Week 2:
University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics

February 1, 2013

My second week at the internship was fairly similar to the first – a LOT of reading.  The majority of Dr. Dindo’s staff was scrambling to finish off preparations for a seminar on Saturday that they had been spending the past few months preparing, and so most of my work concerned tasks I was already fairly familiar with – that is, reading and doing a literature search (although I’d say it’d be a bit optimistic to say I “know” how to do a literature search – “can struggle my way through one” is probably more realistic).  I also met one of the two other undergraduate RAs, and we spent a few hours exploring the hospital, learning these things along the way:

• This hospital feels large enough to be its own city, complete with a hospital.
• The outside of the hospital used to look almost medieval and had a DRAGON on the outside.
• The best office is the Neuroscience one.  Naturally.
• Some poor soul was actually named John Pappajohn.
• Everything in this city seems to be named after him.

However, as stated, most of my time was spent with ACT, so I figured it’d be most productive to tell you about that.

On Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a relatively new (the first case studies were in the late 90s and early 2000s) and broadly applicable therapy that serves as an alternative and/or supplement to other therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which combats unwanted thoughts by pointing out their often illogical nature.  ACT’s primary components are stated in the name (acceptance and commitment), but the therapy itself is composed of six different process areas that interact with each other.

1. Contact with the Present Moment/Present-moment Processes: This area attempts, to some degree, to get one out of one’s own head.  It stresses an awareness of one’s current environment and situation in a focused yet flexible way and is the opposite of purely mental processes, like worry and rumination.

2. Defusion: This area treats one’s thoughts as, at most, simple guidelines to action and focuses on treating these thoughts lightly and acting in spite of them if need be.  Its opposite is fusion, where scary thoughts dictate one’s actions.

3. Acceptance: This area stresses the importance of understanding the worth of and embracing all internal experiences and feelings as a necessary part of one’s life and development.  This does not mean one has to enjoy or actively seek out bad internal experiences, it merely means that one should not actively avoid them.  The opposite of this is avoidance.

4. Values: This area directs and regulates the other process areas.  Values are clearly defined yet unachievable and constantly evolving virtues and traits that one chooses to pursue.  They should be what direct one’s actions above all else.  This process area has no defined “opposite.”

5. Commitment: This area stresses a commitment to the furthering of one’s values and the implementation of the other process areas while still recognizing that one often falls short of these pursuits.  As a result, it does not focus on any point in the future but merely focuses on whether or not one is honoring their commitment in the present moment, allowing anyone who has fallen short to start right back up again.  It has no defined “opposite.”

6. Self-as-context: This area focuses on the concept that one’s personality and identity is a context-specific and constantly-evolving thing created by one’s personal external and internal experiences.  It is the opposite of a self-as-content approach, which boxes someone into a category (e.g. “someone who isn’t good with people”) that prevents them from engaging in certain activities and experiences.

Summary and thoughts: I will admit, while ACT is interesting, spending two weeks just reading about it and not doing much of anything else did become a bit of a chore.  It was extremely jarring when I realized that it was third week at Cornell – it is true when they say a day at Cornell feels like a week everywhere else.  However, at the end of the second week I still was very interested in ACT and felt like the internship was bound to speed up – which it certainly did.

Next Week: Expect pictures – for real this time!  Also expect an explanation of what the elusive “Saturday Seminar” was and an explanation of what felt like the first major turning point in this internship.

Random ACT Insight: ACT feels like less of a “therapy” and more of a general “life philosophy.”  It’s as if you took a bunch of old proverbs (which are often used to explain ACT), mixed them together, and then did scientific studies on them.  IT’S AWESOME.