Book Review: Radical Acceptance

The Words About the Words may Get in the Way

Rodger Garrett (Loma Linda, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach, New York: Bantam Dell, 2004.

While it will seem (to some) "odd" to say that almost everyone would benefit from reading virtually anything Brach (or Linehan, or Hayes, or Strosahl, or Segal, or Kabat-Zinn, or Tolle, or, or, or) has to say on the general topic mindfulness and the meditation skills that foster it, and then criticize such work...

I do have a problem with a little part of what they say. (Or maybe it's more about how they say it.)

And it is this: While it is clear to me from reading their material that Brach and the rest understand the relevance of words and verbal processes to core beliefs, values, idea(l)s, principles, assumptions, convictions, rules and verbally codified attitudes that directly affect appraisals, evaluations, interpretations, assessment, analyses, judgments of, and attributions of meaning to, our emotional experiences; these authors may appear to the less instructed to suggest that language is itself the problem and should be excluded as quickly as possible after being noticed, acknowledged and allowed to float down the metaphorical stream.

(I know: really long sentence.)

In my own studies of cognitive-affective-experiential-behavioral process, however, it looks to me like while words do in fact "get in the way," we do better to honor and radically accept them as the powerful players in our emotions and actions that they in fact are. Coming from decades of work in the Ellis / Beck / Dyer / Meichenbaum / Seligman / Young / Wessler modes of CBT, my newer studies of neurobiological processing of experience (in my case, with Begley, Cozolino, Gazzaniga, Kaszniak, LeDoux, Panksepp, Rock, Schore, Siegel and many others) simply does not square with a language-rejecting approach to therapy for depression, anxiety, stress, mania, PTSD, what-have-you.

And a careful reading of Brach et al, does not square with it, either. I surely "get" the essential, fundamental, vital notion of the mindfulness-based crowd that "the words get in the way," and that one does well to utilize the Buddhist practices to get past them.

But my own experience in working with many people on addiction, depression, anxiety, etc., is that their core beliefs, values, etc. are the problem. They are mis-interpreting reality because of their common cult-ural beliefs, etc. And those core constructions of verbally represented, rather than actual, directly experienced reality will have to be identified, questioned, reviewed and either rejected or reframed to allow for a different set of interpretations, appraisals, evaluations and what have you.

Now. I agree with the DBT, ACT and MBCT crowd that wordless meditation is a necessary component of the healing process. But I do not agree that it is an entirely sufficient one. And here's why: I have -- for more than 35 years -- observed legions of vipassana (Brach's favorite) and other Asian-method meditators who are still very disconnected from reality and unable to behave functionally or effectively in intimate relationships, in the workplace and with their families of origin.

I have written elsewhere about the "three-legged stool" of 1) self-talk identification, questioning and revision; 2) narrative examination, clarification, revision and reconstruction; and 3) mindfulness (including the meditation crucially required to access it). I see that veteran DBT therapist and writer Matthew McKay and several confederates have developed a new (late 2011) New Harbinger series workbook entitled Mind and Emotions: A Universal Treatment for Emotional Disorders. That book operates from the combined, efficacy-research-proven principles I distilled above into the three-legged stool.

This is very much not, however, any sort "dis job" on Brach's work. Without it, we'd all be considerably less edified. Mental health professionals will do their patients a major favor by making RA a required, bibliotherapuetic adjunct.

(c) 2011 by Rodger Garrett; all rights reserved. Links are okay. Please inquire or comment to not_moses@fastmail.fm. Thank You.