ACT With Compassion

Unfortunately there often seems to be a wide chasm between what happens in the research lab and what happens on the front lines of clinical work. On the one hand, researchers need to listen to clinicians and learn about their direct experiences with clients. On the other hand, clinicians can benefit from hearing about clinically relevant research. We hope these “research roundups” provide useful summaries of recent research that can improve your practice with highly shame prone and self-critical clients.

In this post, we highlight some important findings at the intersections of physiology, biology and psychology that have actual real-world implications for your clinical work. So, today, what happens in (research laboratories studying the) Vagus, will not stay in Vagus. ;-)

In addition to the sequence of lovingkindness meditations we have created for use with highly self-critical clients, we have found that it is often powerful for the phrases used in lovingkindness meditations to be customized for a particular person. The goal is to identify personalized lovingkindness phrases based on the client’s own idiosyncratic experience that are responsive to their emotional needs. The goal of this is to enhance the activation of the social safety system by making the phrase more personally relevant.

Self-compassion is great. It feels all nice and warm and fuzzy, right? Actually, maybe not, at least not for everyone. In fact, for a lot of folks, particularly those who struggle with chronic shame and self-criticism, compassion can actually be pretty scary! In fact, we know from research that highly self-critical clients tend to find compassion-related cues to be anxiety provoking.  

Every month, we scour the scientific literature for interesting studies that have practical implications for therapists working with shame, self-criticism, or compassion. Below are a few of our favorites for this month:

One of the core processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is “self as context” work, or, as we prefer to call it, flexible perspective taking. In our work with those struggling with chronic shame and self-criticism, this flexible perspective taking is key to helping individuals to develop a more compassionate perspective towards themselves and others. In this work, the idea is to help individuals begin to see themselves as a conscious person with whom they have a relationship, just like they have relationships with others.  Once they see themselves someone with whom they have a relationship, they are then in a position to be able to get in contact with their values for relationships and begin to apply those to themselves. The idea of having a relationship with oneself is often a novel idea for clients. The question, “What type of relationship do you want to have with yourself” often results in either confusion or else an “aha” moment for clients, which can be signs that you are entering new territory where learning can occur.

Do you ever have times, maybe at the end of a long day of seeing clients, that you feel disconnected or apathetic? Of course you do; we all do. It’s tough to remain present to suffering hour after hour. During times like this it’s common for therapists to try to just “push through”, to ignore our feelings and power on. But we would like to suggest a different, more compassionate, and also probably more effective strategy—getting in contact with your values through a brief perspective taking exercise.

Every month, we scour the scientific literature for interesting studies that have practical implications for therapists working with shame, self-criticism, or compassion. Below are a few of our favorites for this month:

We are grateful and humbled that last month we reached 1,000 likes on Facebook!  As we celebrate this milestone, we wanted to take a moment to thank all our supporters over these last few years who have helped to spread the word about ACT With Compassion. We are also incredibly grateful to those of you who have given us feedback and input which has helped to improve our work. Thank you all!

In a recent post, we wrote about how the absence of criticism in a person’s history is not the same as the presence of warmth.  It is not necessary for clients to have a history of extreme levels of abuse or verbal criticism from others in order to develop a shame prone and self-critical tendency. A mere absence of responsive and warm communications and physical contact from their caregivers can contribute to high levels of shame and self-criticism, even in the relative absence of abuse or criticism.

Every month, we scour the scientific literature for interesting studies that have practical implications for therapists working with shame, self-criticism, or compassion. Below are a few of our favorites for this month: