https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/?page_id=1271<\/a>. Some therapists shy away from\ntalking to someone about the hopelessness of the strategies that he or she uses\n(usually unconsciously) to control inner experiences. They are afraid that the\nclient will feel hopeless about themselves, therapy or life. When clients see ending\ntheir lives as the only option to free themselves from the immense struggle\nthey face every day, as a therapist you want to carefully maneuver the process\nof creative hopelessness to prevent the client being strengthened in his idea\nthat his life is hopeless. However, most people can handle the confrontation,\nand that life or the person is hopeless is certainly not the message we want to\nconvey with this process.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe process\nof creative hopelessness validates that people suffer and that they have\nalready tried a lot to alleviate their suffering. It validates the experience\nthat what they have already tried has not led to the desired result. And it\noffers hope. Hope that another path is possible, by stopping the fight with\nyour own inner experiences, thus with yourself. By shifting the focus from\n“this must go” to ” I want more of these valuable things ”\nnew options become visible. By letting go of the attempts to bring inner\nexperiences under control, people gain control over their lives, their actions\nand their backs. The dirty pain, the painful consequences of not accepting the\npain associated with life, will decrease if someone can let go of the struggle.\nYou can offer that hope as a therapist. Sometimes I hear that therapists believe\nthey should first take away all hope from their clients and let them go home\ncompletely hopeless. That is not what the process of creative hopelessness is\nabout. It is about the insight, not rationally, but on the level of experience,\nthat it is only possible to control your own inner experiences to a limited\nextent. That investing a lot of time and energy in controlling your experiences\nleads to a decrease in (working on) what makes life valuable and meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When\nclients come to realize that their actions to gain more control over their\nexperiences do not work, they often ask the question: what should I do then? It\nis suggested in ACT books to not answer this question as a therapist. First of\nall, the answer could easily lead to someone following the advice in the hope\nof gaining more control. In addition, we try to tap into someone’s experiential\nwisdom in ACT instead of “offering” this wisdom in the form of\nadvice. But there is no simple answer either. Acceptance is not the answer to\nthe question: what is helpful? You could say that psychological flexibility is\nthe answer. The interplay of the six processes, of which acceptance is one. In\nthe therapy you use the other processes to make letting go and approaching\nbehavior (acceptance) possible. For example, when someone expresses the fear\nthat his or her life will never be okay again, then the goal is not that\nsomeone accepts this fear. In this fear there is a belief that someone fuses\nwith and that increases the suffering, the aversiveness of the experience.\nDefusion reduces fear to an emotion, a physically felt experience that is\neasier to carry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Creative\nhopelessness is not a state where we bring the client in with one or a few\ninterventions, after which the client has permanently abandoned the struggle\nwith his own experiences. It is a process that you will return to again and again.\nIt is a motion that people go through during a treatment session and during a\ntreatment process. Sometimes it progresses and sometimes it is more difficult.\nIt is important that the therapist and client agree on the purpose of the\ntreatment: no symptom reduction, no ‘getting better’, no \u2018more control over\nyour thinking and feeling\u2019, but getting more choices to live according your\nvalues. With the process of creative hopelessness, we motivate someone to leave\nthe path of more control over their experiences and to step on the path of a\nvalue-oriented life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Convenience serves people and we are surrounded by all sorts of gadgets and possibilities to make our lives easier. We no longer have to wash (and wash and wash) the sandy vegetables coming from the farmlands ourselves, it lays ready for us in the store. We don’t have to walk for hours to a well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1475","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1481,"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1475\/revisions\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actcursus.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}