ABSTRACT
The literality can have far-reaching consequences for the way in which people approach their internal experiences. Something that unites most of the people that seek psychological intervention is that, prior to encountering Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, the strategies that they use to deal with unwanted internal experiences typically fall into one of two categories. The first is experiential avoidance and the second is characterised by the concept of cognitive fusion. Simply going along with our thoughts and reasons can be an easier option than trying to fight, control, or suppress them in the way we do when engaged in experiential avoidance. Relational Frame Theory sees thoughts, in the form of words or images, as arbitrary symbols that hold relations of tight co-ordination with the stimuli that they describe. They also function in equivalent ways in that they ‘evoke’ the functions of those same stimuli.
