any information from the outside world, which is telling them that everything is actually all right.
What the researchers concluded is that the act of withdrawing from the present moment (or any safety behaviors intended to protect one from shame or potential humiliation) prevents learning. As long as one is desperately using safety behavior, one cannot learn anything new. What one wants to learn is that the expected societal rejection or judgment will not happen. Once that lesson is learned, the person becomes less focused on the self, less focused on monitoring internal body sensations and feelings, and thus more able to accurately receive and interpret external cues. The person becomes more present in the moment.
Social anxiety is the most common of all the anxiety disorders and reflects a persistent fear of social and performance situations. People who have social anxiety are constantly and self-consciously aware of their behavior and how that behavior may appear to others. They are constantly assessing how their behavior meets to meet socially-determined criteria and societal expectations. The fear is that if they fail to meet those criteria/expectations, they will be exposing themselves to potential shame and a sense of humiliation. Yet, in most situations, the person with social anxiety is not confronted by another person and shamed or made to feel humiliated or told that their behavior was inadequate, wrong, or ridiculous. There is no societal response to the person's presumed fear of an inappropriate response. Over and over again, the person with social anxiety holds on to the fear of being shamed, being wrong, and yet nothing in the naturalistic world supports that fear. The question for therapists and researchers is: why isn't the person with social anxiety learning that their fear is not based on reality and why is the person not able to extinguish their fears?
Clark and Wills (1995) wrote an article called Why Fears Persist in which they were able to identify the two main reasons why people with anxiety disorders, specifically social anxiety, persist in keeping the anxiety even in the face of dis-confirming societal feedback. First, Clark and Willis discovered that people with social anxiety shift to an internal locus of attention. They begin to "notice" all the negative internal signs that confirm the fear. They notice that their heart may be beating faster than normal, they may notice that their hands are sweaty and clammy, they may feel crushing pressure on the chest, they may notice they are having difficulty in taking deep breaths, they may notice the coiled knot in their stomach, and that they have difficulty speaking. They focus on all of those internal negative signs and use them as evidence that something terrible is about to happen.
Secondly, people with social anxiety use this internal information to infer how they appear to others… they take on the "observer" perspective and believe that observers (other people) are seeing their internal experience of fast beating heart, clammy hands, pressure on the chest, knot in the stomach, the difficulty in speaking and breathing. They are VISUALIZING their fears and PROJECTING them onto other people.
The third step in understanding why fears persist is that once the fears have been visualized and projected onto the minds of other people, the person with social anxiety begins to implement "safety behaviors." The most common safety behaviors is to withdraw in some way from the experience, either physically or emotionally, and no longer be present in the experience. When the person withdraws from the present moment, they are trapped completely in their internal awareness and are unable to receive any information from the outside world, which is telling them that everything is actually all right.
What the researchers concluded is that the act of withdrawing from the present moment (or any safety behaviors intended to protect one from shame or potential humiliation) prevents learning. As long as one is desperately using safety behavior, one cannot learn anything new. What one wants to learn is that the expected societal rejection or judgment will not happen. Once that lesson is learned, the person becomes less focused on the self, less focused on monitoring internal body sensations and feelings, and thus more able to accurately receive and interpret external cues. The person becomes more present in the moment.
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