Word: accept
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...thrust Hayes into a bitter debate in psychology, takes two highly unusual turns for a self-help manual: it says at the outset that its advice cannot cure the reader's pain (the first sentence is "People suffer"), and it advises sufferers not to fight negative feelings but to accept them as part of life. Happiness, the book says, is not normal...
...mental illnesses, from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder. And although a good cognitive therapist would never advise a panic patient merely to try to will away his anxiety, the main long-term strategy of cognitive therapy is to attack and ultimately change negative thoughts and beliefs rather than accept them. "I always screw up at work," you might think. Or "Everyone's looking at my fat stomach" or "I can't go to that meeting without having a drink." Part mentor, part coach, part scold, the cognitive therapist questions such beliefs: Do you really screw up at work...
...debates between cognitive therapists and third-wave critics are sometimes arcane and petty, but few questions seem as elemental to psychology as whether we can accept interior torment or analyze our way out of it. Hayes was received at last year's Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies convention in Washington with reverence-and revulsion. It wasn't uncommon to see therapists gazing at him between presentations as though he were Yoda. (Hayes is given to numinous proclamations: "I see this acceptance conception, this mindfulness conception, as having the power to change the world.") But skeptics dog him everywhere...
...also shown promise in treating addiction. In one study, drug addicts reported less drug use with ACT than with a 12-step program. And ACT worked better than a nicotine patch for 67 smokers trying to quit. ACT encourages addicts to accept the urge to do drugs and the pain that will come when they stop-and then to work on figuring out what life means beyond getting high. ACT has also been used to help chronic-pain patients get back to their jobs faster. But perhaps the most noteworthy finding was that 27 institutionalized South African epileptics...
Similarly, living by your values sounds great, but if no thought is good or bad, and no belief requires changing, what happens when the values are immoral? Should pedophiles live in accordance with their desires? Should an abused wife accept her husband's assaults? Eager to debate, Hayes has ready answers. "If somebody's gonna tell me, 'My value is sexually educating 8-year-olds,' I will not do therapy around that issue," he says. But while Hayes believes some people truly have pathological values, he says he has never had such a patient. "I've worked with rapists...