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"Mindfulness gets thrown around all the time, but what does that actually mean in practice?"
Published in Lacie White, Palliative Care Nursing as Mindfulness, 2022
However, for nurses in this inquiry, embodied practices are also shaped by larger social narratives about mindfulness. Language embedded in the first ‘mindfulness-based stress reduction program’ (Kabat-Zinn, 2013) reinforces a prevalent narrative in health care. Under the guise of stress reduction, the assumption often made is that mindfulness can smooth out difficult experience, or rather that it can be a magic bullet. The expectation being that like other treatments within a bio-medical model it can ‘fix suffering’—both our own and others’—bringing ultimate symptom relief. However, from a Buddhist theoretical framework mindfulness is taught as a method in which one learns to be with and open to suffering. The ability to acknowledge suffering or discomfort as it is present in one’s experience is essential to its relief (Bruce, 2012; Halifax, 2008b). When mindfulness is practised solely as a tool for symptom relief or self-help, it can lead to experiential avoidance (Amaro, 2015; Monteiro et al., 2015); from a decontextualized frame of reference it can “circumvent many of its potential benefits” (Bruce & Davies, 2005, p. 1341). Thus, discourses of mindfulness that speak solely toward ‘stress-reduction’ may be limiting its application within in the context of palliative care nursing practice.
Dealing with Social Exclusion
Published in S. Alexander Haslam, Psychological Insights for Understanding COVID-19 and Society, 2020
Susanna Timeo, Paolo Riva, Maria Paola Paladino
Acceptance is a core element of mindfulness-based intervention (Germer, 2005) where the painful situation is not avoided, and the negative feelings are embraced. This process involves the conscious and not evaluative acceptance of negative feelings and thoughts. This is also a core element of a promising cognitive-based therapy, namely Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Based on this approach, experiential avoidance is a harmful behavior which consists of running away from negative (or negatively framed) situations. By doing so, people are constantly looking for negative situations to avoid and the focus on negative events is amplified. Acceptance-based therapy helps people consciously embrace negative feelings instead of escaping or reducing them. The acceptance of temporary negative events may help people to focus more on their broader values, thus increasing goal-oriented behavior. In this direction, recent work has shown that people who are more psychologically flexible perceived lower stress following ostracism (Waldeck, Tyndall, Riva, & Chmiel, 2017).
Emerging approaches
Published in Simon R. Knowles, Laurie Keefer, Antonina A. Mikocka-Walus, Psychogastroenterology for Adults, 2019
Underlying ACT theory is the concept of experiential avoidance (i.e., the unwillingness to experience aversive bodily sensations, thoughts, or emotions). Experiential avoidance is thought to be associated with suffering, as attempts from patients to control/eliminate/change internal experiences that are not under their behavioural control can lead the patient away from more valued behaviours [3]. In fact, it has been shown that experiential avoidance has a paradoxical effect because the more a person tries to avoid a private experience, the more this gets exacerbated [4]. For example, in patients with urgency issues who disengage from social activities because of the fear of “having an accident”, suffering comes from the loss of potential pleasurable, growth-oriented activities rather than from the anticipatory anxiety or symptoms themselves. This example highlights another key concept in ACT, that of cognitive fusion. Cognitive fusion can be defined as the instance in which people’s behaviour is guided by the literal content of their thoughts rather than by their direct experience with the world. In this example, even though no “accident” is occurring, the person is reacting as if this had already occurred by removing themselves from the situation pre-emptively.
Group-based acceptance and commitment therapy to enhance graduate student psychological flexibility: Treatment development and preliminary implementation evaluation
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2023
Rivian K. Lewin, Samuel F. Acuff, Kristoffer S. Berlin, Jeffrey S. Berman, Amy R. Murrell
Although never-ending to-do lists and mental checklists help graduate students organize action, they can also lead to “going through the motions” and living in a future-oriented state of worry or fear. This becomes problematic when thoughts and feelings lead to experiential avoidance rather than engagement in valued action.18,19 Mindfulness is taught and practiced throughout the treatment to promote an awareness of avoidance-v. approach-oriented behavior. Mindfulness is a state of awareness that involves flexibly and nonjudgmentally focusing attention on and actively engaging in the present moment.37 As treatment progresses, mindfulness enables students to identify moments of fusion and experiential avoidance as they occur and to re-center on values before taking action.19
An Evaluation of an ACT-Based “Aging Resiliently” Group
Published in Clinical Gerontologist, 2022
Dana B. Goetz, Elizabeth W. Hirschhorn
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may be especially beneficial for older veterans. ACT is a transdiagnostic third-wave behavioral intervention with a goal to reduce experiential avoidance (Dindo, Van Liew, & Arch, 2017; Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Experiential avoidance is defined as efforts to reduce, avoid, or eliminate unwanted private events (e.g., thoughts, emotions, memories, physical sensations). Such efforts are seen as unworkable because: (a) experiential avoidance paradoxically leads to stronger and more frequent unwanted private events, and (b) experiential avoidance interferes with values-based long-term goals. To counter experiential avoidance, ACT uses mindfulness and acceptance strategies to increase valued living in the presence of unwanted private events (Hayes et al., 2006). One such reason ACT may be seen as particularly helpful for older veterans is because they are often faced with problems that are outside of their control (e.g., loss and illness) which may lend well to acceptance-based approaches rather than emotional-control strategies. Though limited, extant research is consistent with this idea. Older adults tend to have better outcomes when using ACT for chronic pain issues compared to treatments that use emotional-control strategies, whereas for younger adults, the opposite is true (Wetherell et al., 2016). Furthermore, higher levels of experiential avoidance in older adults predicts negative affect (Pierson, Roche, & Denburg, 2019).
Emotion Regulation Patterns among Colorectal Cancer Survivors: Clustering and Associations with Personal Coping Resources
Published in Behavioral Medicine, 2021
Svetlana Baziliansky, Miri Cohen
Similar to suppression, experiential avoidance is defined as deliberate efforts made to control or alter how emotions are experienced.7 Experiential avoidance is employed in response to specific stressors (e.g., chronic pain)16 by means of cognitive control and passive avoidance of negative events. Such behavior is often related to the inability to take needed action in the face of stressful events as well.7 Experiential avoidance is deliberate and in contrast to suppression is conceptualized as a functional response.7 Moreover, the construct of experiential avoidance is often related to strongly negative evaluations of stressful events, negative self-references, avoidance of needed action regarding a problem, and experiential and cognitive control of one’s negative emotions.7 Like suppression, experiential avoidance was found to be associated with higher psychological distress and negative emotions.2