Acceptance and Mindfulness in Cognitive Thrapy

Marsha Linehan is the best known proponent of the integration of "mindfulness" into CBT and Steven C. Hayes has been a vocal advocate of "Acceptance" strategies but there are many others who have also been addressing these issues. This is a topic that has received quite a bit of attention recently and which is relevant to quite a few areas of psychotherapy. I bet that a search of Psych Abstracts would turn up quite a bit of work that I'm not familiar with.

The idea that there are times when it is good to help clients accept realities and cope with them rather than spending their time vigorously protesting "the way things are" or frantically trying to change things, is not a new one. This idea is implicit in Ellis's focus on "Awfulizing" as an important Irrational Belief, in Claire Weekes' "floating" approach to dealing with panic attacks, and in Beck's approach to dealing with realistically negative situations. However, the element of acceptance in these approaches wasn't emphasized strongly. Recently "acceptance and coping" has received increasing attention as an alternative to "change" strategies.

One article which discusses the role of acceptance strategies in CBT is cited in the post regarding "Acceptance and change in the treatment of eating disorders and obesity" earlier in this forum. Also, the post "Resources re CT for Pain Management" includes a very brief example of my using interventions which emphasized acceptance and coping with a woman suffering from chronic pain.

"Mindfulness" has recieved much less attention than the more general topic of acceptance but, now that Marsha Linehan is emphasizing it, I'm sure that it will recieve increased attention and will prove to be a valuable part of CBT.

Replies:

mindfulness and Buddhism, by John Suler, 2/12/98 Re: mindfulness and Buddhism, by ALLEN KENNEDY, 10/26/99

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