Mindfulness and CT (Acceptance & Change)

Hi. I'm a 4th year grad student who has had some experience doing cognitive therapy and some limited exposure to midfulness meditation (a la Jon Kabat-Zinn & Marsha Linehan) as well. One thing that I feel that I have gleaned from my (to date) limited experience in doing psychotherapy is an appreciation for the importance of employing both change and acceptance strategies (and teaching these to clients to help them self-regulate). Of course, Steven C. Hayes (and, I'm sure, many others in their times) has written extensively on this topic but I've never seen anyone attempt to integrate what I consider (again, from my limited experience) two of the most effective strategies for (primarily) change (CBT) and acceptance (mindfulness). Although others have acknowledged the role of acceptance in cognitive therapy (e.g., "When Bad Things Happen to Rational People") I believe that the philosophy of mindfulness could serve as an organizing framework for approaching the (sometimes overwhelming) task of acceptance. Of course problem-solving about how to cope with the unavoidable is useful, but I believe that it retains an element of the "how to get to anywhere but here" mindset that keeps clients forever on-the-run and thus unable to fully assess their problems in the first place (the self-monitoring strategies that are a hallmark of early session interventions in CBT probably serve a function of counteracting this). In any case, I was just interested in seeing if anyone else had heard of work out there pertaining to (or had any ideas that they would like to share regarding) the interface of these two (in my opinion) quite compatible and effective approaches.

Replies:

Acceptance and Mindfulness in Cognitive Thrapy, by Jim Pretzer, 2/8/98 mindfulness and Buddhism, by John Suler, 2/12/98 Re: mindfulness and Buddhism, by ALLEN KENNEDY, 10/26/99 Acceptance in cognitive therapy, by Y. Dukesz M.D., 2/22/98 Acceptance operationalized in exposure tx of anxiety, by Peter Perlman, 2/27/98 CT and Mindfulness in preventing depressive relapse, by Zindel Segal, 4/8/98 Mindfulness Training for Relapse Prevention?, by Jim Pretzer, 11/15/98 Acceptance Strategies increase the effectiveness of Behavioral Marital Therapy, by Jim Pretzer, 08/02/00 Mindfulness readings available on-line, by Jim Pretzer, 01/12/03 Opportunity for Mindfulness Training with Linehan, by Jim Pretzer, 06/19/03

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