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Happiness? Get over it

02.25.06 | 8 Comments

[photopress:1572244259.03.TZZZZZZZ.jpg,thumb,alignright]A few minutes after my daily dose of Lamictal I noticed this Salon interview with ACT therapist Stephen C. Hayes (on the occasion of his new book). Not familar with ACT therapy? First I’d heard of it too.

ACT (Acceptance and Commitment) therapy is the third wave in the movement from behavioral therapy to cognitive therapy (to ACT therapy). Instead of just teaching folks to be able to detach enough from their emotions to make rational choices about them, ACT contrasts two ways of life (with convenient acronyms):

  1. ACT: Accept your reactions and be present. Choose a valued direction. Take action.
  2. FEAR: Fusion with your thoughts. Evaluation of experience. Avoidance of your experience. Reason-giving for your behavior.

ACT (and its sibling therapy schools) draws a lot from lay-friendly version of Buddhist mindfulness. What’s more, it teaches something of an American “Middle Way” between self-indulgence and self-mortification. Consumerism and feel-goodism (and overeating?) stand in as the American forms of self-indulgence. On the side of self-mortification, you could put American innovations like extreme sports and exercise obsession.
Feel-goodism? Perhaps the most controversial claim ACT makes is that happiness is not normal. Expecting happiness, or believing you have a “right” to happiness, ACT says, will in turn make you unhappy.

“Happiness isn’t normal” becomes the ACT catchphrase. Simple observation of human life throughout history should be enough to prove that. The trick, urges ACT, isn’t to be happy, it’s to lead a value-centered life—whether you’re happy that month or not.

Living out our deepest chosen values will carry us through most any storm. But because we get such poor training in even thinking about what our values might be—and such poor training in “sitting with suffering”—we have a hard time thinking outside the consumerist happiness box. Insert ACT therapy sessions here.

Sounds exciting. I’m going to look more into this. Looks to be much more info here.

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