The purpose of this kind of work is not to create a new sense of attachment. We are not arguing that people “really” are one sense of self or another. Rather, by helping the person contact a sense of “being here,” we can facilitate three key ACT processes: 1) decreasing an attachment to a conceptualized self, 2) creating a context in which acceptance and defusion work is not threatening, and 3) fostering greater flexibility. Making the experiential distinction between the knower and the known empowers the client to observe experience more freely and get on with the business of living, rather than struggling to eliminate negatively evaluated experiences before any valued direction can be taken (e.g., living according to the thought “When my anxiety goes away, I will live my life”).
Let’s take an example that illustrates how self as context can moderate our usual way of knowing. A client might say, “I hate myself. I can’t stand feeling like this a moment longer,” and then in the process of attending to and believing what the “mind has just said” about the feeling, the client may choose to drink alcohol as a means to escape the experience. In this example, the content of the mind is being held liter- ally and is being applied to the self as a conceptualized object. The content includes an evaluation about the self and a predictive outcome (“I can’t stand this”). If a literal verbal sense of knowing dominates, it seems that immediate action must be taken or some awful event will follow. Behavior is quickly organized around fixing or controlling the mind’s content, but that very work can be problematic; for example, if a client numbs out to forget bad memories, uses cocaine to feel better, or avoids intimacy to avoid fears of being unlovable.
If the client simply attends to the moment and observes his or her thoughts, another avenue is pos- sible. For example, the client might watch the thought “I can’t stand feeling like this a moment longer” arise and then notice what happens. Immediately thereafter, another thought will arise and … the stream of experience will continue to flow. Coming to know this ongoing flow of experience—that is, experiential knowledge—will tell the client that he or she won’t perish; in fact, another moment will pass and another experience will come along. If the client can be present to directly experience the moment, he or she will have an opportunity to learn how thoughts and emotions are not destructive and will also have the oppor- tunity to expand his or her sense of self, coming to recognize that the client is an experiencer or observer, rather than the experience itself.
WHAT SHOULD TRIGGER THIS PROCESS?
In ACT, therapists work with clients on an ongoing basis to explore the problem of being too attached to the conceptualized self and to explore self as context. However, therapists will want to increase their focus on these issues at two key times. The first is when a client’s attachment to a particular conceptualized self interferes with the ability to make needed changes in his or her life. For instance, a client might be overly identified with being a victim. In believing the content of this conceptualized self, the client mistrusts others and refuses to engage in intimate relationships, even though intimacy may be held as part of the client’s relationship values. When fully engaged in this conceptualized self, the client’s life as victim can be largely constraining. The therapist’s job is to help the client make contact with self as context and engage a larger and more encompassing sense of self that is separate from the content of the mind. In other words, the client is able to contact a sense of self that is separate from the victim self. The goal is to increase flexibility and support the client in engaging in new behavior.
The second time involves helping clients find a secure and safe place from which to contact and confront feared emotions, memories, thoughts, and sensations. Feared experiences often threaten a person’s very sense of self. Making contact with the transcendent “I” can help clients see there is a place—in fact,
they are a place—that is unchanging and stable and does not need to be threatened by the experiences
of their mind or felt emotions. This can facilitate the work of defusion and willingness, which necessarily entail contacting painful and distressing experiences. Self-as-context work can also aid in values work, especially because it undermines attempts to please others or avoid guilt or shame in the guise of values.
Clinicians can watch out for certain signs in themselves, as well, that suggest the utility of this ACT process. These include a sense of personal disconnection, lack of empathy, boredom, arguments with the client, or the pull to protect the client’s self-image.
WHAT IS THE METHOD?
The main goal of this process is to help the client establish or reconnect with the continuous sense of self that is involved in noticing or observing the moment-by-moment flow of thought and emotion as ongoing experience, rather than as believed or disbelieved instances of thinking or feeling to which the client must respond. When the client can observe experience with a sense of perspective and the equanimity that provides, new and more flexible ways of responding can develop. Some strategies used in this process include:
Recognizing a sense of “you” exists that is aware of thoughts and emotions.
Teaching and requesting the practice of mindfulness and awareness (see chapter 4).
Actively practicing noticing a transcendent and compassionate, socially expansive sense of self in and out of session.
Focusing on experience instead of logic.
Defusing from the content of thinking (see chapter 3).
More specifically, contact with an observer self (Hayes et al., 1999) is created through a series of metaphors, interventions, and experiential exercises that help the client come into contact with self as context, rather than self as content. Typically, this is accomplished through a variety of exercises aimed at helping the client attend to various aspects of the present moment, and then notice an “I” exists that is noticing these aspects of experience.
Metaphors
As with many ACT interventions, it helps to have organizing metaphors. Several metaphors exist to describe self as context; one example compares the self as context to a house, and the self as content to the furniture in the house (see figure 5-1). Metaphors used in other parts of the work, such as the bus metaphor (Hayes et al., 1999, pp. 157–158), can easily be expanded to provide an organizing metaphor for self as context. For example, if the therapist is using the metaphor of a bus full of unruly passengers in work on defusion, acceptance, and values, it is easy to talk about the driver as the part of the person that is aware of all of these experiences.
The chessboard is a central ACT metaphor (Hayes et al., 1999, pp. 190–192). In this metaphor, the self (i.e., the arena or context in which experience takes place) is likened to a chessboard. The chess
pieces are said to correspond to the client’s thoughts, feelings, sensations, and so on. After this metaphor is established, it can be elaborated in many ways; for example, by discussing how chess is a war game and the board (“I”) has no real investment in how the war turns out. The therapist can also note that, although the various pieces are threatening to each other, they are not threatening to the board, which simply touches and supports them. The therapist can use an actual chessboard to help make the metaphor more concrete. Using physical props, such as a chess- board, is especially helpful for clients with limited abstraction abilities. The following transcript illus- trates how this metaphor, once laid out, can be made more experiential by integrating it into the flow of the session.
Client: [immediately after the chessboard metaphor was described and an actual chessboard with pieces was used] So, I’m the board and my thoughts and feelings are the pieces? But what about my thoughts about who I am?
Therapist: [picks up more chess pieces and sets them on the board] More pieces to be added to the
board.
Client: But when I feel things, it’s real, it’s overwhelming.
Therapist: [picks up another chess piece] Yes, it is definitely an experience you are having. [sets chess
piece on the board, representing the feeling] And that thought you just had, the one that said, “But when I feel things, it’s real, it’s overwhelming,” is another piece, too, another experience. [sets another chess piece on the board]
Client: So everything I say will become another piece?
Therapist: Yes, each experience you have, whether it be a feeling or a thought, is another piece on the
board. And, as the board, notice that you are in touch with the pieces, you are in contact with them [slides pieces around on the board to demonstrate contact], yet the pieces are not the board.
Client: Well, I think I would just like to dump the board over.
Therapist: And that thought, too, is another piece on the board. [sets another piece on the board] See
how this works?
Client: I know, but I don’t want those bad pieces.
Therapist: [compassionately] I can understand why. But, again, check your experience and see. Have
you ever been able to kick the pieces that you didn’t want off the board? Have those bad memories and feelings disappeared?
Client: No.
Therapist: So even “I don’t want those bad pieces” goes on the board. [puts another piece on the board]
Remember, though, the board is not the pieces. The board—you, the experiencer—is larger than any single piece. You are in contact with your thoughts and feelings. You are aware of having them, and yet you are not them. You experience them, and you are continually adding to your board … and the pieces are not the board. The board can hold the pieces and remain intact and whole, even if a piece says, “This is overwhelming.”
Here, the therapist is demonstrating self as context by pointing to the board as the holder of experi- ence (the pieces) and the observer of experience, while also demonstrating that experience is ongoing and additive. Experience flows from one moment to the next, and each new experience is to be observed, just as another piece is added to the board. It is worth noting that we, as therapists, and our clients are not always in contact with this sense of self. It is difficult to remain in the observing perspective. It takes prac- tice to be aware of this sense of self. Regardless, it is a freeing position. If the client is not the experience, then he or she is free to choose, while holding the pieces. No effort is needed to change the piece before effective action can be taken.