Mindfulness and meditation in the workplace: An acceptance and commitment therapy approach

There is a wide-ranging and growing body of evidence that mental health and behavioral effectiveness are influenced more by how people interact with their thoughts and feelings than by their form (e.g., how negative they are) or frequency. Research has demonstrated this key finding in a wide range of areas. For example, in chronic pain, psychosocial disability is predicted more by the experiential avoidance of pain than by the degree of pain (McCracken 1998). A number of therapeutic approaches have been developed that share this key insight: Distress tolerance (e.g., Brown et al. 2002; Schmidt et al. 2007), thought suppression (e.g., Wenzlaff and Wegner 2000), and mindfulness (Baer 2003). It is also central to a number of the newer contextual cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) approaches to treatment, such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT; Segal et al. 2002), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT; Linehan 1993), metacognitive therapy (Wells 2011), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes et al. 1999). The purpose of this chapter is to describe how ACT conceptualizes mindfulness and tries to enhance it in the pursuit of promoting mental health and behavioral effectiveness (e.g., productivity at work). To this end, we discuss ACT’s key construct of psychological flexibility, which involves mindfulness, and how it has led to a somewhat different approach not only to conceptualizing mindfulness, but also to how we try to enhance it in the workplace. In so doing, we hope to show that whilst formal meditation practice is valued in ACT, it is only one strategy that is used to promote mindfulness, as well as psychological flexibility more generally

Identifying Psychological Mechanisms Underpinning a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Intervention for Emotional Burnout. (Forthcoming)

One hundred employees of a UK government department were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) a worksite, group-based, CBT intervention called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; n = 43), which aimed to increase participants’ psychological flexibility; and, (2) a waitlist control group (control; n = 57). The ACT group received three half-day sessions of training spread over two and a half months. Data were collected at baseline (T1), at the beginning of the second (T2) and third (T3) workshops, and at six months follow-up (T4). Consistent with ACT theory, analyses revealed that, in comparison to the control group, a significant increase in psychological flexibility from T2 to T3 in the ACT group mediated the subsequent T2 to T4 decrease in emotional exhaustion in the ACT group. Consistent with a theory of emotional burnout development, this significant decrease in emotional exhaustion from T2 to T4 in the ACT group prevented the significant T3 to T4 increase in depersonalization seen in the control group. Strain also decreased from T2 to T3 in the ACT group, only, but no mediator of that improvement was identified. Discussion focuses on implications for theory and practice in the fields of ACT and emotional burnout

Linking Recent Discrimination-Related Experiences and Wellbeing via Social Cohesion and Resilience

The current study examined the relationship between recent experiences of discrimination and wellbeing and the mediating effects that social cohesion and resilience had on this relationship. Using online sampling, participants (N =255) from a South London community rated the levels of discrimination related experiences in the past 6 months, alongside measures of social cohesion, resilience, and wellbeing (happiness and depressive symptoms). Results revealed a negative relationship between recent experiences of discrimination and wellbeing which was explained by a serial mediation relationship between social cohesion and resilience, and singly by resilience alone. The study highlights how recent experiences of discrimination can lead to a depletion of personal resources and social resources (which in turn also lead to reduced personal resources) and in turn, to lower levels of wellbeing

The development and initial validation of The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes the relationship a person has with their thoughts and beliefs as potentially more relevant than belief content in predicting the emotional and behavioral consequences of cognition. In ACT, ‘defusion’ interventions aim to ‘unhook’ thoughts from actions and to create psychological distance between a person and their thoughts, beliefs, memories and self-stories. A number of similar concepts have been described in the psychology literature (e.g. decentering, metacognition, mentalization and mindfulness) suggesting converging evidence that how we relate to mental events may be of critical importance. Whilst there are some good measures of these related processes, none of them provides an adequate operationalization of cognitive fusion. Despite the centrality of cognitive fusion in the ACT model, there is as yet no agreed measure of cognitive fusion. This paper presents the construction and development of a brief, self-report measure of cognitive fusion: The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ). The results of a series of studies involving over 1800 people across diverse samples show good preliminary evidence of the CFQ’s factor structure, reliability, temporal stability, validity, discriminant validity, and sensitivity to treatment effects. The potential uses of the CFQ in research and clinical practice are outlined

Examining the relationship between acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) processes and stigma

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Flexible Organisations: Creating a Healthy and Productive Context for Gender and Sexual Minority Employees

It is fairly straightforward to imagine how mindfulness and acceptance skills can help gender and sexual minority (GSM) individuals to live vital and effective lives, even when experiencing difficult circumstances. In an organisational setting, one can even imagine how individual or group training sessions can help to promote mindfulness and acceptance. But what about at the team and organisational levels of the workplace: Can we design teams and organisations that are ‘mindful’ and that can promote mindfulness and acceptance in their employees? We believe that this is possible through the concepts and techniques that are associated with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999). ACT maintains that a process called psychological flexibility is at the core of helping people to maintain good mental health and behavioural effectiveness. It refers to people’s ability to focus on their current situation, and based upon the opportunities afforded by that situation, take appropriate action towards pursuing their values-based goals, even in the presence of challenging or difficult psychological events (e.g., thoughts, feelings, physiological sensations, images, and memories; Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda & Lillis, 2006). Later in this chapter, we will note how we can use ACT to increase psychological flexibility in GSM employees. First, how can we use the concept of psychological flexibility to create an organisational environment in which these individuals can thrive, both emotionally and in terms of their productivity

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is best described as a contextual cogni¬tive behaviour therapy (CBT). Contextual CBTs are a recent addition to the cognitive behavioural tradition and are distinct from earlier approaches (e.g. Beck’s cognitive therapy) in both their proposed mechanisms of change and core therapeutic techniques. Whilst earlier forms of CBT focus on changing the content, form or the frequency of people’s difficult or challenging internal experiences (e.g. thoughts, feelings, physiological sensa¬tions, images and memories), contextual CBTs seek to alter the psychological context, or perspective, in which people approach these experiences. Thus, rather than focusing on challenging and disputing problematic thoughts and feelings, contextual CBTs encourage people to approach those internal events from a mindful and open perspective. In so doing, these unwanted events are less likely to overwhelm them and determine their actions

Understanding the impact of gender identity nonaffirmation: The mediating role of psychological needs thwarting

Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people report high levels of violence, discrimination, and stigma, and this has repeatedly been linked to mental health problems (Testa et al., 2015). However, research examining the general psychological processes underpinning these relationships is in its infancy. Combining understanding from the gender minority stress and resilience model (Testa et al., 2015), Hatzenbuehler’s (2009) integrative mediation framework and basic psychological need theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), we investigated psychological needs thwarting (i.e., thwarted competence, relatedness, and autonomy) as intermediary variables in the relationship between a specific type of TGNC discrimination—gender identity nonaffirmation—and psychological distress and life satisfaction outcomes. We based this model on a two-wave longitudinal panel design where data were obtained from 454 TGNC people living in England, who participated in surveys on two measurement occasions, 12 months apart. Autoregressive analysis revealed that thwarted competence mediated the relationship between gender identity nonaffirmation and depression (β = .05, SE = 0.02, p = .021), stress (β = .05, SE = 0.02, p = .021), and life satisfaction (β = −.05, SE = 0.02, p = .034); thwarted autonomy mediated the relationship between nonaffirmation and depression (β = .03, SE = 0.02, p = .049) and life satisfaction (β = −.04, SE = 0.02, p = .049); and thwarted relatedness mediated the relationship between nonaffirmation and depression (β = .05, SE = 0.02, p = .039). We discuss practical and theoretical implications for the fields of gender minority stress, basic psychological need theory, and TGNC mental health

Linking Recent Discrimination-Related Experiences and Wellbeing via Social Cohesion and Resilience

The current study examined the relationship between recent experiences of discrimination and wellbeing and the mediating effects that social cohesion and resilience had on this relationship. Using online sampling, participants (N= 255) from a South London community rated the levels of discrimination related experiences in the past 6 months, alongside measures of social cohesion, resilience, and wellbeing (happiness and depressive symptoms). Results revealed a negative relationship between recent experiences of discrimination and wellbeing which was explained by a serial mediation relationship between social cohesion and resilience, and singly by resilience alone. The study highlights how recent experiences of discrimination can lead to a depletion of personal resources and social resources (which in turn also lead to reduced personal resources) and in turn, to lower levels of wellbeing