Capstone: Day 19

      So on the last hour, we killed two birds w/ one stone. As I said in previous posts, my mentor is doing extra work that involves watching videos of psychologists in San Diego working with post veteran patients. All the patients are undergoing ACT and my mentor has to watch the sessions and evaluate how well the psychologists are adhering to the treatment. As for me, I was able to truly see the Hexaflex diagram at work. When undergoing ACT, the patients focus on certain aspects of the diagram in each session. With each aspect comes a certain title or goal for the session. The hour long session I watched was titled "Options for 'Learning to Live with It'". One point of the Hexaflex diagram was values, and that was what this session focused on. The patient had chronic pain from fighting in the war and was beginning to get depressed. The psychologist was trying to get him to stop focusing on the pain and to start thinking about what was really important (this also links back to mindfulness). There was one point that I found interesting during the session. The psychologist asked , "If you weren't in pain, what would you be doing?" The patient said things like he would be volunteering, spending more time with his family, and going back to school. Just by asking this question, the psychologist was able to figure out his values based on his answers without straight up asking "What are your values?" After that she said, "Well what's stopping you from going to school now?" The patient says, "I'm not that smart." It's not the pain that's stopping him from doing some of the things he wants to do, yet he is quick to blame it on the pain because he is so busy thinking about it. Honestly, there were some moments where I was bored watching the videos, but I got a lot out of it. I find the videos very interesting, but hopefully the next time we watch them, I won't be so drowsy.