Creative Hopelessness in ACT for OCD

Because creative hopelessness and this concept that we’ve been discussing is one that can be a little bit harder to wrap our heads around, and it can be a little difficult to convey this message to clients, for that reason, I’m going to walk through some extra examples for you and see which ones fit for you and which ones fit for your clients.

And with OCD, in particular, honestly, any client, you want to match their experience to the metaphor that you’re using or vice versa. You want to make sure that the components of the metaphor sync up with what they’re describing because that’s going to make it a much more rich experience. And they will understand the concepts much more if it actually applies to what they’re going through.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

So, for OCD, there are some common components that you want to be looking for and ones that many of my OCD clients present with. And so I’ll give you some examples to make sure that you’re looking for these with your OCD clients. Hopefully, there’ll be some metaphors in here that can provide you with some extra options of what you can use.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.