I wanted to let you know about an Associate or Full Professor Director of
Clinical Training position we are searching for this year. If you know anyone
who might be interested please forward the announcement to them.

Associate or Full Professor
Director of Clinical Training (DCT) Position, Clinical Psychology Program

The Department of Psychology at the University of North Texas (UNT) invites
applications for a tenure track
associate or full professor to be Director of Clinical Training (DCT) of the
Clinical Psychology Program.

For complete qualifications, additional information and to apply please visit:
https://facultyjobs.unt.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=50465

AA/ADA/EOE

ACT relevant research:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1783974/scripps_team_shows_diet_switching_can_activate_brains_stress_system/index.html?source=r_health

PS eliminating "extrinsic" sugar from out diet is among the best things we can do to boost our immune system and protect us against flues of all kinds...

What if we add a little "intrinsic sweetness" to our lives?

Best to all,
Maarten

This is a truly horrible event. Research tells us that

Hi Paty

You might want to try contact Ignacio Jarero (see below), who has done a lot of work with grouptreatments of children (and parents) suffering from trauma.
I have met them some 15 years ago, and was very impressed by their work, and their care and generosity. I think they're still around...
I don't have recent contact info, but if you have difficulties contacting them, please feel free to contact me by backchannel and i'll see what I can do.

Even if some of the protocols they use might need some adaptation for these to become ACT consistent, their long experience in Latin America may be herlpful for you.

Bon courage!
Maarten

---

EMDR Integrative Group Treatment Protocol: A Postdisaster Trauma Intervention for Children and Adults

Ignacio Jarero
AMAMECRISIS, Mexico City, Mexico (IJ, LA); Colorado School of Professional Psychology, Colorado Springs, CO, USA (JH); informes@...

Lucina Artigas

John Hartung

AMAMECRISIS, Mexico City, Mexico (IJ, LA); Colorado School of Professional Psychology, Colorado Springs, CO, USA (JH)

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is recognized as an effective and efficient treatment for trauma-related issues. This article describes an integrated EMDR and group treatment for children and adults traumatized by natural disasters in several Latin American countries. This protocol combines the eight standard EMDR treatment phases with a group therapy model. The hypothesis is that the resulting hybrid offers more extensive reach than did the original EMDR model, which was intended for use with individuals, and takes treatment efficacy and efficiency well beyond that expected from traditional group process. To illustrate the application of the model, one formally measured field study and nine pilot projects are described. The promising results of this intervention suggest that EMDR is an effective means of providing treatment to large groups of people impacted by large-scale traumatic events (e.g., natural disasters). Controlled research is needed to clarify this issue.

Key Words: EMDR • Latin America • natural disaster • posttraumatic stress • trauma • children


Traumatology, Vol. 12, No. 2, 121-129 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1534765606294561


-------- Message d'origine--------
De: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com de la part de Patricia Juarez
Date: jeu. 12/11/2009 03:29
�: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy
Objet : [acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] victims of violence in Ju�rez, Mexico





Hi everyone,



I am writing to the list to see if some of you may be willing to share ideas and/or group exercises you would recommend for a group of children (ages ranging from 8-10), who last Wednesday witnessed an execution of 4 men right behind their school backyard while they were in physical ed. They didn't actually see it, but they heard the gunshots and then found out what had happened. Now the kids are experiencing PTSD-like symptoms and behaviors, and the school asked us to go and intervene, not only with this group of kids, but with the entire elementary school (eighteen classrooms of around 40 students each), including the teachers who are themselves shocked and don't know what to do to help their students.



Given that they live in an area of the city which has a lot of problems, that the situation of violence in Ju�rez doesn't seem to be coming to an end any time soon (realistically speaking), and that I have no experience in working with kids, I would very much welcome any feedback  (back channel if you prefer).



Thank you very much in advance!





Paty Ju�rez

Mtra. Patricia Ju�rez Mendoza
Centro de Atenci�n Psicol�gica SUR�
Universidad Aut�noma de Ciudad Ju�rez

"Once we recognize that thoughts are empty, the mind will no longer have the power to deceive us."  Khyetse Rinpoche
                                         
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft's powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/

A fellow-traveller?

Best to all,
Maarten

Alva Noe: "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness",Hill and Wang; 1 edition (February 17, 2009)

"No� turns Descartes's famous statement on its head: I am, therefore I think, says No�. The author, a philosopher at UC-Berkeley, challenges the assumptions underlying neuroscientific studies of consciousness, rejecting popular mechanistic theories that our experience of the world stems from the firing of the neurons in our brains. No� (Action in Perception) argues that we are not our brains, that consciousness arises from interactions with our surroundings: Consciousness is not something that happens inside us. It is something we do or make. No� points out that many of our habits, like language, are foundational aspects of our mental experience, but at the same time many, if not most, habits are environmental in nature—we behave a particular way in a particular situation. He goes on to challenge popular theories of perception, in particular the claim that the world is just a grand illusion conjured up by the brain. Readers interested in how science can intersect with and profit from philosophy will find much food for thought in No�'s groundbreaking study." (Feb. 24)

Hi Todd and all

I find this connection between curiosity and mindful awareness very interesting and important.
And I think we can connect this with another thread, that of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
My take on some of your work is that for you curiosity is intrinsically motivating; or in slightly different terms, that curiosity is intrinsically reinforcing.
Do you, or anybody else, have any comments on this?


From my part, one of the things that struck me watching Kevin Polk work was, how frequently in his trauma-groups he would respond to his members sharing some stuff:
"Ah, you noticed that... Interesting!" (or: "Isn't that interesting?"). And then this interest (maybe weak at first, maybe the persons couldn't quite go along with that) would be further activated by all the "sorting-and-deriving" he engages his patients in, via the matrix.

Seems to me that this  "Ah, you noticed that... Interesting!" is reinforcing "noticing" as well as the "self that is doing the noticing", as well as highlighting (reinforcing) the intrinsic reinforcement of interest/ curiosity.
And so, key elements of mindfulness are trained in an almost "offhand", informal, playful and conversational way.

What I'd better add, here, is that for Kevin whatever the patient notices is genuinely interesting; so it's much more than just a clever set of words, his own curiosity and care "shines through", very much so.

Best to all,

Maarten


-------- Message d'origine--------
De: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com de la part de tkashdan@...
Date: mar. 10/11/2009 16:30
�: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
Objet : [acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] Re: Question about mindfulness and self-as-context

Hi all,

If you look at the consensus operational definitions of mindfulness (Shaprio, Bishop, Teasdale, etc.), you find that there are 2 components:

1. self-regulation of attention- the awareness component
2. the quality of one's attention- paying attention with openness and curiosity

Most self-report scales focus on the awareness component and not the openness, curiosity, and receptivity to what is being attended to. Thus, it is not surprising that the correlations are small with openness measures. The problem with Openness scales is they are black boxes filled with facets that have little to do with each other. Being imaginative? Artistic preferences and sensibilities? Daydreaming? Creativity? Put these all together and you get non-random error with artistic minded people with artificially higher scores. We only get what the items tap. I think there are benefits to moving away from the globular beast of openness to capture the exact dimensions of interest.

I have some data being written up showing a synergistic interaction between curiosity and mindful awareness in predicting receptivity to difficult emotional material (reminders of death in a terror mgmt paradigm). In fact, we are presenting a poster with these findings at ABCT next week in the mindfulness SIG.

I am not sure why people are apt to neglect curiosity and openness as parts of mindfulness, not antecedents, correlates, or consequences, but part of being mindful.

Most experimental manipulations of mindfulness focus heavily on the first component of mindfulness but don't nab the first and second components. In the ACT model, curiosity is implicitly embedded in acceptance, defusion, and self-as-context but I argue it should be made more explicit. The person who does the best job of making it explicit is Russ Harris. He has at right at the forefront with being present and doing what matters.

cheers,
Todd

--
Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
George Mason University
Mail Stop 3F5
Fairfax, VA  22030
Office: 703-993-9486
Fax: 703-993-1359
Lab: http://mason.gmu.edu/~tkashdan/
Homepage: http://toddkashdan.com/
Blog: huffingtonpost.com/todd-kashdan



--- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, "amielanger" <amie-langer@...> wrote:
>
> A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:
>
> 1.    nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
> 2.    awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself
>
> The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to focus more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.
>
> So my question is.even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus on this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context (and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on the latter.
>
> Thank you,
> Amie
>
>
> *****************************************
> Amie N. Langer, M.A.
> Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
> The University of Iowa
> E11 Seashore Hall
> Iowa City, IA  52246
> amie-langer@...
>

Jacqueline,

Yes, it makes sense and seems "right on" to me. And from a "bigger picture" of a
Leading Principle such as, "Be the best parent I can be," all of the stuff can
be seen as dove tailing together. Making your son's shopping experience as
pleasant as possible isn't just in the service of "have a good time," or "keep
him from being such a pain to me as he is when he as a 'bad' time." Rather, it
seems more in the service of "don't let other stuff interfere with the skills
that I think will help him life his life well." By aiming to "help them grow up"
you do things that "help them grow up" and those things are reinforcing not just
in and of themselves but because they are part and parcel of "help them grow
up." I think that is precisely Kelly's definition of values in ACT.


I'll soon be off traveling so it may be awhile before I respond again.

Best,

Hank

________________________________________
From: Jacqueline A-Tjak [a-tjak.turk@...]
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 11:31 PM
To: Robb, Harold B.
Cc: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Hi Hank,

Yes, this is helpful. Thanks. I guess that what confuses me is when I try to
understand a small operant as being values consistent. Let me check if I get
this right:

For example: Two weeks ago I went shopping with my children for clothes. The
small picture would be: the reinforcement is in having the clothes they
needed after the shopping. The big picture would be: I tried to let my kids
make their own decisions, they had their own money so they can learn to
spend it wisely, I tried to make it a pleasant enterprise (since my son
hates shopping for clothes, that takes some skill). And even that is only a
small picture because my kids will not learn to spend their money wisely
when they go shopping with their own money once. It is part of a process.
But since I know what I am doing it for, and that is mostly a verbal thing,
I will feel reinforced by the act of letting them make their own decisions,
knowing (verbally) this will probably help them to learn to do that wisely
over time.

Makes sense?

Best,

Jacqueline

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] Namens Robb, Harold
B.
Verzonden: zondag 8 november 2009 18:57
CC: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
Onderwerp: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Jacqueline,

"Means-ends" analysis is a relational frame. It can be arbitrarily applied
to anything. "Means" ar not somehow "inately means" and "ends" are not
somehow "inately ends;" at least not from a functionalist perspective.. The
usual BIG main feature is that "means" temporally preceed "ends." This is
why the concept of "reinforcement" is often so hard to get one's head
around. The "reinforcement" comes after, not before, the behavior and by
that "placement" tends to make the probability of the behavior more likely
in a similar context; and if it doesn't, it wasn't a "reinforcer."

When you note, "and they respond to me in an open friendly manner" might be
a "result," yes it could. And you don't have to stop the analysis there. You
can look at a "bigger" picture. "An operant" can be a big or as small as one
cares to make it. It is a "way of looking," not "the thing looked at."
Operants can have ANY size. So, you COULD stop with the "friendly manner,"
and you could look "bigger." "Be the most likable person I can be" might be
the self-chosen Leading Principle I am following, and there might be some
other Leading Principle such as "Be as conected with the folks you are with
as you can." Likely, the way, "and they respond to me in an open friendly
manner," fits with the first is likely not the way it fits with the second.
With regard to the first, the response is likely to be the whole point. With
the second, it is a "signal of connection" which links to something bigger
than the immediate response itself which is why it is a "signal" - both an
R+ and an SD+ for "more of that"  where "that" is "connecting" "stuff."

If you look at Kelly's definition, he is talking about "BIG" operants from
the point of view of "time and size." So, you will have to look at something
"long enough and wide enough" to see if what he is describing is what's
going on. The thing is, there are also short cuts because we claim that
"valued action" is vitalizing and you can contact "vitalizing" rather
quickly, either with yourself or with others. The "just going through the
motions" experience vs. the "WAY COOL" experience sort of hits you in the
face when you have enough discrimination history. You can even notice, "Well
this isn't much for me, but s/he sure seems to be getting off on it," or
vice versa.

The main point I would make is that if you make an operant analysis "big
enough" you will be able to ANALYTICALLY "break it into smaller pieces." The
"smaller pieces" aren't "real pieces," that's just how you broke it up. So
you go back to, "What was the point of breaking up that way?" If you answer,
" to find the REAL reinforcers," the heart of Functional Contnextualism has
slipped away - and it is easy to do in a system that has taught us about
"reality and how sciece cuts realty at its joints." "THERE ARE NO JOINTS!,"
he said with perhaps too much enthusiasm. :)

So, according to Kelly (and his definition seems fine enough to me), "In
ACT, values are freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing,
dynamic, evolving patterns of activity, which establish predominant
reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement in the valued
behavioral pattern itself." OK, if you want to see if what you are looking
at is about "values," as defined, then look "big enough" so that the
definition can apply. If you look "smaller," it can't. If you look "big" and
then "break big into smaller," don't get trapped in the "reality of the
pieces." Go back and ask what the point of making the pieces was in the
first place. If the answer is, "to find the REAL/TRUE analysis," smile, sigh
and notice, "Yea, metaphysical realism suckered me again!"

Hope this helps.

H
________________________________________
From: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Jacqueline
A-Tjak [a-tjak.turk@...]
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 8:37 AM
To: 'Kelly Wilson'; 'William Kordonski'
Cc: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com; 'Maarten Aalberse'
Subject: RE: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Hi all,

I am very grateful for this discussion about reinforcement. I am confused
and hope to de-confuse.

I learned from Kelly this about values: In ACT, values are freely chosen,
verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of
activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that activity that are
intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern itself.

Intrinsic is explained as: Independent of results or outcome.

Here is where I get lost.

Hank wrote: 'If I am trying to have a conversation with someone and they
respond to me in an open friendly manner, that ought to be reinforcing to
me. How people respond is an intrinsic part of the action of conversing and
not something extrinsic to it.'
But that could be considered a result, right? So what confuses me is: what
do we consider a result or outcome and what not? What is a natural part of a
response pattern and what is not?

HELP!

Best,
Jacqueline


Van: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] Namens Kelly Wilson
Verzonden: vrijdag 6 november 2009 21:14
Aan: William Kordonski
CC: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com Listserve; Maarten
Aalberse
Onderwerp: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"


One thing at a time please BIll. Hmmmm. Widely accepted. Dunno.
Theoretically coherent. I would argue it with anyone anytime. Try the
alternative - discrete objects or events are the reinforcers. I can readily
find examples where that just doesn't work, but that are clearly examples of
reinforcement. Here is a pretty simple explication from Mindfulness for Two
- pages 31-33 with examples of why responses as movements and stimuli as
objects are insufficiently flexible ways of speaking.

Two Common Errors in Understanding Responses and Stimuli
Two common misconceptions about responses and stimuli are that responses are
movements and stimuli are discrete objects. From a contex- tual behavioral
perspective, these are both incorrect in the most techni-

p. 31
A Clinician's Guide to Stimulus ControlMindfulness for Two
cal sense. On the response side, standing still is defined as a response if
I can demonstrate that standing still, as the response of interest, is
capable of being organized by context, which is to say, capable of being
provoked by some kind of stimulus. For example, if I give you a five-dollar
bill when you stand still and take five dollars when you move and thereby
alter the probability that you'll stand still, then "standing still" meets
our defini- tion of behavior: it's something the organism can do. Also,
standing still can be brought under contextual control-that is, it's in
dynamic inter- action with a stimulating environment.
On the stimulus side, the most common error is to think of a stimu- lus as
an object. We might, for example, see the five-dollar bill as the stimulus
that organizes behavior. In a limited sense, this is true, but a more
sophisticated way to think of this is that standing still changes the world
from one where you can't buy things to one in which, with your crisp, new
fiver, you can. It is that transition from not having the power to buy
things to having that power that organizes behavior, not the bill per se.
For example, if I gave you a billion dollars, the promise of an extra five
bucks would likely no longer organize your behavior, and you would stand
still or move as it pleased you. Or if I locked you in a cell where money
couldn't be spent or given away, five dollars (or even a billion) wouldn't
do much to organize your behavior. Why not? Because receiv- ing the
five-dollar bill in either of those two contexts wouldn't change your world
in any significant way.
In many applications, calling the five-dollar bill a reinforcer of behavior
is probably workable. (We should remember that, despite the leaps and bounds
of contemporary physics, Newton's classical mechanics work just fine in most
instances too.) However, we want a more sophis- ticated understanding of the
dynamic interaction of responding and stimulating.
Why does it matter? The distinction matters because sometimes there's no
object or immediate discrete event to which we can point. Richard Herrnstein
and Philip Hineline (1966) carried out a classic experimental example that
illustrates this point nicely. In their study, rats were placed in an
experimental chamber, and the floor of the chamber was briefly electrified
at random intervals. If the rats pressed a certain lever within the chamber,
the shocks would come at a slightly reduced, though still random, interval.
What Herrnstein and Hineline found in the experiment was that lever pressing
was maintained in the rats. We cannot understand the maintenance of the
lever pressing by appealing to the immediate effects of lever pressing. The
most common immediate effect of a lever press was that nothing would happen.
In fact, as result
P. 32

of the shocks coming at random intervals, the lever press was sometimes
followed immediately by a shock. Why did the rats press the lever? In simple
terms, the rat pressed the lever because doing so precipitated a transition
in context from one in which shocks are more frequent to one in which they
are less frequent.


best,
kelly


On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:02 PM, William Kordonski wrote:


Transition from one context to another is the rein forcer? Is this a
generally accepted view in BA?

And so, if I may look at intrinsic vs. extrinsic reinforcement: There is
really no difference.

Ex: playing a guitar for an audience vs for oneself is just a change in
context from non-playing to playing. Extrinsic then is something you can
identify in the environment to distinguish one context from another. Is that
right?

Bill

________________________________
From:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmen
ttherapy@yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Kelly
Wilson
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 9:33 AM
To: Maarten Aalberse
Cc:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmen
ttherapy@yahoogroups.com> Listserve
Subject: Re: [acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"



Maarten - I truly do not think anyone is in opposition to the concern you
express. There is just too much contrary evidence. People have said again
and again on the list, me too, that avoidance is not inherently bad, that
people ought to pick their own pace, that movement is always relative to the
client's values and pace.

IMO ACT in Practice is just talking about openness to experience. In my
view, openness does not involve complete and inflexible absorption - I have
seen clients who indulge in that and plenty of "feel your feelings"
therapists ready to help them do it. I have been guilty of it
myself--intoxicated by the potency of emotion. ACT is not a feel your
feelings for it's own sake therapy though. I think, and individual authors
can correct me if I am wrong, that it is probably just a matter of economy
of words.

Here is an example from behavior analysis. I train people to always always
always think of reinforcers as transit ions in context. The food pellet is
not the reinforcer for the rat's lever press. The reinforcer is the
transition in context from one in which eating is not possible to one in
which eating is possible. This conception of reinforcement is much more
flexible than an object oriented understanding of reinforcement. It allows
us to talk sensibly about both the rat lever pressing for food and the rat
lever pressing to transition from higher density of shocks to a lower
density of shocks even when any particular press might be followed by an
immediate shock. It allows for a scaling up or down or our understanding of
relevant context (molar vs molecular) without changing the analytic
sensibilities.

That said, you can find me talking about reinforcers as if they are objects
or discreet events sometimes because the transition in context language is
cumbersome. I wonder if what you are seeing is like that. I just cannot
think of any major ACT treatment develope r who would say "resisting
feelings is always pathogenic" - I can easily imagine them saying, about
avoidance, about fusion, about turning away from values, that there is a
risk involved, but not a blanket always pathogenic claim.

perhaps the discussion can serve to remind us to come back frequently to the
always contextualized, functional understanding of what is and is not
pathogenic.

anyhow, my two cents,

kelly




On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:41 AM, Maarten Aalberse wrote:







Oh dear.

With a little trepidation I come back to this diffciult discussion on
"without needless defense".

It's because in looking up something completely different, I stumbled on
this, in ACT in Practice, P; 128:

"(...) rather the aim is to embrace what is currently being felt without
resistance".

I don't think I'm playing wordgames when I say that this implies that
resistance is pathogenic.

This I can't agree with, for both theoretical and clinical reasons.

A little detail to add to the above, resistance in psychoanalysis refers to
resisting the therapist's interventions....

So where "without defense" is problematic for me, "without resistance" is
IMO even more off track.

As a little aside: "without" is dead-man's territory for me.

Best to all (really!)

Maarten


Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/k
wilson/kwilson.htm%0d%0a%20>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>






Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/k
wilson/kwilson.htm>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>









------------------------------------

To learn more about ACT, RFT, the Association for Contextual Behavioral
Science (ACBS), and the scientific and practical program we are creating
together as a world community, be sure to visit
http://www.contextualpsychology.org.

If you wish to participate in ACT/RFT/ACBS forum discussions (similar to
this list serve, but with an easily accessible permanent record)
periodically visit http://www.contextualpsychology.org/forum


-Yahoo! Groups Links

Good one, curiosity as part of the ACT model, although I think that it depends
on how you apply the model in the first place. I suppose a lot of ACT therapists
would use it implicitly. Personally, I apply the concept curiosity to one's own
mind, experiences and thoughts as part of being aware in the present and
defusing from content of thoughts in clients a lot, although I might use other
words for it (f.i. friendliness, compassion). I use curiosity a lot in treating
OCD, as part of 'being curious to the strange working of your mind and its
creativity for creating difficult thoughts', or something.

Best,
Marco

--- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, tkashdan@... wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> If you look at the consensus operational definitions of mindfulness (Shaprio,
Bishop, Teasdale, etc.), you find that there are 2 components:
>
> 1. self-regulation of attention- the awareness component
> 2. the quality of one's attention- paying attention with openness and
curiosity
>
> Most self-report scales focus on the awareness component and not the openness,
curiosity, and receptivity to what is being attended to. Thus, it is not
surprising that the correlations are small with openness measures. The problem
with Openness scales is they are black boxes filled with facets that have little
to do with each other. Being imaginative? Artistic preferences and
sensibilities? Daydreaming? Creativity? Put these all together and you get
non-random error with artistic minded people with artificially higher scores. We
only get what the items tap. I think there are benefits to moving away from the
globular beast of openness to capture the exact dimensions of interest.
>
> I have some data being written up showing a synergistic interaction between
curiosity and mindful awareness in predicting receptivity to difficult emotional
material (reminders of death in a terror mgmt paradigm). In fact, we are
presenting a poster with these findings at ABCT next week in the mindfulness
SIG.
>
> I am not sure why people are apt to neglect curiosity and openness as parts of
mindfulness, not antecedents, correlates, or consequences, but part of being
mindful.
>
> Most experimental manipulations of mindfulness focus heavily on the first
component of mindfulness but don't nab the first and second components. In the
ACT model, curiosity is implicitly embedded in acceptance, defusion, and
self-as-context but I argue it should be made more explicit. The person who does
the best job of making it explicit is Russ Harris. He has at right at the
forefront with being present and doing what matters.
>
> cheers,
> Todd
>
> --
> Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Department of Psychology
> George Mason University
> Mail Stop 3F5
> Fairfax, VA  22030
> Office: 703-993-9486
> Fax: 703-993-1359
> Lab: http://mason.gmu.edu/~tkashdan/
> Homepage: http://toddkashdan.com/
> Blog: huffingtonpost.com/todd-kashdan
>
>
>
> --- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, "amielanger"
<amie-langer@> wrote:
> >
> > A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion
regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a
review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion
regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:
> >
> > 1. nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
> > 2. awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself
> >
> > The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to
focus more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative
awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the
second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second
process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental
freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors
assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream
mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article
concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness
because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur
within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it
reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.
> >
> > So my question is�even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus
on this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context
(and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the
authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do
not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other
portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT
incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing
self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only
speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on
the latter.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Amie
> >
> >
> > *****************************************
> > Amie N. Langer, M.A.
> > Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
> > The University of Iowa
> > E11 Seashore Hall
> > Iowa City, IA  52246
> > amie-langer@
> >
>

Hi all,

If you look at the consensus operational definitions of mindfulness (Shaprio,
Bishop, Teasdale, etc.), you find that there are 2 components:

1. self-regulation of attention- the awareness component
2. the quality of one's attention- paying attention with openness and curiosity

Most self-report scales focus on the awareness component and not the openness,
curiosity, and receptivity to what is being attended to. Thus, it is not
surprising that the correlations are small with openness measures. The problem
with Openness scales is they are black boxes filled with facets that have little
to do with each other. Being imaginative? Artistic preferences and
sensibilities? Daydreaming? Creativity? Put these all together and you get
non-random error with artistic minded people with artificially higher scores. We
only get what the items tap. I think there are benefits to moving away from the
globular beast of openness to capture the exact dimensions of interest.

I have some data being written up showing a synergistic interaction between
curiosity and mindful awareness in predicting receptivity to difficult emotional
material (reminders of death in a terror mgmt paradigm). In fact, we are
presenting a poster with these findings at ABCT next week in the mindfulness
SIG.

I am not sure why people are apt to neglect curiosity and openness as parts of
mindfulness, not antecedents, correlates, or consequences, but part of being
mindful.

Most experimental manipulations of mindfulness focus heavily on the first
component of mindfulness but don't nab the first and second components. In the
ACT model, curiosity is implicitly embedded in acceptance, defusion, and
self-as-context but I argue it should be made more explicit. The person who does
the best job of making it explicit is Russ Harris. He has at right at the
forefront with being present and doing what matters.

cheers,
Todd

--
Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
George Mason University
Mail Stop 3F5
Fairfax, VA  22030
Office: 703-993-9486
Fax: 703-993-1359
Lab: http://mason.gmu.edu/~tkashdan/
Homepage: http://toddkashdan.com/
Blog: huffingtonpost.com/todd-kashdan



--- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, "amielanger"
<amie-langer@...> wrote:
>
> A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion
regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a
review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion
regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:
>
> 1. nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
> 2. awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself
>
> The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to focus
more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative
awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the
second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second
process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental
freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors
assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream
mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article
concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness
because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur
within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it
reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.
>
> So my question is�even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus on
this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context
(and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the
authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do
not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other
portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT
incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing
self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only
speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on
the latter.
>
> Thank you,
> Amie
>
>
> *****************************************
> Amie N. Langer, M.A.
> Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
> The University of Iowa
> E11 Seashore Hall
> Iowa City, IA  52246
> amie-langer@...
>

Hi all,

If you look at the consensus operational definitions of mindfulness (Shaprio,
Bishop, Teasdale, etc.), you find that there are 2 components:

1. self-regulation of attention- the awareness component
2. the quality of one's attention- paying attention with openness and curiosity

Most self-report scales focus on the awareness component and not the openness,
curiosity, and receptivity to what is being attended to. Thus, it is not
surprising that the correlations are small with openness measures. The problem
with Openness scales is they are black boxes filled with facets that have little
to do with each other. Being imaginative? Artistic preferences and
sensibilities? Daydreaming? Creativity? Put these all together and you get
non-random error with artistic minded people with artificially higher scores. We
only get what the items tap. I think there are benefits to moving away from the
globular beast of openness to capture the exact dimensions of interest.

I have some data being written up showing a synergistic interaction between
curiosity and mindful awareness in predicting receptivity to difficult emotional
material (reminders of death in a terror mgmt paradigm). In fact, we are
presenting a poster with these findings at ABCT next week in the mindfulness
SIG.

I am not sure why people are apt to neglect curiosity and openness as parts of
mindfulness, not antecedents, correlates, or consequences, but part of being
mindful.

Most experimental manipulations of mindfulness focus heavily on the first
component of mindfulness but don't nab the first and second components. In the
ACT model, curiosity is implicitly embedded in acceptance, defusion, and
self-as-context but I argue it should be made more explicit. The person who does
the best job of making it explicit is Russ Harris. He has at right at the
forefront with being present and doing what matters.

cheers,
Todd

--
Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
George Mason University
Mail Stop 3F5
Fairfax, VA  22030
Office: 703-993-9486
Fax: 703-993-1359
Lab: http://mason.gmu.edu/~tkashdan/
Homepage: http://toddkashdan.com/
Blog: huffingtonpost.com/todd-kashdan



--- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, "amielanger"
<amie-langer@...> wrote:
>
> A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion
regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a
review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion
regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:
>
> 1. nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
> 2. awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself
>
> The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to focus
more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative
awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the
second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second
process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental
freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors
assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream
mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article
concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness
because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur
within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it
reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.
>
> So my question is�even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus on
this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context
(and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the
authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do
not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other
portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT
incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing
self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only
speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on
the latter.
>
> Thank you,
> Amie
>
>
> *****************************************
> Amie N. Langer, M.A.
> Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
> The University of Iowa
> E11 Seashore Hall
> Iowa City, IA  52246
> amie-langer@...
>

Hi folks

First of all I want to thank all of you who helped me navigate through my difficulties with acceptance practices as "being intrusive", as "pushing for experiences", as "dismantling defenses" etc.

It reminded me once more to not to forget (blush) to appreciate the huge difference it makes if acceptance is done in the service of values, instead of apparently a goal in and of itself.

As an interesting aside: I remembered this morning how the classical dutch word for acceptance: "aanvaarding", originally referred to two boats navigating alongside eachother, connecting ("aan") while floating ("varen") in the same direction.
Doesn't that sound a bit like the good not-so-old bus metaphor where we "take passengers along for our ride toward our values"?

Another illustration of the importance of seeing acceptance as one part of the hexaflex instead of apparently a goal in and of itself: when studying Tara Brach's "Radical Acceptance" it became clear for me that Tara's clients get into difficulties with accepting when... they stay massively fused with painful thoughts.
Makes me wish for Tara (whose work I find very inspiring) more explicitly introducing defusion...

Best to all,
Maarten

Hi Hank,

Yes, this is helpful. Thanks. I guess that what confuses me is when I try to
understand a small operant as being values consistent. Let me check if I get
this right:

For example: Two weeks ago I went shopping with my children for clothes. The
small picture would be: the reinforcement is in having the clothes they
needed after the shopping. The big picture would be: I tried to let my kids
make their own decisions, they had their own money so they can learn to
spend it wisely, I tried to make it a pleasant enterprise (since my son
hates shopping for clothes, that takes some skill). And even that is only a
small picture because my kids will not learn to spend their money wisely
when they go shopping with their own money once. It is part of a process.
But since I know what I am doing it for, and that is mostly a verbal thing,
I will feel reinforced by the act of letting them make their own decisions,
knowing (verbally) this will probably help them to learn to do that wisely
over time.

Makes sense?

Best,

Jacqueline

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] Namens Robb, Harold
B.
Verzonden: zondag 8 november 2009 18:57
CC: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
Onderwerp: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Jacqueline,

"Means-ends" analysis is a relational frame. It can be arbitrarily applied
to anything. "Means" ar not somehow "inately means" and "ends" are not
somehow "inately ends;" at least not from a functionalist perspective.. The
usual BIG main feature is that "means" temporally preceed "ends." This is
why the concept of "reinforcement" is often so hard to get one's head
around. The "reinforcement" comes after, not before, the behavior and by
that "placement" tends to make the probability of the behavior more likely
in a similar context; and if it doesn't, it wasn't a "reinforcer."

When you note, "and they respond to me in an open friendly manner" might be
a "result," yes it could. And you don't have to stop the analysis there. You
can look at a "bigger" picture. "An operant" can be a big or as small as one
cares to make it. It is a "way of looking," not "the thing looked at."
Operants can have ANY size. So, you COULD stop with the "friendly manner,"
and you could look "bigger." "Be the most likable person I can be" might be
the self-chosen Leading Principle I am following, and there might be some
other Leading Principle such as "Be as conected with the folks you are with
as you can." Likely, the way, "and they respond to me in an open friendly
manner," fits with the first is likely not the way it fits with the second.
With regard to the first, the response is likely to be the whole point. With
the second, it is a "signal of connection" which links to something bigger
than the immediate response itself which is why it is a "signal" - both an
R+ and an SD+ for "more of that"  where "that" is "connecting" "stuff."

If you look at Kelly's definition, he is talking about "BIG" operants from
the point of view of "time and size." So, you will have to look at something
"long enough and wide enough" to see if what he is describing is what's
going on. The thing is, there are also short cuts because we claim that
"valued action" is vitalizing and you can contact "vitalizing" rather
quickly, either with yourself or with others. The "just going through the
motions" experience vs. the "WAY COOL" experience sort of hits you in the
face when you have enough discrimination history. You can even notice, "Well
this isn't much for me, but s/he sure seems to be getting off on it," or
vice versa.

The main point I would make is that if you make an operant analysis "big
enough" you will be able to ANALYTICALLY "break it into smaller pieces." The
"smaller pieces" aren't "real pieces," that's just how you broke it up. So
you go back to, "What was the point of breaking up that way?" If you answer,
" to find the REAL reinforcers," the heart of Functional Contnextualism has
slipped away - and it is easy to do in a system that has taught us about
"reality and how sciece cuts realty at its joints." "THERE ARE NO JOINTS!,"
he said with perhaps too much enthusiasm. :)

So, according to Kelly (and his definition seems fine enough to me), "In
ACT, values are freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing,
dynamic, evolving patterns of activity, which establish predominant
reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement in the valued
behavioral pattern itself." OK, if you want to see if what you are looking
at is about "values," as defined, then look "big enough" so that the
definition can apply. If you look "smaller," it can't. If you look "big" and
then "break big into smaller," don't get trapped in the "reality of the
pieces." Go back and ask what the point of making the pieces was in the
first place. If the answer is, "to find the REAL/TRUE analysis," smile, sigh
and notice, "Yea, metaphysical realism suckered me again!"

Hope this helps.

H
________________________________________
From: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Jacqueline
A-Tjak [a-tjak.turk@...]
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 8:37 AM
To: 'Kelly Wilson'; 'William Kordonski'
Cc: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com; 'Maarten Aalberse'
Subject: RE: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Hi all,

I am very grateful for this discussion about reinforcement. I am confused
and hope to de-confuse.

I learned from Kelly this about values: In ACT, values are freely chosen,
verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of
activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that activity that are
intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern itself.

Intrinsic is explained as: Independent of results or outcome.

Here is where I get lost.

Hank wrote: 'If I am trying to have a conversation with someone and they
respond to me in an open friendly manner, that ought to be reinforcing to
me. How people respond is an intrinsic part of the action of conversing and
not something extrinsic to it.'
But that could be considered a result, right? So what confuses me is: what
do we consider a result or outcome and what not? What is a natural part of a
response pattern and what is not?

HELP!

Best,
Jacqueline


Van: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] Namens Kelly Wilson
Verzonden: vrijdag 6 november 2009 21:14
Aan: William Kordonski
CC: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com Listserve; Maarten
Aalberse
Onderwerp: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"


One thing at a time please BIll. Hmmmm. Widely accepted. Dunno.
Theoretically coherent. I would argue it with anyone anytime. Try the
alternative - discrete objects or events are the reinforcers. I can readily
find examples where that just doesn't work, but that are clearly examples of
reinforcement. Here is a pretty simple explication from Mindfulness for Two
- pages 31-33 with examples of why responses as movements and stimuli as
objects are insufficiently flexible ways of speaking.

Two Common Errors in Understanding Responses and Stimuli
Two common misconceptions about responses and stimuli are that responses are
movements and stimuli are discrete objects. From a contex- tual behavioral
perspective, these are both incorrect in the most techni-

p. 31
A Clinician's Guide to Stimulus ControlMindfulness for Two
cal sense. On the response side, standing still is defined as a response if
I can demonstrate that standing still, as the response of interest, is
capable of being organized by context, which is to say, capable of being
provoked by some kind of stimulus. For example, if I give you a five-dollar
bill when you stand still and take five dollars when you move and thereby
alter the probability that you'll stand still, then "standing still" meets
our defini- tion of behavior: it's something the organism can do. Also,
standing still can be brought under contextual control-that is, it's in
dynamic inter- action with a stimulating environment.
On the stimulus side, the most common error is to think of a stimu- lus as
an object. We might, for example, see the five-dollar bill as the stimulus
that organizes behavior. In a limited sense, this is true, but a more
sophisticated way to think of this is that standing still changes the world
from one where you can't buy things to one in which, with your crisp, new
fiver, you can. It is that transition from not having the power to buy
things to having that power that organizes behavior, not the bill per se.
For example, if I gave you a billion dollars, the promise of an extra five
bucks would likely no longer organize your behavior, and you would stand
still or move as it pleased you. Or if I locked you in a cell where money
couldn't be spent or given away, five dollars (or even a billion) wouldn't
do much to organize your behavior. Why not? Because receiv- ing the
five-dollar bill in either of those two contexts wouldn't change your world
in any significant way.
In many applications, calling the five-dollar bill a reinforcer of behavior
is probably workable. (We should remember that, despite the leaps and bounds
of contemporary physics, Newton's classical mechanics work just fine in most
instances too.) However, we want a more sophis- ticated understanding of the
dynamic interaction of responding and stimulating.
Why does it matter? The distinction matters because sometimes there's no
object or immediate discrete event to which we can point. Richard Herrnstein
and Philip Hineline (1966) carried out a classic experimental example that
illustrates this point nicely. In their study, rats were placed in an
experimental chamber, and the floor of the chamber was briefly electrified
at random intervals. If the rats pressed a certain lever within the chamber,
the shocks would come at a slightly reduced, though still random, interval.
What Herrnstein and Hineline found in the experiment was that lever pressing
was maintained in the rats. We cannot understand the maintenance of the
lever pressing by appealing to the immediate effects of lever pressing. The
most common immediate effect of a lever press was that nothing would happen.
In fact, as result
P. 32

of the shocks coming at random intervals, the lever press was sometimes
followed immediately by a shock. Why did the rats press the lever? In simple
terms, the rat pressed the lever because doing so precipitated a transition
in context from one in which shocks are more frequent to one in which they
are less frequent.


best,
kelly


On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:02 PM, William Kordonski wrote:


Transition from one context to another is the rein forcer? Is this a
generally accepted view in BA?

And so, if I may look at intrinsic vs. extrinsic reinforcement: There is
really no difference.

Ex: playing a guitar for an audience vs for oneself is just a change in
context from non-playing to playing. Extrinsic then is something you can
identify in the environment to distinguish one context from another. Is that
right?

Bill

________________________________
From:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmen
ttherapy@yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Kelly
Wilson
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 9:33 AM
To: Maarten Aalberse
Cc:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmen
ttherapy@yahoogroups.com> Listserve
Subject: Re: [acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"



Maarten - I truly do not think anyone is in opposition to the concern you
express. There is just too much contrary evidence. People have said again
and again on the list, me too, that avoidance is not inherently bad, that
people ought to pick their own pace, that movement is always relative to the
client's values and pace.

IMO ACT in Practice is just talking about openness to experience. In my
view, openness does not involve complete and inflexible absorption - I have
seen clients who indulge in that and plenty of "feel your feelings"
therapists ready to help them do it. I have been guilty of it
myself--intoxicated by the potency of emotion. ACT is not a feel your
feelings for it's own sake therapy though. I think, and individual authors
can correct me if I am wrong, that it is probably just a matter of economy
of words.

Here is an example from behavior analysis. I train people to always always
always think of reinforcers as transit ions in context. The food pellet is
not the reinforcer for the rat's lever press. The reinforcer is the
transition in context from one in which eating is not possible to one in
which eating is possible. This conception of reinforcement is much more
flexible than an object oriented understanding of reinforcement. It allows
us to talk sensibly about both the rat lever pressing for food and the rat
lever pressing to transition from higher density of shocks to a lower
density of shocks even when any particular press might be followed by an
immediate shock. It allows for a scaling up or down or our understanding of
relevant context (molar vs molecular) without changing the analytic
sensibilities.

That said, you can find me talking about reinforcers as if they are objects
or discreet events sometimes because the transition in context language is
cumbersome. I wonder if what you are seeing is like that. I just cannot
think of any major ACT treatment develope r who would say "resisting
feelings is always pathogenic" - I can easily imagine them saying, about
avoidance, about fusion, about turning away from values, that there is a
risk involved, but not a blanket always pathogenic claim.

perhaps the discussion can serve to remind us to come back frequently to the
always contextualized, functional understanding of what is and is not
pathogenic.

anyhow, my two cents,

kelly




On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:41 AM, Maarten Aalberse wrote:







Oh dear.

With a little trepidation I come back to this diffciult discussion on
"without needless defense".

It's because in looking up something completely different, I stumbled on
this, in ACT in Practice, P; 128:

"(...) rather the aim is to embrace what is currently being felt without
resistance".

I don't think I'm playing wordgames when I say that this implies that
resistance is pathogenic.

This I can't agree with, for both theoretical and clinical reasons.

A little detail to add to the above, resistance in psychoanalysis refers to
resisting the therapist's interventions....

So where "without defense" is problematic for me, "without resistance" is
IMO even more off track.

As a little aside: "without" is dead-man's territory for me.

Best to all (really!)

Maarten


Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/k
wilson/kwilson.htm%0d%0a%20>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>






Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/k
wilson/kwilson.htm>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>









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periodically visit http://www.contextualpsychology.org/forum


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I don't have access to the article and so have not read it. That being said, I agree that #2 (awareness of awareness) sounds more like self-as-context and less like defusion. And also puzzling that they don't acknowledge ACT's emphasis on building both skills.

Could you perhaps post the article?

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 1:54 PM, amielanger <amie-langer@...> wrote:

�
 
 
   

A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:

1. nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
2. awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself

The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to focus more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.

So my question is…even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus on this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context (and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on the latter.

Thank you,
Amie

*****************************************
Amie N. Langer, M.A.
Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
The University of Iowa
E11 Seashore Hall
Iowa City, IA  52246
amie-langer@... <mailto:amie-langer%40uiowa.edu>

 
   
 

A recent article in Clinical Psychology Review titled "Mindful emotion
regulation: An integrative review" (Chambers, Gullone, & Allen, 2009) includes a
review of the different conceptualizations of mindfulness and emotion
regulation, and then focuses on two aspects of mindfulness:

1. nonjudgmental and nonelaborative awareness
2. awareness of, or perception of, awareness itself

The article delineates how mainstream psychology has thus far tended to focus
more on the first process (i.e., developing nonjudgmental nonelaborative
awareness) and has not engaged to any significant degree with the notion of the
second (i.e., direct perception of awareness). The authors note the second
process has been variously referred to as "choiceless awareness," "mental
freedom," and even "cognitive defusion." Throughout the article, the authors
assert that this second process has not been incorporated into mainstream
mindfulness-based interventions, with the exception of MBSR. The article
concludes that future research should focus more on this aspect of mindfulness
because, among other things, it fosters recognition that sensory phenomena occur
within awareness yet do not alter or harm that awareness, and as such, it
reduces the tendency to respond to stimuli either appetitively or avoidantly.

So my question is�even though ACT as a technology does not explicitly focus on
this second process, is it not embedded within the notion of self-as-context
(and psychological flexibility more generally)?  My mind is puzzled that the
authors claim this process has been referred to as "cognitive defusion" yet do
not note its inclusion in ACT, particularly given they reference ACT in other
portions of the article. I am wondering if the authors do not agree that ACT
incorporates this process, or if I have misunderstood the function of developing
self-as-context within an ACT framework. I realize that the authors can only
speak to the former, so I am hoping to get feedback from the ACT community on
the latter.

Thank you,
Amie


*****************************************
Amie N. Langer, M.A.
Clinical Psychology Graduate Student
The University of Iowa
E11 Seashore Hall
Iowa City, IA  52246
amie-langer@...

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

PS
It was a heterogenic clinical sample of 60 psychiatric inpatients.

--- In acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com, "Marco" <marcokleen@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> In a small correlational study I've performed (with some others on this list)
we found a zero-correlation between mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness
Scale; MAAS)and the Openness subscale of the NEO-FFI. I found this quite
supprising, given the fact that openness is defined as a compound of the
following:
>
> Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.
> Aesthetics - the tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry.
> Feelings - being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional
experience.
> Actions - the inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new
foods.
> Ideas - the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas.
> Values - the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and
political values.
>
> OK, it's not completely psychological flexibility described, but being open in
the way described above seems quite ACT consistent...:-) And given the fact that
mindfulness is a compound of being present, defusing, accepting and being aware
of one's observer self, I'd expect at least some positive correlation....
>
> Any ideas on this finding?
>
> Best,
> Marco
>

Hi all,

In a small correlational study I've performed (with some others on this list) we
found a zero-correlation between mindfulness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale;
MAAS)and the Openness subscale of the NEO-FFI. I found this quite supprising,
given the fact that openness is defined as a compound of the following:

Fantasy - the tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.
Aesthetics - the tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry.
Feelings - being receptive to inner emotional states and valuing emotional
experience.
Actions - the inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new
foods.
Ideas - the tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas.
Values - the readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and
political values.

OK, it's not completely psychological flexibility described, but being open in
the way described above seems quite ACT consistent...:-) And given the fact that
mindfulness is a compound of being present, defusing, accepting and being aware
of one's observer self, I'd expect at least some positive correlation....

Any ideas on this finding?

Best,
Marco

Jacqueline,

"Means-ends" analysis is a relational frame. It can be arbitrarily applied to
anything. "Means" ar not somehow "inately means" and "ends" are not somehow
"inately ends;" at least not from a functionalist perspective.. The usual BIG
main feature is that "means" temporally preceed "ends." This is why the concept
of "reinforcement" is often so hard to get one's head around. The
"reinforcement" comes after, not before, the behavior and by that "placement"
tends to make the probability of the behavior more likely in a similar context;
and if it doesn't, it wasn't a "reinforcer."

When you note, "and they respond to me in an open friendly manner" might be a
"result," yes it could. And you don't have to stop the analysis there. You can
look at a "bigger" picture. "An operant" can be a big or as small as one cares
to make it. It is a "way of looking," not "the thing looked at." Operants can
have ANY size. So, you COULD stop with the "friendly manner," and you could look
"bigger." "Be the most likable person I can be" might be the self-chosen Leading
Principle I am following, and there might be some other Leading Principle such
as "Be as conected with the folks you are with as you can." Likely, the way,
"and they respond to me in an open friendly manner," fits with the first is
likely not the way it fits with the second. With regard to the first, the
response is likely to be the whole point. With the second, it is a "signal of
connection" which links to something bigger than the immediate response itself
which is why it is a "signal" - both an R+ and an SD+ for "more of that"  where
"that" is "connecting" "stuff."

If you look at Kelly's definition, he is talking about "BIG" operants from the
point of view of "time and size." So, you will have to look at something "long
enough and wide enough" to see if what he is describing is what's going on. The
thing is, there are also short cuts because we claim that "valued action" is
vitalizing and you can contact "vitalizing" rather quickly, either with yourself
or with others. The "just going through the motions" experience vs. the "WAY
COOL" experience sort of hits you in the face when you have enough
discrimination history. You can even notice, "Well this isn't much for me, but
s/he sure seems to be getting off on it," or vice versa.

The main point I would make is that if you make an operant analysis "big enough"
you will be able to ANALYTICALLY "break it into smaller pieces." The   "smaller
pieces" aren't "real pieces," that's just how you broke it up. So you go back
to, "What was the point of breaking up that way?" If you answer, " to find the
REAL reinforcers," the heart of Functional Contnextualism has slipped away - and
it is easy to do in a system that has taught us about "reality and how sciece
cuts realty at its joints." "THERE ARE NO JOINTS!," he said with perhaps too
much enthusiasm. :)

So, according to Kelly (and his definition seems fine enough to me), "In ACT,
values are freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic,
evolving patterns of activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that
activity that are intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern
itself." OK, if you want to see if what you are looking at is about "values," as
defined, then look "big enough" so that the definition can apply. If you look
"smaller," it can't. If you look "big" and then "break big into smaller," don't
get trapped in the "reality of the pieces." Go back and ask what the point of
making the pieces was in the first place. If the answer is, "to find the
REAL/TRUE analysis," smile, sigh and notice, "Yea, metaphysical realism suckered
me again!"

Hope this helps.

H
________________________________________
From: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Jacqueline A-Tjak
[a-tjak.turk@...]
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 8:37 AM
To: 'Kelly Wilson'; 'William Kordonski'
Cc: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com; 'Maarten Aalberse'
Subject: RE: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"

Hi all,

I am very grateful for this discussion about reinforcement. I am confused and
hope to de-confuse.

I learned from Kelly this about values: In ACT, values are freely chosen,
verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of
activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that activity that are
intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern itself.

Intrinsic is explained as: Independent of results or outcome.

Here is where I get lost.

Hank wrote: �If I am trying to have a conversation with someone and they respond
to me in an open friendly manner, that ought to be reinforcing to me. How people
respond is an intrinsic part of the action of conversing and not something
extrinsic to it.�
But that could be considered a result, right? So what confuses me is: what do we
consider a result or outcome and what not? What is a natural part of a response
pattern and what is not?

HELP!

Best,
Jacqueline


Van: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] Namens Kelly Wilson
Verzonden: vrijdag 6 november 2009 21:14
Aan: William Kordonski
CC: acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com Listserve; Maarten Aalberse
Onderwerp: [english 100%] [Spam][english 100%] Re:
[acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"


One thing at a time please BIll. Hmmmm. Widely accepted. Dunno. Theoretically
coherent. I would argue it with anyone anytime. Try the alternative - discrete
objects or events are the reinforcers. I can readily find examples where that
just doesn't work, but that are clearly examples of reinforcement. Here is a
pretty simple explication from Mindfulness for Two - pages 31-33 with examples
of why responses as movements and stimuli as objects are insufficiently flexible
ways of speaking.

Two Common Errors in Understanding Responses and Stimuli
Two common misconceptions about responses and stimuli are that responses are
movements and stimuli are discrete objects. From a contex- tual behavioral
perspective, these are both incorrect in the most techni-

p. 31
A Clinician�s Guide to Stimulus ControlMindfulness for Two
cal sense. On the response side, standing still is defined as a response if I
can demonstrate that standing still, as the response of interest, is capable of
being organized by context, which is to say, capable of being provoked by some
kind of stimulus. For example, if I give you a five-dollar bill when you stand
still and take five dollars when you move and thereby alter the probability that
you�ll stand still, then �standing still� meets our defini- tion of behavior:
it�s something the organism can do. Also, standing still can be brought under
contextual control�that is, it�s in dynamic inter- action with a stimulating
environment.
On the stimulus side, the most common error is to think of a stimu- lus as an
object. We might, for example, see the five-dollar bill as the stimulus that
organizes behavior. In a limited sense, this is true, but a more sophisticated
way to think of this is that standing still changes the world from one where you
can�t buy things to one in which, with your crisp, new fiver, you can. It is
that transition from not having the power to buy things to having that power
that organizes behavior, not the bill per se. For example, if I gave you a
billion dollars, the promise of an extra five bucks would likely no longer
organize your behavior, and you would stand still or move as it pleased you. Or
if I locked you in a cell where money couldn�t be spent or given away, five
dollars (or even a billion) wouldn�t do much to organize your behavior. Why not?
Because receiv- ing the five-dollar bill in either of those two contexts
wouldn�t change your world in any significant way.
In many applications, calling the five-dollar bill a reinforcer of behavior is
probably workable. (We should remember that, despite the leaps and bounds of
contemporary physics, Newton�s classical mechanics work just fine in most
instances too.) However, we want a more sophis- ticated understanding of the
dynamic interaction of responding and stimulating.
Why does it matter? The distinction matters because sometimes there�s no object
or immediate discrete event to which we can point. Richard Herrnstein and Philip
Hineline (1966) carried out a classic experimental example that illustrates this
point nicely. In their study, rats were placed in an experimental chamber, and
the floor of the chamber was briefly electrified at random intervals. If the
rats pressed a certain lever within the chamber, the shocks would come at a
slightly reduced, though still random, interval. What Herrnstein and Hineline
found in the experiment was that lever pressing was maintained in the rats. We
cannot understand the maintenance of the lever pressing by appealing to the
immediate effects of lever pressing. The most common immediate effect of a lever
press was that nothing would happen. In fact, as result
P. 32

of the shocks coming at random intervals, the lever press was sometimes followed
immediately by a shock. Why did the rats press the lever? In simple terms, the
rat pressed the lever because doing so precipitated a transition in context from
one in which shocks are more frequent to one in which they are less frequent.


best,
kelly


On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:02 PM, William Kordonski wrote:


Transition from one context to another is the rein forcer? Is this a generally
accepted view in BA?

And so, if I may look at intrinsic vs. extrinsic reinforcement: There is really
no difference.

Ex: playing a guitar for an audience vs for oneself is just a change in context
from non-playing to playing. Extrinsic then is something you can identify in the
environment to distinguish one context from another. Is that right?

Bill

________________________________
From:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmentthe\
rapy@yahoogroups.com> [mailto:acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Kelly Wilson
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 9:33 AM
To: Maarten Aalberse
Cc:
acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy@yahoogroups.com<mailto:acceptanceandcommitmentthe\
rapy@yahoogroups.com> Listserve
Subject: Re: [acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy] "Without resistance"



Maarten - I truly do not think anyone is in opposition to the concern you
express. There is just too much contrary evidence. People have said again and
again on the list, me too, that avoidance is not inherently bad, that people
ought to pick their own pace, that movement is always relative to the client's
values and pace.

IMO ACT in Practice is just talking about openness to experience. In my view,
openness does not involve complete and inflexible absorption - I have seen
clients who indulge in that and plenty of "feel your feelings" therapists ready
to help them do it. I have been guilty of it myself--intoxicated by the potency
of emotion. ACT is not a feel your feelings for it's own sake therapy though. I
think, and individual authors can correct me if I am wrong, that it is probably
just a matter of economy of words.

Here is an example from behavior analysis. I train people to always always
always think of reinforcers as transit ions in context. The food pellet is not
the reinforcer for the rat's lever press. The reinforcer is the transition in
context from one in which eating is not possible to one in which eating is
possible. This conception of reinforcement is much more flexible than an object
oriented understanding of reinforcement. It allows us to talk sensibly about
both the rat lever pressing for food and the rat lever pressing to transition
from higher density of shocks to a lower density of shocks even when any
particular press might be followed by an immediate shock. It allows for a
scaling up or down or our understanding of relevant context (molar vs molecular)
without changing the analytic sensibilities.

That said, you can find me talking about reinforcers as if they are objects or
discreet events sometimes because the transition in context language is
cumbersome. I wonder if what you are seeing is like that. I just cannot think of
any major ACT treatment develope r who would say "resisting feelings is always
pathogenic" - I can easily imagine them saying, about avoidance, about fusion,
about turning away from values, that there is a risk involved, but not a blanket
always pathogenic claim.

perhaps the discussion can serve to remind us to come back frequently to the
always contextualized, functional understanding of what is and is not
pathogenic.

anyhow, my two cents,

kelly




On Nov 6, 2009, at 2:41 AM, Maarten Aalberse wrote:







Oh dear.

With a little trepidation I come back to this diffciult discussion on "without
needless defense".

It's because in looking up something completely different, I stumbled on this,
in ACT in Practice, P; 128:

"(...) rather the aim is to embrace what is currently being felt without
resistance".

I don't think I'm playing wordgames when I say that this implies that resistance
is pathogenic.

This I can't agree with, for both theoretical and clinical reasons.

A little detail to add to the above, resistance in psychoanalysis refers to
resisting the therapist's interventions....

So where "without defense" is problematic for me, "without resistance" is IMO
even more off track.

As a little aside: "without" is dead-man's territory for me.

Best to all (really!)

Maarten


Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/kwils\
on/kwilson.htm%0d%0a%20>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>






Kelly G. Wilson
205 Peabody Building
Psychology Department
University of Mississippi
Oxford, MS 38677

fax: 662.915.5398
(do not use during summer)
ph: 662.816.5189

academic homepage:
www.olemiss.edu/working/kwilson/kwilson.htm<http://www.olemiss.edu/working/kwils\
on/kwilson.htm>
also check out
www.onelifellc.com<http://www.onelifellc.com/>
www.mindfulnessfortwo.com<http://www.mindfulnessfortwo.com/>