A blog article of mine recently made it into Psychology Today! And not just the website, but the physical, paper-based version you can buy at airport shops and everywhere else they sell newspapers. You can read the full article here: stevenchayes.com/what-actuall...

The research on thought suppression is pretty unambiguous: it doesn't work the way people hope, and it often backfires. This is not a character flaw in the people trying it; it's a structural feature of how verbal minds work.

I’ve recently been interviewed by Catherine Plano, where we discuss the core principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, as well as what is at the heart of psychological change.
You can click here to listen to the full episode: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExbX...

The skills that help our clients, being able to feel difficult things without being consumed by them, staying connected to what matters rather than just managing distress, these apply to us too. What works is developing the same capacity we're trying to help others build.

Willingness is the choice to make room for a difficult experience, to allow it to be present without fighting it, suppressing it, or waiting for it to resolve before you act. It is not the same as wanting the experience. You don't have to want anxiety in order to be willing to have it.

This one is for the conscientious practitioners who take their clients' stuck points home with them. Slow progress is data, not a verdict. The question it raises is whether something in the approach needs to flex, not whether you've fundamentally failed.

One of the most reliable ways in is to think about someone you genuinely admire, not for their achievements, but for the quality of how they lived. What was it about them that moved you? Another way in is through pain: what hurts you most tends to point directly toward what matters to you most.

Pliance is behavior that's controlled by the approval or disapproval of others, rather than by your own values or the direct consequences of what you're doing. In other words, you're doing it because someone important to you expects it, or would be upset if you didn't, not because it matters to you.

New research from our team just dropped, and it's worth a look if you work with clients using ACT.

Read it in full here: bit.ly/4shaRGJ

There's a lot of cultural mythology around the big breakthrough, the turning point, the moment everything changed. And sometimes those moments happen. But the life you end up living is mostly built out of the small, unremarkable choices you made when nobody was watching, including yourself.

I'm going to be one of 50 speakers at the Ultimate Healing Summit, a free seven-day online event running April 7 through 13, and I want to invite you to join.

You can learn more and register yourself here: bit.ly/4v5zEiG

If the calm you find in meditation is coming from temporarily stepping away from difficult experiences, then yes, the moment you step back in, they'll be there waiting. What's more useful is developing a relationship with your experience that travels with you into the rest of your life.

Relational Frame Theory is a scientific account of how human language and thinking work. The core finding is that humans, uniquely among animals, learn to relate anything to anything else in an almost infinite number of ways: this is like that, this is better than that, this causes that, etc.

Something genuinely exciting landed in the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science.

You can check out the full article here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Psychological Flexibility is not a fixed quality that people either possess or lack. Instead, it's something everybody can learn, practice by practice; impacting your overall well-being more than virtually any other skill-set in mental health.

For the first time, ACT Bootcamp is coming to New York City. May 4 through 7, myself, Robyn Walser, Miranda Morris, and Diana Hill will take you through everything you need to walk out on day four and work differently with your very next client.

Sign up here: stevenchayes.me/ACTBCNY26

When clients understand the concepts but nothing shifts, the work is almost always staying too cognitive. Understanding something and experiencing something are governed by different processes entirely, and change lives in the second one.

Values, as I use the term, are chosen qualities of being and doing that matter to you intrinsically, not because they lead somewhere else, but because they express something real about who you want to be. They're directions, not destinations.

May 29 and 30 in Regina, Canada, I'm running a two-day Process-Based ACT workshop for practitioners who want to go deeper. Sign up at stevenchayes.me/ACTBCCA26

I hope to see you there.

I know this sounds strange, but "feeling good" as a goal tends to produce very narrow and disappointing outcomes. The fuller aim, the one the research actually supports, is something more like full engagement with the life you care about living.

I've recently been invited to speak on the Clearer Thinking podcast, with Spencer Greenberg. You can check out the full episode here: bit.ly/4bLZCiK

When you engage with a worried thought, even to argue against it, you give it more presence, not less. You're still in the ring with it. What actually loosens a thought's grip isn't winning the debate; it's stepping back from the debate entirely.

I'm coming to Canada.

May 29 and 30 in Regina, I'm running a two-day Process-Based ACT workshop. Intermediate, advanced, and beginners all welcome.

Sign up at stevenchayes.me/ACTBCCA26

Hope to see you there.

Creative hopelessness is not about instilling despair. It's about helping someone genuinely see, usually for the first time, that the control strategies they've been using to manage their suffering haven't been working, and may even have been making things worse.

The largest meta-analysis ever done on ACT and depression just landed!
ACT produces a large overall effect on depression, climbing to g = 1.18 in studies that directly targeted it.

You can check it out here: stevenchayes.me/4bllnFH

I've also created a Notebook LM version: stevenchayes.me/4benE5w

I think people underestimate what this small act actually builds over time. The returning isn't the failure of mindfulness; it is the practice. Each time you notice you've drifted and come back, you're training your ability to make conscious choices in the direction of your deeper goals and values.

I hear this often, and I don't think it means therapy can't help. It usually means something specific hasn't been addressed yet. A lot of approaches focus on reducing symptoms. That's not nothing, but it leaves out a crucial question: what do you actually want your life to look like?

If you've ever sat across from a client and wondered whether the research you were trained on actually applies to them, Reimagining ACT is where we work through that together.

Sign up at stevenchayes.me/ReACTAR26

Self-as-context, which I sometimes call the observing self, is the sense of "you" that has been continuously present throughout your entire life, watching, experiencing, and noticing everything that has happened, while not being identical to any of it.

A new study analyzed my first session with a grieving client alongside sessions by Robert Neimeyer and Diana Fosha. Three therapists, three different orientations, all treating grief.

You can read the full article here: stevenchayes.me/scienceworth...