My guest this week is therapist and author Dr. Carissa Gustafson, who wrote an excellent book called Reclaim Your Life: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 7 Weeks (affiliate link). We focused on using ACT to treat depression, since this is the second installment of our series on effective ways to manage depression. As you’ll hear, ACT is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, but it has a really different emphasis, especially in how we deal with the negative thoughts that are so common and distressing in depression. Instead of working to change the thoughts themselves, we focus on changing our relationship with our thoughts, as Carissa explains. We also talk about how we can move through low energy and low motivation and do what’s important to us when our mood is so low, and how sometimes we need to let our hearts break so they can open. I know you’ll take a lot from this episode.

Topics we covered included:

• The broad applicability of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles
• Getting to the root of our experience with depression
• The idea of trying to avoid sadness in depression
• Depression as numbness vs. sadness
• Dealing with self-critical thoughts in traditional CBT vs. ACT
• What to do when negative thoughts still feel true
• Changing how we relate to our thoughts
• Adding mindful awareness to cognitive awareness
• Processes of fusion and defusion, and the amount of power we give our thoughts
• Recognizing that you are not your thoughts
• Observing our experience from a bit of a distance
• How we can find the willingness to be present in our experience when we’re depressed
• Finding a why to help us move toward activities that boost our mood—especially connection and service
• How to move through low energy and low motivation to do what’s important to us
• Letting the heart break so it can open
• Starting with acceptance and moving to what is actionable
• The role of self-compassion in ACT
• What drew my guest to an acceptance-based approach

Carissa Gustafson, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist based in Calabasas, California.

She specializes in working with adults who are experiencing stress and burnout, depression, anxiety, and other issues.

Carissa strongly believes in evidence-based practice, and uses third-wave CBT approaches like ACT as well as dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and others.

She is also an adjunct faculty member at Pepperdine University where she teaches about the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders and provides clinical supervision.

When she’s not working she enjoys meditating, practicing yoga, spinning, reading, journaling, going on adventures with her husband and daughter or playing with their dog.

Find Carissa online at her website.