Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Up to now I've covered the first two thirds of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. If you have been trying the exercises, hopefully you have developed a little bit of confidence in being able to be present to the moment and your internal experiences (thoughts, feeling, sensations, memories, urges). To review, acceptance in this context is not approval, but awareness. Awareness so that these internal experiences are less likely to blindly influence your reactions, or drag you i

In the last reflection, we considered the call to return, over and over again, to the God who invites us out of fear and self-reliance. That “return” is not only a spiritual image but also something that happens in the most ordinary moments of our day. Each time we act, we are making a choice. In spirituality, the choice is between the choice that draws us closer to the person God calls us to be, or one that carries us away from that call. In psychology, this is named in a bi

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart.” (Joel 2:12) The Christian life is a continual return. Again and again, God invites us to turn from distraction, fear, and self-reliance, and to come back to Him with trust. In the last blog, I spoke about the serious difficulty posed when trust is injured through highly chaotic relationships or trauma. But even in more ordinary circumstances, humans are ones to prefer to plan, to choose, and to control what h

CCC 2734 Filial trust is tested - it proves itself - in tribulation. News of violence, especially connected to churches, can stir fear, anxiety, or anger. These emotions are understandable. They reveal our respect for life and the sacredness of the places we worship. But if left unchecked, they could pull us away from peace, prayer, and one another. How do we persist in these times? Faith does not mean we never feel afraid or angry. It means we turn toward God with our emoti

The answer, in the words of my grad school professor Dr. James Werth, would be - it depends. Experiential Acceptance and Avoidance In...

At the core of experiential acceptance is learning the skill of sitting with our emotions. It is letting ourselves be with our feelings,...

Perhaps it was providential that I met with so many of my clients who have chronic health illnesses this week when I was formulating this...

In which I take something pop psych off the internet and dissect it. There’s a lot of content online that presents itself as solid...

"Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts". Psalm 139: 23 Being in the here-and-now, connected to our true...

“Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41) The Gospel tells us of a time when Jesus' disciples were caught in a...

In the quiet of prayer or the chaos of daily life, we may find ourselves asking: Who am I, really? Am I the roles that I fulfill? My...

“Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them—every day begin the task anew.” St....

“Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” Matthew 6:34 (NABRE) In our...

"Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason." CCC §159 There is much which...