Creative Hopelessness and Trauma: Difficulties with Unworkable Control

In this video, I’m going to talk about some common difficulties that therapists can encounter when working with creative hopelessness and addressing workable vs unworkable control in PTSD.

So, here’s one thing that can happen. What if when you’re generating that list that I just talked about, the client suggests that they’ve tried mindfulness or meditation or they’ve tried acceptance already as ways of dealing with the trauma? What do you do then? Aren’t we trying to, you know, get them toward mindfulness or acceptance? Well, the therapist should always remain open to the possibility that acceptance may not work. But oftentimes, when you explore further with the client what it is that they’re saying, it turns out that they’ve been using mindfulness or acceptance as control strategies.

Walser, R. D., & Westrup, D. (2007). Acceptance and commitment therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related problems: A practitioner’s guide to using mindfulness and acceptance strategies. New Harbinger Publications.

So, an example is somebody says like, “Well, I already tried meditation. I did it and the first few times I did it I actually felt relieved and afterward, I fell right asleep. But after that, like every time I would start doing mindfulness, I would just notice all the things I felt anxious about and I never felt relaxed again.” So, what you hear when you listen to that story is that the person had sort of an initial response where mindfulness was maybe relaxing or helped reduce anxiety, but that then they started trying to apply it as a way of reducing anxiety, which, as we’re suggesting, is part of the problem. So, you have to listen closely to what people are talking about. Often, if they talk about meditation, mindfulness, acceptance not having worked, it’s because they were using those things as another method of control. So again, what we’re suggesting is that when you’re trying that control agenda, that’s what leads to problems.

Walser, R. D., & Westrup, D. (2007). Acceptance and commitment therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related problems: A practitioner’s guide to using mindfulness and acceptance strategies. New Harbinger Publications.