ACT for OCD: Rituals and Creative Hopelessness
Key Points
- Assist the client in understanding the difference between internal and external experiences and the relationship between them.
- Internal experiences are thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations.
- External experiences are behaviors.
- Mental behaviors, rituals, or compulsions are behaviors that happen internally.
- Creative hopelessness is the experience of hopelessness when realizing that strategies to get rid of discomfort have been ineffective and the client is uncertain how to proceed.
Materials Downloads
ACT for OCD Online Training
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Transcript
Now we’ll begin to lay the groundwork for the client to understand the relationship between their internal and external experiences and how they relate to each other.
So first, I make the distinction with them about what are internal and external experiences. So, I describe internal as what happens inside of our skin and the internal world, which tends to happen automatically. In OCD, these are obsessions, including urges, images, sensations.
Twohig, M. P., Hayes, S. C., & Masuda, A. (2006). Increasing willingness to experience obsessions: Acceptance and commitment therapy as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Behavior Therapy, 37(1), 3–13.,Twohig, M. P., Hayes, S. C., Plumb, J. C., Pruitt, L. D., Collins, A. B., Hazlett-Stevens, H., & Woidneck, M. R. (2010). A randomized clinical trial of acceptance and commitment therapy versus progressive relaxation training for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(5), 705–716.
But in general, when I talk about what’s going on inside, we’re thinking thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations. Those are the 3 main groups.
Twohig, M. P., Hayes, S. C., & Masuda, A. (2006). Increasing willingness to experience obsessions: Acceptance and commitment therapy as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Behavior Therapy, 37(1), 3–13.,Twohig, M. P., Hayes, S. C., Plumb, J. C., Pruitt, L. D., Collins, A. B., Hazlett-Stevens, H., & Woidneck, M. R. (2010). A randomized clinical trial of acceptance and commitment therapy versus progressive relaxation training for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(5), 705–716.