Last month, we brought you three exercises, based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), that aimed to bring calm to the somewhat stressful times we are all facing. This month, we bring you three more effective exercises that look to enhance psychological flexibility and limit worries.
To start, let’s take a moment and revisit acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). ACT is a form of counseling and, as with applied behavior analysis (ABA), a branch of clinical behavior analysis. It is an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies mixed in different ways with commitment and behavior-change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay in contact with the present moment regardless of unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, while choosing one’s behaviors based on the situation and personal values. The foundation of ACT are six core processes that help establish the overarching goal of ACT, psychological flexibility. The six processes are: contacting the present moment, defusion, acceptance, self-as-context, values, and committed action. Last month’s blog entry provided exercises based on defusion, self-as-context, and acceptance. This entry will provided exercises based on contacting the present moment, values, and committed actions. All of which are aimed at helping address challenges that children may be facing during the current pandemic crisis.
- Contacting the present moment (or living in the here and now, rather than getting stuck on past or future events or thoughts) Present moment awareness is also often described as mindfulness or being aware of one’s thoughts or physical sensations. Humans possess complex covert verbal behavior (i.e., thoughts, emotions, etc.), which can make it easy to be preoccupied with thoughts about the past or future, and can result in feeling disconnected or tuned out from our current circumstances. In short, when we spend time worrying about yesterday or stressing about tomorrow, we can miss out on today. Children can be particularly affected by this during the current situation. They may be stuck at home and overly focusing on wanting things to be like they were before. Or wishing into the future, like when they’ll get to return to in-person school. Both are examples of children struggling to focus on what they can do in the present moment. The Mind full of stuff (Dixon, 2014) exercise helps a child to describe their mind as being “so full of stuff, that it messes you up.” To help your child in differentiating between a “mind full of stuff” or being “mindful of stuff,” you can discuss thoughts they are having a lot and also what those thoughts are getting in the way of. Following the discussion, have your child draw their mind full of thoughts on one side of a paper, and on the other side, draw themselves free of, or standing next to those thoughts, doing what they really want to do. Guide your child through a discussion of how taking small steps with the things they actually have control over can help them access positive reinforcement, rather than being stuck in the past or worrying about the future.
- Values (or what is truly important and meaningful to you) Depending on your child’s age and functioning level, they may have a hard time understanding a statement such as, “We need to stay home so we can prevent the spread of the virus” because this description may be too abstract for them. To make it more concrete and impactful, try relating a statement like that to something that is familiar for your child. The Do it for Grandpa exercise attempts to do just this. You could present the situation to your child with a statement like, “The virus can be dangerous for older people. You know how much you love Grandpa and how much he loves you? Well by staying home today instead of going to school, we help Grandpa stay safe. And a lot of your friends have grandparents who they love too, so we can help keep everyone’s grandparents stay safe if we stay home today. Should we make today Grandpa day at our house?” Parents can make statements like this even more concrete by having your child write “Grandpa Day” on the window with a dry erase marker, by writing a letter to Grandpa, or by making a video call to Grandpa, etc.
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Committed actions (or taking action guided by your values – doing what matters – even if it’s difficult or uncomfortable) There are several exercises and tools that can help children come up with attainable goals for moving towards their values (even with difficult thoughts). The ACTion plan can help your child identify a self-management plan for choosing avoidant behaviors less and committing to adaptive behaviors that will result in positive reinforcement more. The plan consists of this worksheet with seven sections. You can have your child fill out the worksheet themselves or you can write it for them. The steps include:
- Write down your child’s goal in the “#1 My Goal” section
- Discuss your child’s values with them for the “#2 My Values” section. A great way to begin this conversation is to simply ask “What do you care about?” or “What is important to you?” and write down their answers.
- Next, you will ask your child to identify some thoughts and feelings that they have that aren’t so helpful when they are trying to achieve their goal. It is important in this section that your child is told that we will say a quick “hello” to these thoughts and feelings, will make room for them to happen, and will still work towards our goal. Write down the identified thoughts and feelings in the “#3 Thoughts and feelings” section.
- In the “#4 Smaller steps within my goal” section you will want to talk with your child and identify a smaller step within their goal. For example, if their goal is to “do school online”, a smaller step may be “sitting for 10 minutes during schoolwork time without taking a break.”
- Next, you will help them identify the smallest, easiest step (actual behavior) they can begin with. For instance, they may say that the smallest, easiest step they can begin with would be setting a timer for 10 minutes. Write that down in section #5.
- In the next section, you will ask your child to identify someone that can help them with this plan and write that person’s name in section #6.
- Finally, you will ask your child to choose a day that they will start taking steps toward their goal and write that down in section #7.
We hope you find these exercises and activities beneficial for you and your child as you look to enhance psychological flexibility during this time. Questions? Please contact us if would like to learn more!
Reference
Tarbox, C., Silverman, E. A., Chastain, A. N., Little, A., Bermudez, T. L., & Tarbox, J. (2020, April 30). Taking ACTion: 18 Simple Strategies for Supporting Children with Autism During the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/96whj