ABSTRACT
Aversive reactions to unwanted emotions such as sadness are the ®rst step in a potential cascade towards a persistent sense of unhappiness or depression. A key result of aversive reacting is experiential avoidanceÐthe attempt to remain out of contact with our thoughts, emotions and body sensations. Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, and Strosahl (1996) suggested that the attempt to avoid internal experiences is a process that is both common across many psychological problems and implicated in their maintenance; and at the other end of the spectrum high levels of experiential connectedness (of both client and therapist) are positively correlated with good outcomes in therapy. Developing skills to ``tune into'' the direct experience of what has been avoided through meditation is a distinctive feature of MBCT (Williams et al., 2007b).
