Avoidance and Control in ACT: Moving Towards Psychological Flexibility
Booz Allen
Department of Veterans Affairs
Yale University
University of Nevada, Reno
Key Points
- Avoidance is a common way of responding to painful thoughts, feelings, and memories.
- Toward the beginning of treatment, introduce the concept that trying to control these experiences related to the trauma is part of the problem.
- The ACT therapist informs the client about how this approach to treatment is different.
- Ask the client to commit to a specific number of sessions and then to judge whether their life is becoming more workable.
