ABSTRACT
A good acceptance & commitment therapy practitioner will use their functional analysis to completely understand why it is that a client does what they do, even in respect of the most hurtful or self-destructive actions. In drawing out maintenance cycles, there are many places to start, and often the most useful is with the unwanted emotion that the client wrestles with. Avoiding difficult topics in therapy or withdrawing a promotion application for fear of failure are examples of behavioural avoidance. The consequence of experiential avoidance is that it creates significant life costs. Life becomes smaller, significant amounts of energy are wasted in avoidance and opportunities for valued actions are missed. Thoughts that are suppressed tend to rebound and emotions that are avoided become more prominent in the longer term. All of maintenance cycles around to mean that more of the painful emotion at the start of the cycle is increasingly likely to be maintained, or worsen.
