As I mentioned last month, Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a form of psychotherapy based on cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and relational frame therapy (RFT). RFT has provided new evidence regarding how your brain processes stressful and other information.

 

Steven Hayes and his colleagues (2001) at the University of Nevada at Reno found that when you learn something, you learn it in relation to other things specific to that time and place. This implies that the context of your learning is as important as the content of it. For example, your current thoughts, emotions, and behavior about a potential stressor are related to their original frames of reference (or what Relational Frame theorists call relational frame") from your past in which you initially learned about this stressor. The way you respond to this current potential stressor can be influencedentirely by your brain's ability to use information from that original frame of reference.

 

Your mind uses information from previous relational frames as the basis for assessing the threat posed by current potential stressors. In addition, your mind can carry this one step further and use the same previous information to jump ahead and project an infinite number of future situations involving this and similar potential stressors. Your mind's ability to use the past and present to jump ahead and anticipate future problems is the basis for a lot of your worry and anxiety. 

RFT has found that your brain is a 24/7 thinking and feeling machine that always has your past frames of reference operating in the background of your brain. Like a computer, your brain constantly processes information and is capable of running multiple programs at the same time. These "programs" are your thoughts, personal scripts (sub-vocal story lines), mental images (internal pictures you attach to the scripts), and emotions. Like the operating system or other programs on your computer's hard drive, your programs (your thoughts, personal scripts, mental images, and emotions) run in the background without you even realizing they're on.

Like viruses that invade your computer, your unhelpful programs (illogical thoughts and negative unhelpful self-talk) can corrupt your attempts to make sense of potential stressors. When this happens your mental processing is inefficient and unhelpful, and your brain (like your computer processor) freezes up and doesn't function. You've probably noticed, for example, that when you're really stressed, you just can't seem to think clearly, you feel jittery and tongued-tied, and sometimes you just shut down.

Next month we'll continue this discussion with a closer look at unhelpful thoughts, personal scripts, mental images, and emotions.