Self-Compassion From an ACT Perspective: An Intellectual and Experiential Exploration Dennis Tirch PhD

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Self-Compassion From an ACT Perspective An
Intellectual and Experiential ExplorationDennis
Tirch PhD Jason Luoma PhDwww.mindfulcompassion
.comhttp//www.portlandpsychotherapyclinic.com
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• Rate how often you behave in the ways below,
  using the following scale
• Almost never
  
  Almost always
• 1 2
  3 4
  5
•  
• _____1. When I fail at something important to me
  I become consumed by feelings of inadequacy.
• _____2. I try to be understanding and patient
  towards those aspects of my personality I dont
  like.
• _____3. When something painful happens I try to
  take a balanced view of the situation.
• _____4. When Im feeling down, I tend to feel
  like most other people are probably happier than
  I am.
• _____5. I try to see my failings as part of the
  human condition.
• _____6. When Im going through a very hard time,
  I give myself the caring and tenderness I need.
• _____7. When something upsets me I try to keep my
  emotions in balance.
• _____8. When I fail at something thats important
  to me, I tend to feel alone in my failure
• _____9. When Im feeling down I tend to obsess
  and fixate on everything thats wrong.
• _____10. When I feel inadequate in some way, I
  try to remind myself that feelings of inadequacy
  are shared by most people.
• _____11. Im disapproving and judgmental about my
  own flaws and inadequacies.
• _____12. Im intolerant and impatient towards
  those aspects of my personality I dont like.

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Compassion Solutions
Ancient wisdom Compassion transforms the mind.
(Buddhism) Evolution Evolution has made our
brains highly sensitive to internal and external
kindness Neuroscience Specific brain areas are
focused on detecting and responding to kindness
and compassion ACT Compassion is a value
inherent in psychological flexibility model
Self-compassion related to flexible perspective
taking
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Compassion definitions

• Compassion can be defined in many ways As a
  sensitivity to the suffering of self and others
  with a deep commitment to try to relieve it
  Dalai Lama
• Eight fold path - represents a multi-modal
  approach for training ones mind

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Compassion Definitions

• Neff (2003b) has operationalized self-compassion
  as consisting of three main elements
• Self-kindness vs harsh criticism and
  self-judgment
• A sense of common humanity vs seeing self as
  separate and isolated
• Mindfulness vs overidentification

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Self-Compassion and Psychological Flexibility

• These components combine and mutually interact to
  create a self-compassionate frame of mind.
• Self-compassion is relevant when considering
  personal inadequacies, mistakes, and failures, as
  well as when confronting painful life situations
  that are outside of our control.

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Self-Compassion Data

• Higher levels of reported self-compassion are
  correlated with
• Lower levels of depression and anxiety (Neff,
  2003 Neff, Hseih, Dejitthirat, 2005 Neff,
  Rude, Kirkpatrick, 2007)
• life satisfaction, feelings of social
  connectedness (Neff, Kirkpatrick, Rude, 2007)
• personal initiative and positive affect (Neff,
  Rude, et al., 2007)

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Compassion Training Data

• Practice in imagining compassion for others
• produces changes in frontal cortex and immune
  system (Lutz et al, 2009)
• Loving kindness meditation
• increases positive emotions, mindfulness,
  feelings of purpose in life and social support
  and decreases illness symptoms (Frederickson et
  al, 2008, JPSP)
• Compassion meditation (6 weeks)
• improves immune function, and neuroendocrine and
  behavioral responses to stress (Pace, 2008, PNE)
• Compassion training
• reduces shame and self-criticism in chronic
  depressed patients (Gilbert Proctor, 2006, CPP)

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Self-Compassion from a CBS perspective

• Dahl, Plumb, Stewart and Lundgren, (2009)
• Self-Compassion involves
• willingly experiencing difficult emotions
• mindfully observing our self-evaluative,
  distressing and shaming thoughts without allowing
  them to dominate our behavior or our states of
  mind
• engaging more fully in our lifes pursuits with
  self-kindness and self-validation
• flexibly shifting our perspective towards a
  broader, transcendent sense of self (Hayes,
  2008a).

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Self-Compassion and Psychological Flexibility

• Our learned capacity for flexible perspective
  taking is involved in our experience of empathy
  (Vilardaga, 2009), as well as our related
  experience of compassion.
• In order to understand self-compassion,
  therefore, its useful to consider the self
  that is the focus of compassion, from an RFT
  perspective.

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Self-Compassion and Psychological Flexibility

• Deictic relations are building blocks of how we
  experience the world, ourselves, and the flow of
  time.
• Returning to an awareness of self-as-context
  offers us a non-attached and dis-identified
  relationship to our experiences.
• This allows the habitual stimulus functions of
  our painful private events and stories to hold
  less influence over us.

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Self-Compassion and Psychological Flexibility

• From the perspective of the I-Here-Nowness of
  being, I can view my own suffering as I might
  view the suffering of another, and be touched by
  the pain in that experience, without the dominant
  interference of my verbal learning history, with
  its potential for shaming self-evaluations
  (Vilardaga, 2009 Hayes, 2008).

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Formation of Self-as-ContextThe No-Thing Self
(Hayes, 2008)
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I-Here-Nowness of Perspective Taking
Self-as-context
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Brain Development in Deep Historical Context
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Private Events and Brain Development in the
context of Genotype, Phenotype, and Present Moment

• 1. Old Brain
• Emotional Responding Anger, anxiety,
  sadness, joy, lust
• Overt Behavioral Responding Fight, flight,
  withdraw, engage
• Relationship Behaviors Sex, status,
  attachment, tribalism
• 2. New Brain
• Relational Framing, Imagination, fantasize, look
  back and forward, plan,
• Integration of mental abilities
• Self-awareness, self-identity, flexible
  perspective taking, self- feeling
• 3. Social Brain
• Need for affection and care
• Socially responsive, self-experience and motives
• ?

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Sources of behaviour
Interaction of old and new psychologies
New Brain Derived Relational Responding,
Selfing Planning, Rumination,
Old Brain Emotions, Motives, Relationship
Seeking, Safety Seeking Behaviors
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Understanding our Motives and Emotions

• Motives evolved because they help animals to
  survive and leave genes behind
• Emotions guide us to our goals and respond if we
  are succeeding or threatened
• There are three types of emotion regulation
• Those that focus on threat and self-protection
• Those that focus on doing and achieving
• Those that focus on contentment and feeling safe

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Types of Affect Regulator Systems
Content, safe, connected
Drive, excite, vitality
Non-wanting/ Affiliative focused Safeness-kindnes
s Soothing
Incentive/resource- focused Wanting, pursuing,
achieving, consuming Activating
Anger, anxiety, disgust
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Self-Protection

• In species without attachment only 1-2 make it
  to adulthood to reproduce. Threats come from
  ecologies, food shortage, predation, injury,
  disease. At birth individuals must be able to go
  it alone, be mobile and disperse

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Dispersal and avoid others
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Protect and Comfort Less instinctive brain
post birth learning
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Compassion Process
Giving/doing Mindful Acts of kindness Engagement
with the feared
Receiving/soothing SBR/booth Validation Gratitude
appreciation
Compassionate Self
Threat Mindful awareness Triggers In the
body Rumination Labelling
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Present Moment Contact
Values Authorship
Willingness
Psychological Flexibility
Commitment
Defusion
Self-As-Context
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Sympathy, Sensitivity
Care For Well-Being
Distress Tolerance
CompassionateFlexibility
Commitment to Compassionate Behavior
Non-Judgment
Empathy
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Present Moment Contact
Mindfulness
Values Authorship
Willingness
Psychological Flexibility
Self-Kindness
Commitment
Defusion
Self-As-Context
Common Humanity
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Contact with the present

• Build awareness of self-criticism/self-attack
• Clients often do not even notice their
  self-evaluations.
• Methods
• Teach client to notice evaluation/judgment as it
  occurs in session (noticing antecedents)
• Help clients to notice avoidance of shame as it
  occurs in session (noticing behavior)
• Bring costs of self attack into the room
  (noticing consequences)
• Read aloud self-attacking thoughts, but imagine
  she were saying them to a friend in the same
  position
• Use a mirror when reading self-attacking
  thoughts to self
• Act out self-attack in chair work

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Acceptance Interventions

• Develop ability to acknowledge and embrace aspect
  of self that feels damaged, broken, unlovable,
  not-good-enough, and/or rejected
• Methods
• Examine workability of behaviors aimed at
  avoiding shame (anger, shutting down, addictive
  behavior).
• How do they avoid feeling bad about themselves or
  feeling rejected? What happens in shame producing
  situations?
• Bring process of shame and self-attacking into
  the room and improve ability to sit with it and
  with reaction to self-attack (usually with chair
  work)
• Practice willingness in relating shameful
  experiences and secrets to trustworthy others
  (starting with therapist)

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Defusion

• Develop distance, distinction from self-attacking
  thoughts.
• Clients typically see critical view of self as
  normal, earned, or needed for motivation.
• Methods
• Imagery imagine this critical self as if it
  were a person (include tone, size, facial
  expression, etc.). Give it a name.
• Naming the critic develop a name for the
  critical side of the self that has some endearing
  qualities
• Act out criticizer as if it were another person
• Many common defusion exercises can be helpful
  here

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Self as context/flexible perspective taking

• Develop connection a sense of self that
  transcends our stories about self
• Shame/self-criticism is fundamentally a problem
  with self/other as content
• Methods
• Work on letting go of attachment to self as
  content, e.g., self evaluations
• Practice flexible perspective taking (loving
  kindness meditation, taking perspective of
  shamers, taking perspective of therapist, and
  caring others)
• Physicalize self as content through chair
  exercises
• Add a third chair, perhaps a compassion chair or
  observer chair for experiencing the ongoing
  dialogue.
• Have client be the compassionate therapist in the
  third chair. What would that person say?
• Use hierarchical framing to build sense of common
  humanity in suffering and normality of shame and
  fears

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Flexible perspective taking

• Shift perspectives to expand possibilities
• If your best friend was watching this
  interaction, what would they say?
• If you were a therapist for a couple that acted
  this way, what would you think of them? What
  would you want for them? For him, for him?
• If you were (someone client admires) in the self
  chair, how would you act differently
• If you were me and you heard what you are saying
  right now, what would you think?
• Notice change in perspective
• When you look at this from another perspective,
  does it feel the same? Different? Do you see
  yourself the same way when you take these
  different perspectives?
• Combine with augmentals
• If x (whatever the critic says) were not weighing
  you down, what would you be doing? What would you
  need from him/her to make that possible?
• If x (whatever critic says) no longer held you
  back, what would you be doing?

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Values

• Help person explore and define values toward self
• Most people value empathy and connection, but
  fusion with self-concept impedes applying that to
  themselves
• Methods
• Empathy and compassion for self can emerge when
  the damage done by fusion with self-criticism is
  fully contacted
• Elicit and define the kind of relationship person
  wants to have toward themselves

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Committed action

• Help client take steps to act on values while
  practicing gentleness and compassion
• Self-attacks often function as a way to coerce
  the self to act in line with self-standards and
  values (e.g., buck up and push through it).
• Self-criticism makes it harder to take risks and
  learn, which inevitably involves failure and
  mistakes
• Methods
• Build commitment to practices of self-care and
  self-kindness
• When exploring other kinds of valued actions,
  explore what kind of relationship person wants to
  have toward self as they do this--and how do you
  want to be with yourself as you take these
  actions?