Key targets for

willingness
Help clients let go of the agenda of control as

applied to internal experience

Help clients to see experiential willingness as an

alternative to experiential control

Help clients come into contact with willingness as

choice, not a desire

Help clients to understand willingness as a process,

not an outcome

Control
A great deal of suffering and struggle is found in the

denial of the inevitability of human pain.

When we feel a whole range of negative emotions, we

generally try our best to undo these experiences

These attempts at controlling our private experience (via

suppression, avoidance, distraction, re-structuring etc.)

can often back fire

Despite being a perfectly natural coping strategy, and

despite sometimes working very hard to avoid painful

events, the positive effects of avoidance are short-lived
For example, imagine a social phobic who values

relationships with people. Initially avoiding people may

provide relief, but the long term implication for this action
is isolation

Attempts at controlling unwanted, unpleasant

experiences can cost us in two major ways

Firstly, often when we try to reduce or remove pain it returns

stronger to haunt and distress us. It also leads to the
development of a vicious circle where pain is something to be
feared. Therefore we feel pain about having pain, or anxiety
about feeling anxious or depression about being depressed!
ACT calls this dirty pain! In contrast clean pain refers to the
discomfort that is natural and the automatic consequence of
living life!

Second, attempts at avoiding painful experiences comes from

our huge need to feel good. However, often a life lived in
pursuit of feeling good is not lived in the service of our most
deeply held values. Often, doing what is important or matters
is painful and creates that sense of vulnerability. Ironically,
often trying to feel good via avoidance will only lead to feeling
bad!

What is willingness?
ACT specifically targets letting go of the control

agenda, which aims to get rid of experiences that

cannot be gotten rid of

ACT offers willingness as this alternative

If a client is unwilling then he or she makes choices

based on the avoidance of internal experiences,

rather than his or her core values

Willingness can be defined as being open to ones

whole experience while also actively and

intentionally choosing to move in a valued life
direction

Willingness is an action and has an all or nothing

quality to it, it is a choice

Clients sometimes confuse willingness for a
feeling. But one does not have to feel willing to be
willing
Clients can often mistake willingness for tolerance.
Tolerance implies that negative experience is to be
withstood until something better comes along.
Willingness on the other hand involves openness and

allowing, not as waiting or needing for something to

change to a better thing if we are tolerant enough

Finally willingness is not loss or resignation, as the

word acceptance can sometimes imply. It is life

affirming, empowering and vitalizing

Willingness is a skill to be learned, not just a

concept that provides miraculous results

It therefore takes time and practise
The job of the therapist is to manufacture

situations where clients can choose to

experience difficult thoughts or feelings
But there are steps the therapist employs in

order to manufacture willingness in the client

The Method
The process of fostering willingness usually

involves two steps;

Firstly, the therapist must undermine control as

the dominant way of relating to one self and ones

world. With the aim of creating an initial
openness, this is a good precursor for introducing
willingness
Secondly, willingness is introduced and the

therapist will try to create situations that allow the

client to practice these skills

Undermining control
Attempts to control are so second nature that

managing and controlling unwanted events is

not a choice, but the way it is.
Indeed the idea that clients might be able to

willingly accept anxiety is a bit like suggesting

they could live without breathing!
Therefore substantial work is done at the

beginning of therapy, introducing the client to

this new way of thinking.

The therapist will focus on a few issues when

trying to undermine control attempts;

Help the client to become aware of his or her

attempts at control based on their own experience.

This is called drawing out the system
Examining the workability of these strategies
relative to larger life goals
Guiding the client to a place where he or she can
let go of these strategies

The outcome of the process of undermining

control is often a loosened attachment to and

confidence in the control agenda

Draw out the system

Start with asking the client the nature of the issue i.e. why

are you here?

Almost always clients will report a struggle with some

emotion, memory or self evaluation (pain, anxiety, self doubt,

worthlessness)

Next we move on to the strategies that the client has used

to solve the problem

Be careful some of these problem solving strategies may

seem helpful (talking to friends) as well as unhelpful (getting

really drunk!)

Importantly, the client probably isn't aware of the ways

that they struggle to control their private experience. It is

the therapists job to slowly draw these out of the system
For example a depressed client may not immediately see how

oversleeping and over eating are intended to modulate a

mood state

Examine workability
At the same time as drawing out the possible ways

that the client has attempted to solve their

problems, the therapist must also examine the
workability of these strategies

The basic question here is have these strategies worked out

as your mind said they would?

There are spheres to explore here

Firstly - has what the client did to reduce or
eliminate anxiety actually eliminated anxiety
Your are in a win-win here, because the fact they have come
to see you in therapy means that every other attempt at
solving their problem hasnt worked
Secondly, in what ways has the client constricted or

limited their lives to deal with the problem?

What would you be doing with your time if you were not busy
managing your anxiety

The reason the therapist explores these two

avenues is because the two are linked in the

experiential control agenda
Namely, control strategies often promise us not

only that we will feel good, but that we will be

living well also. The therapist in ACT attempts
to undermine these two promises
Its ironic that most clients/people believe that if

they feel good first, then living well is easy. And

some spend their whole lives trying to achieve
the first, at the expense of actually living

Therapeutic stance and

pitfalls
The therapist should view whatever attempts at control the

client has tried as perfectly reasonable and understandable

It is also important to focus on workability. This is not about

being right, or proving that the therapist has a better way.

Its about helping the client to apply the criterion of
workability to their lives

Dont get caught up in the content of what the client is

saying i.e. dont get side-tracked into discussing the clients

problems in too much detail, we just want to know if the
strategies worked
Remember that the client would have verbally rehearsed his or

her stories many times, and may feel threatened and begin to
defend themselves and their strategies, at this point come
back to the issue of workability

The next step

Discussion is likely to show that past strategies have not

worked too well.

In order to move the clients forward to a place where they

can let go of these attempts, the therapist tries to foster a

state of creative hopelessness, where the therapist
suggests that perhaps those attempts cant work.

The idea of creative hopelessness is to ask the client to

recognise that their attempts have not been working, and

to suggest that a place of not having a solution is where
we want to be. Because its a place where new
possibilities are born
Importantly, at this point the therapist shouldnt come up

with a solution. Just let the client sit with their not knowing.

The importance of metaphor

Throughout the entirety of ACT metaphors are used

to demonstrate the principles the therapist talks

about.
With creative hopelessness the therapist will want
to convey that usually, the more effort we make
with something the more reward we receive. Yet in
this case the client has made a lot of effort to no
avail. The following metaphors may help

Struggling with quicksand

A person who has fallen into a hole with only a shovel

to get out
Feeding a hungry tiger so that he will leave
Running on a hamster exercise wheel that goes
nowhere

Lets look at some transcripts to see

if we can spot what the therapist is

doing

Important point 1
Be respectful and humble even when being

confrontational, otherwise it can seem like your

playing a game

The idea is to let the client know that the strategies

reinforced by the social community are not working,

not that he or she is incorrect
the agenda is hopeless, not the client

The idea of leaving the client hopeless comes from

the fact that when were not busy engaging in

avoidance we can see our lives more clearly

Remember that each client will need different

amounts of time on this. Some are steeped in their

avoidance, others not so much

Important point 2
Here the therapist moves on from workability to

suggesting that control might be the problem

rather that the solution to the clients problems
The problem is that our history tells us that if we
have a problem, then we get rid of it and all will be
well, but this may not be the case with psychology.
In all of these examples, clients think that getting
their internal experiences under control will enable
them to live (just like with physical problems). But
what if it was all a lie!
When I get my anxiety under control, Ill get a job
When the pain stops Ill find another relationship
When I dont feel guilty anymore, Ill reconnect with

my children

At this point a number of metaphors are

available to the therapist to help out

Chinese handcuff
Tug of war with a monster
The polygraph metaphor
And many more

These all convey the same message if

you're not willing to have it, youve got it!

Fostering
acceptance/willingness
Once the client recognises unworkable strategies

and realizes that control might be the problem,

therapy turns to willingness.
In this phase, attention is turned towards building
new behaviours that are about embracing, holding
and compassionately accepting ones experience
Clients often enter therapy to feel better (be
happier), acceptance aims to let clients feel better
(get better at feeling) in the service of living better
The therapist guides the client to practise
willingness so that they can apply it broadly to their
lives

Remember that the client is taking a big step into

the unknown here.

Not many people allow themselves to come into

contact with their emotions/issues.

The therapist is there to gently guide the client to

take these steps. They will do this in two ways;

Teaching the client what willingness is
Actively practising willingness in the present

moment

Willingness involves embracing the moment, in

the here and now, as it unfolds, fully and without

defence
What we mean by fully is broad and inclusive, all

emotions and mind content are there to be

experienced, not just the parts we like.

Willingness is a choice making a selection

because we can
Many clients might provide many reasons why

they do not have a choice, it is your job to allow

the client to defuse from their reasons and take
action

There is a quick way you can do this

Tea or coffee?
List the reasons why you would not choose one
over the other
And now ask if the client could still drink that
option despite all the reasons not to
It is not the reason that chooses, but the person
Would you be willing to choose willingness if it

meant you got to live your life?

Lets look at a classic willingness metaphor

Willingness is an action
Just like teaching someone to ride a bike, it is

difficult to instruct and must instead be

experienced and practised
Willingness tends to be practised throughout
the therapeutic process. The therapist will do
this by continually giving clients the choice to
do a difficult exercise or discuss a difficult topic
Popular exercises;
Eyes on exercise
Tin can monster exercise
Looking for Mr discomfort exercise

Important points
Willingness is often decided by the context i.e. a social

phobic could be willing in a bookstore, but not a shopping

centre, he or she could be willing or five seconds or one
hour
Therapists would usually start by asking the client to be willing

in a small way, then increase the steps with time.

Willingness is on-going we can never achieve it, simply

continue to choose willingly in each situation

Willingness is heavily integrated into the other parts of the

ACT model

We will therefore come across many willingness exercises in

the next few weeks

Now lets do some examples!!!!