Making Use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:
~~ Move Through Depression & Anxiety and Create a Life Worth Living 

A Mindfulness :: Acceptance Approach
to Therapy for Depression and Anxiety

Hundreds of books have been written by psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists to try to help you overcome or put an end to depression or to do away with anxiety. But what if you could actually make constructive use of your depression and anxiety to awaken you take action and change your life for the better? Your symptoms may be legitimately viewed as “warning signals” that certain aspects of  your life are calling out to you for attention. Perhaps various life contexts find you yearning for growth, renewal, personal restoration and balance.

Learning to understand and interpret your depression or anxiety as “signal cues” for vital life change is much more important than ignoring, tolerating your suffering or avoiding paying attention them. Such avoidant tendencies (refusing to take action) only make your depressive situation worse.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a new and powerful treatment plan for depression and anxiety that will help you live a productive life by accepting your feelings instead of fruitlessly trying to avoid, deny or stoically tolerate them.

The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook for Depression will show you, step-by-step, how to stop your cycle of depression. Our outcome in making use of this workbook will assist you to feel more personally effective and energized, as you actively involve yourself in pleasurable and fulfilling activities that will help you work through, rather than avoid, aspects of your life that are perpetuating your problems and serving to exacerbate and worsen your experience of depression.

I will assist you in making functional use of  the techniques in this book to evaluate your own depression and create a personalized treatment plan to help you resolve you depression and prevent relapse into similar psychological challenges. You’ll enrich your total life experience by skillfully focusing your energy — not on fighting depression —  but on vitally living the life you want to live.

Patricia Robinson PhD , Kirk Strosahl PhD

 

 

 

Dr. Patrick J. Hart
Therapy for Depression & Anxiety in Seattle 

If you elect to work with me to resolve your personal struggles with depression or anxiety, I am likely to prescribe to you various actions and exercises that involve intensive exposure to activities and lifestyle changes similar to those summarized and illustrated in the above workbook. Such prescriptions will augment our work during your time spent outside of our psychotherapy sessions.

It is important that you are willing to engage in various prescribed actions (behavior activation) in your daily life — outside the consult room. I will ask you to “trade in your inertia and avoidance” and instead, engage in vital actions that will serve to effectively resolve your experience of depression and anxiety.

Once you understand your experience of depression or anxiety  for what it is, rather than what this seems to be, you will be in an excellent position to begin to effectively do something about it.

What depression seems to be is a set of mental, emotional and physical symptoms that can be overwhelming if you try to take them on individually. In reality, depression [and anxiety] is a set of experiences that routinely can inform us that something is functionally out of balance in your approach to living. ”

Depression is never an accident of nature; it is a perfectly designed to tell you something important [routinely radically imbalanced] about how your life is being lived.  Rather than rejecting your depression as a blight, you can learn to [realistically] accept where you are in your life and view depression as a natural consequence  [implicitly human trap] of living in a very complicated age” (Stroshal & Robinson, 2008, p. 24).

As we engage in our psychotherapeutic work,  I will steadfastly encourage you to hold yourself gently — moving decisively forward, in a behavioral sense, strategically toward the life you value most — while treating yourself with the utmost compassion and self-respect.

We will work earnestly to redirect your actions and your energy toward solving the dilemmas that keep you “stuck in cycles” that sustain your experience of depression and anxiety.  Making use of the tenants of Clinical Behavior Analysis and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we will proceed decisively — and courageously — toward active engagement in cognitive and behavioral solutions that will serve to turn your depressive/anxious warning signals into the vital and balanced life you value most.

ACT Psychotherapy Research Wisdom Reveals

The “triggering” events for depression and anxiety are as
numerous and varied as the people who experience such
depression and anxiety. What works must be tailored
especially for you.

Paradoxically, trying to gain control over your mood has
the unintended effect of causing you to lose control ofer the
life you endeavor to live.

The two “siren songs” that cereate depression are emotional
avoidance and cognitive fusion with unworkable rules about
controlling unwanted internal experiences. Again a paradox!

The pathways out of depression require “psychological flexibility”
in the areas of accepting unwanted internal events, developing
a mindful and intentional approach to daily living, and engaging
in actions designed to solve problems rather than to avoid them.

The ACT Informed Doctors Say:

“If you decide to turn around and face difficult personal and interpersonal problems in your life, you can quickly regain your sense of health and vitality.   You have what it takes to get back on the horse that threw you. Let’s get on with it and reverse the downward spiral of depression!” (Stroshal & Robinsion, 2008, p. 42)

If it’s hight time for you to find your solution
– just give me a call! 206-547-HELP

If you choose to work with me, I’ll help you make an accurate inventory of your depression inducing behaviors in major areas of your life.  We’ll accurately identify what you’ve done to try to control you depression, and earnestly evaluate how these strategies have worked (or routinely backfired for you) over time. We will seek perspective and come to understand just how  your depression might be “trying to protect you” with abysmally depressing results — and in accomplishing this — you’ll come to view your depression in a refreshing and illuminating light. A promising light that reveals the imbalances that blockade you from living your most vital and cherished life.

Patrick J. Hart Psy.D. ~ Psychotherapist
Cognitive Behavioral Therapist Seattle
Family Intervention Specialist and Counselor

Counseling & Psychotherapy