Kweku’s Korner
By Dr. Kweku Akyirefi Amoasi
Kweku Akyirefi Amoasi, formerly known as Ramel Smith
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is simple and nuanced. It’s a personal journey, but a walk with others to help guide and support us through that journey. As we enter the second half of this six-stage philosophy, we will shift to the concept of “Self as Context.” At this step, many experts speak on comprehensive distancing at this point. This in essence is acknowledging the past hurt and pain but removing yourself from that pain as though you were looking at yourself from the outside. For example, have you ever journaled about a situation and reread your writing a few weeks, months, or years later and thought, “Did I really write this?” was this my train of thought?” That’s a good thing, which means there was growth… if we grew and not regressed. The essence of who you are may be slow to change, but some things change about us daily. Muhammad Ali once stated, “the man who sees the world the same at 50, as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
Now, as it relates to ACT, the Self as Context means for us to observe to witness ourselves and to consider our behavior, past experiences, and current thoughts as a spectator. If we can learn to step outside of ourselves, we can remove the subjectivity in our thoughts and become more objective. With an objective outlook, we remove emotions and begin to utilize the rational part of our brain. This is why it is easier to advise than follow our own advice. What if we could give ourselves advice, but give it to us from a prism that removes our own biases?
This walks us neatly into the next phase of understanding our “Values.” To complete self as context, we must know who we are. What makes us unique? What are our morals, values, and ethics? When we understand who we are, we remove factors of learned helplessness, imposter syndrome, and low self-esteem. It is these false concepts that allow us to stay drowned in our past and believe that we are destined to suffer. Our focus here is to remember the greatness that was in us before it was stolen and then commit ourselves to allowing that part of our personality to guide our thought process and subsequent moves. And, if you think, hell, I don’t even know who I am or I am not that strong person! Well, we have a process that helps you discover or build some core concepts that will allow you to approach these past issues with a different outlook.
The key to self as context through our values is to remember self-compassion and self-love will help build and recover the essence of our belief system that will facilitate our journey to healing by not allowing the past to hold our future hostage. We are constantly becoming and evolving. This means we get to determine which steps we take to get to the place we know we deserve. We do not have to live in the painful past. We can walk toward a beautiful new beginning.