Acceptance and commitment therapy for complicated mourning

posterior to the death of a loved one, it is common for the balks do not want to continue experiencing sadness or remembering the person who died due to the pain of symptoms or the sense of disconnection with the person who died. Reason, in most cases, choose to neutralize, control or try to disappear these sensations or thoughts.

The result of avoiding this experience, in the short term, is that it decreases the painful symptoms and / or the sensation of disconnection with the dead entity, so this strategy is visualized as the "solution" to account for the pain understood as "problem". The paradox of this strategy is that, the more trying to control or avoid experience, it will be present for longer and in most cases, it tends to extend the course, symptoms and difficulties of functioning of the mourning process.

A Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)is a treatment model whose objective is to develop psychological flexibility in customers in a process of mourning, rather than focusing on reducing their mal- being, favoring adaptation and integration to this new context (Hayes et al., 1999). This adaptation is achieved when the bandwidth identifies as its strategies used to reduce the pain and / or malaise caused by their loss interfere with the assimilation of loss and adaptation to a medium where the loved one is no longer. By which the treatment favors that the bandwith changes the center of attention to the behaviors that enhance and give meaning to your life while learning to relate in a different way with your pain (Cruz, Reyes, et al., 2017).

within actThe therapist assists to the patient to express and allow himself to be in contact with his emotions, facilitating the acceptance of unwanted private experiences and helping to understand the mourning responses of a open form. It also helps in recognizing the impact that had the loss in his life and facilitates that the bereaved person lives a life according to his values, with what is important for himself, without fighting internally against obstacles that his mind attributed to him To avoid feeling what simply exists inside the person.

The treatment of ACT focuses on favoring the processes that increase psychological flexibility from the Open styles (ie acceptance, bloom), centered present moment, I as a context) and compromised(ie values, compromised action).

Helping, thus, the client can oscillate between being in touch with his mourning experience while performing shares committed towards what is important in his life to adapt to these changes.

References:

Cruz, J. I., Reyes, M. A., & Corona, Z. I. (2017b). Duel: Treatment Based in La therapy of aceptación and Commitment. CDMX: Modern manual.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change.