Processed food addiction

I was recently browsing some of the units I completed for my counselling diploma – for revision. The human memory has not evolved to store, organise, categorise and recall all the large amounts of information we collect every day, nor is our memory always accurate. It’s important for counsellors and therapists to keep up to date with new approaches to counselling, and it doesn’t hurt to read over learned materials from college days. I thought I’d provide some learning about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for readers.

Just to acknowledge the work of others, most of what is written below, I have retrieved and paraphrased from ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY Published by: Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors Pty Ltd.

Acceptance and commitment therapy, known as ACT (pronounced as the word ‘act’), is an approach to counselling that was originally developed in the early 1980s by Steven C. Hayes, and became popular in the early 2000’s through Hayes’ collaboration with Kelly G. Wilson, and Kirk Strosahl as well as through the work of Russ Harris. You can look them up on Youtube or Google if you’re interested in what they might have to say about ACT.

“Unlike more traditional cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) approaches, ACT does not
seek to change the form or frequency of people’s unwanted thoughts and emotions. Rather,
the principal goal of ACT is to cultivate psychological flexibility, which refers to the ability to
contact the present moment, and based on what the situation affords, to change or persist
with behaviour in accordance with one’s personal values. To put it another way, ACT
focuses on helping people to live more rewarding lives even in the presence of undesirable
thoughts, emotions, and sensations.”
(Flaxman, Blackledge & Bond, 2011, p. vii)

ACT interventions tend to focus around two main processes:

• Developing acceptance of unwanted private experiences that are outside of personal
  control.
• Commitment and action toward living a valued life (Harris, 2009)

In a nutshell, ACT gets its name from its core ideas of accepting what is outside of your personal control and committing to action that improves and enriches your life.

Cognitive Defusion is the process of learning to detach ourselves from our thought processes and simply observe them for what they are – “transient private events – an ever-changing stream of words, sounds and pictures” (Harris, 2006, p. 6). I think this component of ACT is incredibly beneficial if we practice it daily. I like to say, just like the function of the heart is to pump oxygenated blood around the body, one of the brain’s functions is to have thoughts. We can observe thoughts without taking them to mean more than what they are. Some thoughts are automatic, some are subconscious, and some are unconscious or preconscious beliefs that we consider to be true and factual and “rules” about how the world operates and how we have to operate in it. If someone is defused from their thought processes, these processes do not have control on the person; instead the person is able to simply observe them without getting caught up in them or feel the need to change/control them.

Acceptance is the process of opening oneself up and “making room for unpleasant feelings, sensations, urges, and other private experiences; allowing them to come and go without struggling with them, running from them, or giving them undue attention” (Harris, 2006, p. 7). Practicing acceptance is important because it encourages the individual to develop an ability and willingness to feel uncomfortable without being overwhelmed by it (Flaxman, Blackledge & Bond, 2011). It’s important to acknowledge that to accept something doesn’t mean we like it or have a passive attitude. It is to accept something exactly as it is and then we choose what to do with it. Think of the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Contact with the present moment is the concept of being “psychologically present” and bringing full attention to the “here-and-now” experience (Harris, 2009). I’d also argue that to psychologically present, we must also be aware of our physical body and the sensations within it and outside of it. Because we have the ability to think about the past and about the future, sometimes it can be difficult to stay in the present (Batten, 2011; Harris, 2009). Having contact with the present moment is essential because that it where we find out anchor and power. We have the ability to pay attention in a flexible manner to the present moment and connect with that experience rather than ruminate on past events or future possibilities (Lloyd & Bond, 2015). Some of you might say “What if I can’t stand the present moment?”. True. If you have extreme emotional experiences or have a history of trauma, it may be functional for you to use distraction or talking to someone when the present moment is “too much to take”. What we want to work towards is using healthy coping strategies in the present moment mindfully, instead of behaviours that no longer serve us.

Values, and identifying them, (i.e., what is important to the individual) is a central element of ACT because it assists clients to move in the direction of living and creating a meaningful life. One of the central goals of ACT is to help clients to connect with the things they value most and to travel in “valued directions” (Stoddard & Afari, 2014).

Committed action is the process of taking steps towards one’s values even in the presence of unpleasant thoughts and feelings (Harris, 2009). Behavioural interventions, such as goal setting, exposure, behavioural activation, and skills training, are generally used to create committed action. The ACT model acknowledges that learning is not enough, one must also take action to create change.

Self-as-context, or what I prefer to call “the observing self” or simply just our self-awareness, creates a distinction between the ‘thinking self’ and the ‘observing self’ (Harris, 2009). The thinking self refers to the self that generates thoughts, beliefs, memories, judgments, fantasies, and plans, whereas the observing self is the self that is aware of what we think, feel, sense, or do (Harris, 2009). “From this perspective, you are not your thoughts and feelings; rather, you are the context or arena in which they unfold” (Stoddard & Afari, 2014). Being aware of the observing self allows an individual to have a greater ability to be mindful and in the present moment, as they can separate themselves from the thoughts, beliefs, and memories they have.

Reading isn’t that same as doing: Most people read these books and feel genuinely inspired — and then return to the same environment, same habits, same triggers, and same social circles that shaped their original behaviour. The insight lands but the conditions that created the old patterns don’t change. Knowledge and behaviour change are genuinely different things.

The gap between understanding and feeling: We can intellectually understand that the algorithm is manipulating us and still doomscroll for two hours. We can know compound interest is real and still not start investing. Humans are not rational actors who update their behaviour when presented with good information. It’s more accurate to say that we are emotional (or irrational) creatures with an ability to think rationally.

Selection bias: The act of picking up a self-help book already tells us something significant about the person holding it. They have enough self-awareness to recognise a problem, enough agency to seek something out, and enough hope remaining to think improvement is possible.

The people these books visibly or noticeably change were probably already changing. Someone in a genuine crisis or completely checked out of self-reflection rarely picks up 12 Rules for Life unprompted. Therefore, the audience is already somewhat primed.

To be fair, even if someone was already primed, does that fully dismiss the book’s role? A person can be ready to change and still need something to crystallise it — a framework, a permission slip, a particular sentence that lands at the right moment. Some people do hit rock bottom and then become voracious self-help readers, almost compulsively.

Macro change is almost invisibly slow: Ideas from books do shift culture — but over generations, not months or years. The concepts Freud wrote about are now just how ordinary people talk about themselves without knowing where it came from. Yuval Noah Harari’s ideas about misinformation are slowly entering mainstream conversation. It just looks like nothing is happening because the timescale is so long.

The paradox of self-help as an industry: If these books genuinely solved problems permanently, people would stop buying them. The industry arguably depends on people remaining slightly lost.

the primary value of self-help isn’t the advice itself, but the normalising function — the relief of recognising yourself in a description and feeling less isolated in your experience. That’s a meaningful distinction because it separates:

• The stated purpose — here are tools and strategies to change your life
• The actual mechanism of comfort — you are not broken, others feel this too

And the evidence arguably supports your reading. People frequently report feeling better while reading self-help books, but studies consistently show the behavioural changes rarely stick. If the advice were the active ingredient, you’d expect the reverse.

The most honest answer is probably that real change happens through experience, relationships, and repeated practice — and books at their best just provide a framework for making sense of those things after the fact. Which is valuable, but it’s not the same as transformation.

References

Bregman, R. (2020). Humankind: A hopeful history (E. Manton & E. Moore, Trans.). Bloomsbury Publishing.

Carnegie, D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. Simon & Schuster.

Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House.

Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press.

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

Harari, Y. N. (2018). 21 lessons for the 21st century. Spiegel & Grau.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Peterson, J. B. (2018). 12 rules for life: An antidote to chaos. Random House Canada.

Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Viking.

Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Rönnlund, A. R. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think. Flatiron Books.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press.

Purpose

This report summarises how clinical psychology and psychiatry generally understand people who believe that killing others is justified, necessary or required because of a religious or ideological cause. It uses plain language where possible and distinguishes extreme beliefs from mental illness.

Believe it or not – Key finding

A belief that killing people is justified by religion does not, by itself, mean that a person is mentally ill.

This is an important distinction. Contemporary psychiatric literature indicates that members of terrorist or extremist groups do not generally have higher rates of mental illness than the general population. Mental illness appears to be more common among some lone-actor extremists, but it still cannot be assumed to be the explanation for their behaviour.

In other words, someone can be psychologically capable of understanding what they are doing, planning it deliberately and believing that it is morally right, while not suffering from a psychiatric disorder.

1. Extreme religious belief is not necessarily psychosis

Psychosis involves a significant loss of contact with reality, such as hallucinations or fixed false beliefs that are not reasonably explained by the person’s cultural or religious background.

For example:

• Extreme ideology: “My religion teaches that these people are enemies of God, so killing them is justified.”
• Possible psychosis: “God is personally speaking to me through my television and has instructed me to kill my neighbour because he is secretly a demon.”

The first statement may represent an extreme ideological or religious belief. The second could indicate a psychiatric disorder, particularly if it occurs alongside other symptoms of psychosis.

A psychiatrist would therefore ask much more than “Does this person have strange beliefs?” They would examine whether the person has lost the ability to distinguish their beliefs from reality and whether there are other symptoms of mental illness. Distinguishing extremist beliefs from symptoms of mental disorder is recognised as an important difficulty in psychiatric assessment.

2. How can an otherwise ordinary person come to accept killing?

Psychology provides several explanations that do not require mental illness.

One is moral disengagement. This is where a person changes the way they think about an action so that something normally considered wrong becomes acceptable.

An ordinary example would be a soldier being trained to think of an enemy as a threat rather than as an individual person with a family and a life.

In extremist thinking, this can become much more extreme:

“They are not innocent people. They are enemies of God.”

Once someone has been placed into an “enemy” category, killing them can become psychologically easier to justify.

3. The importance of an “us versus them” mentality

Extremist movements often create a very strong distinction between “us” and “them”.

The person may increasingly see:

• their own group as good, pure or righteous;
• outsiders as corrupt, dangerous or evil;
• disagreement as evidence of hostility; and
• violence as self-defence or moral duty.

This is something ordinary people can recognise in less extreme forms.

For example, football rivalry can involve “us versus them”, but most people retain the understanding that the opposing team’s supporters are still ordinary human beings.

Extremism can take the same psychological distinction to an entirely different level, where the opposing group is no longer regarded as deserving the same moral consideration.

4. Religion can provide a powerful justification

Religious belief can become particularly powerful when something is regarded as a sacred or absolute value.

If a person believes:

“This is God’s command”,

then ordinary moral reasoning can change.

Instead of asking:

“Is killing this person morally acceptable?”

the person may ask:

“How could I disobey God?”

This can produce a situation where the individual genuinely believes they are doing something morally good, despite the fact that an outside observer sees the behaviour as horrific.

That does not make the behaviour acceptable, nor does it make the belief reasonable. It helps explain how the person can psychologically reconcile their actions with their own sense of morality.

5. Believing something and acting on it are different

Clinical assessment is particularly interested in the difference between extreme beliefs and a pathway towards violence.

A person might say:

“I believe people who oppose my religion are evil.”

That is concerning, but it is different from:

“I have decided to kill someone.”

And that is different again from:

“I have chosen a target, obtained the means to do it and have started preparing.”

Psychiatric risk assessment therefore looks for behavioural evidence of movement towards violence, rather than simply diagnosing someone based on their political or religious beliefs. Contemporary forensic psychiatry specifically emphasises identifying warning behaviours and distinguishing extremist beliefs from an actual pathway towards violence.

6. Mental illness can nevertheless be involved

Some people who commit extremist violence do have mental disorders.

For example, a person could have:

• schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder;
• severe depression;
• a personality disorder;
• substance-use problems;
• significant paranoia;
• or another condition affecting their judgement or behaviour.

However, clinicians should not automatically assume that the mental illness caused the extremism.

The relationship may instead look something like:

Personal grievance + extremist ideology + social reinforcement + psychological vulnerabilities + opportunity + willingness to use violence

rather than simply:

mental illness → terrorism.

Research specifically cautions against looking for a single cause or single psychological profile for radicalisation.

7. The most important clinical distinction

From a clinical perspective, there is a major difference between:

“This person believes something that I consider bizarre, frightening or morally repugnant.”

and

“This person has a psychiatric disorder that is causing them to lose contact with reality.”

Those are not the same thing.

A person can be completely sincere, highly intelligent, psychologically organised and fully aware of their actions, while holding an extraordinarily dangerous ideology.

That is one reason psychiatry does not regard terrorism or religious extremism as a diagnosis in itself.

Conclusion

Clinical psychology and psychiatry would generally view religiously motivated killing as a complex interaction between ideology, psychology, social influences and individual circumstances, rather than automatically as evidence of insanity.

The crucial question is not simply:

“Are their beliefs extreme?”

It is:

“What is driving those beliefs, how firmly are they held, is the person able to distinguish belief from reality, and have they moved from believing violence is justified to actually intending, preparing or attempting to carry it out?”

That distinction is important because a mentally ill person is not necessarily dangerous, and a person who is not mentally ill can nevertheless become extremely dangerous. Contemporary psychiatric literature explicitly warns against confusing mental disorder with extremist ideology and instead emphasises assessing the person’s actual pathway towards violence.