Be a Leader, Follow the Leader

The Relational Frame Theory (RFT) frames the fundamental concept of ACT. RFT aims to explore the link between behavior and human language. Understanding language is crucial in psychotherapy. But if your ideas (or are they really yours? However, once you have completely savored the bitter pill, swallowed and digested it, and found and accepted who and what you are, whatever and whoever that may be, there is the peace and power of being someone whose ideas and self-image coincide with reality. And those are priceless things to have. Describing how and why we come to have such mistaken ideas about ourselves, about this maybe finally unknowable and ultimately even non-existent self of us, is stuff for a article on its own. What's far more important now, is undertaking the journey out of the delusion. It's a journey everyone makes for themselves, and everyone encounters other things, other reasons, other constellations on this private journey. It would be of little use to describe any individual findings, as they'd rather distract you from your truth, instead of helping you find it. What may be of help, is knowing that one tried and tested way of setting about this journey is through mindfulness and meditation. I don't pretend that it's the only way, nor the best way for you, but it's worth looking into if the adventure appeals to you. There's probably nothing more satisfying in a person's life than to look in the mirror, take off the mask, and finally meet the man or woman behind. Many of us use language in private when we think or in public when we speak with the people around us. We use language to think about, read about, write about, talk about, evaluate, relate, categorize, and describe everything around us. Language is a useful tool in our existence as human beings, and without it we may never have had the chance to build our civilizations. For example, without language, we could not develop laws and societal rules to regulate our behavior. While human language offers a lot of benefits, it can also have negative aspects. It's like the yin and yang - it has a powerful dark side and a powerful bright side. And based on RFT, language plays a critical role in human suffering.

Language is a tool we use to form prejudiced and hateful assumptions about people around us, construct negative thoughts, obsess over things, and revisit events that caused us trauma in the past. Too much use of language and thinking can also make it hard to keep in touch with the present moment. We can spend so much time thinking about our past and worrying about our future that we end up being unable to enjoy the present. The Emulator Error A definite pitfall for neurodivergents is trying to be, or at least emulate, a neurotypical. I for one got completely lost in that. I also judged myself harshly for it later on, after I developed a bit more observational power and insight in myself and caught myself red-handed over and over trying to behave like a neurotypical again and again. But I think a bit more lenience and forgiveness is appropriate: life amidst the neurotypical pack is f*ing hard, and all of us neurodivergents end up with strategies to survive. You can't blame yourself for trying to survive in any way you did. The thing is, when you're completely absorbed in this survival strategy of emulating a neurotypical, you're unaware of the fact that you're doing this. You're so focused on blending in and surviving that you actually take yourself for the person you're emulating. In reality, it's as if your `embarrassing' real self is choking in a tub, with your false, neurotypical-emulating self doing its best to keep it underwater, and out of sight. Your emulator part is always busy faking to be happily neurotypical, joking and having fun with your neurotypical `friends. Through a deeper understanding of human language and its mechanism, we can better harness its bright side to minimize the effects of the dark side. This form of understanding is what RFT is trying to provide through ACT. Psychotherapists who are studying how human language affects our behavior usually concentrate on two remarkable aspects of language: generativity and symbolism. It is easy to understand symbolism as language is used to refer to an object or an idea. For example, the word tree refers to a type of plant with a trunk that supports branches, leaves, and may or may not bear flowers or fruits. Language is used to symbolize things. When you gain a better understanding of a specific word, then you can understand its meaning.

Meanwhile, generativity refers to our ability to create and understand an endless number of sentences with meaning. It is also known as productivity. Every language has a specific number of basic letters, sounds, and words. All of this happens mostly under the radar of your consciousness, so for all practical purposes you may consider yourself to be much more neurotypical than you actually are. You hide your neurodivergence just as much from yourself as you conceal it from others. To make things worse, this is a vicious circle. The more you behave like a neurotypical and hide your true self, the more obnoxious you will become to people who are really like you, and the more you'll have to seek the company of neurotypicals who will demand more neurotypical behavior of you - or else exclude you. In the end you're continuously miserable because the rewards from your neurotypical `friends' aren't for you (your real you), they're for your cardboard construction of a `you. If all goes well, you touch rock bottom and find something there to change the game. It may be a article (maybe even this one), an encounter, a long forgotten thing someone said to you, a story, a song, or even a realization that sprung up seemingly from nowhere in your mind. You'll ditch the antics and get real. Because whichever way you turn it, your real you never dies until you do. Rules for survival: get real with yourself! However, each one of us can produce an endless number of totally unique sentences with these words, letters, and sounds. Various theories have been developed to explore these features and usually describe the important properties or concentrate on various concerns. For instance, linguists believe that the novelty and complexity and generativity of language are mainly due to genetic factors. However, cognitive psychologists believe that our brain is responsible for how we process and store information, including symbols. In spite of the differences in focus, most language studies are based on the similar idea that language is used to express information that is developed by our brains. Basically, language is a system of symbols that will allow us to express our ideas that can be understood by other people. These theories often concentrate on what are deemed to be the important processes of language.

Researchers and practitioners of RFT take a different method of exploring language and cognition. Instead of explaining language as a means of communicating ideas from one person to another, RFT focuses on how humans obtain language through interaction with people and their environment. This is framed to provide a useful and practical language analysis and cognition and not just a description of a concept. Rule #1: Do your dark tourism. Don't assume you know yourself until you've visited all of your moldy catacombs. You aren't a saint, so there's bound to be some weird and underwordly parts to you. They're there to stay, and they're really great company if you respect and value them. A good little demon inside can come in handy anytime, and may even save your life. Without hell (etymologically speaking simply `the concealed place', where you hide everything you don't want to see), what's the point or fun in heaven, right? Either you live with your weird and wacky parts on a daily basis, or you're avoiding to face reality in one way or another and condemning yourself to Eternal Fakeness. Rule #2: Do your happy tourism. Don't assume you know yourself until you've visited all of your fantastic gardens. You are not the devil incarnate so there's bound to be quite some great and exciting parts to you, and some of them may not be known to you, or maybe you refuse to see them because you think that's immodest or not done. ACT is considered as the applied technology of RFT as it tries to help people use language as a way to resolve specific psychological issues. This can be done through the psychological flexibility model that is distinct in ACT. The Psychological Flexibility Model The main objective when undergoing ACT is to enhance our psychological flexibility, which refers to our capacity to keep in touch with the present as a fully aware human being, and depending on what the circumstances call for, persisting or changing in behavior to serve preferred values. To put this simply, this means taking our own emotions and thoughts a bit more lightly, and behaving on long-term values instead of momentary feelings and thoughts, and impulses. Emotions and thoughts tend to be shaky indicators for long-term values. It's not easy to control them, and they have the tendency to go to extremes.

When we allow our emotions and thoughts to influence our behavior, we might overlook the more significant, emerging trends of action and fail to grasp genuine meaning in our lives, or experience life's richness. At present, psychological flexibility is measured through the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire, which is used by psychotherapists and ACT specialists to predict the following psychological concerns: Poor work performance Look into the mirror in all honesty and see the bad and the ugly but also the good. Rule #3: Be a dedicated tourist. Revisit your catacombs and gardens regularly. Better even: never leave them entirely, but simply abolish the boundaries between them and the rest of you. Rule #4: Be the dragon that never sleeps. Always remain alert for when you're sliding into character. It's not wrong or bad to slide into a character once in a while and be a bit (or even very) fake. There are many valid reasons for doing so and it's not a crime, not to yourself nor to anybody else. In the world as it is, it's often a great strategy. Just make sure you know that you're doing it, and return to your real self in time before you get lost. Substance abuse Anxiety sensitivity Long-term disability Higher anxiety General pathology Alexithymia There are six fundamental ACT processes that establish psychological flexibility, and these will be discussed in detail in the next article.