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Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, posits that psychopathology arises from psychological inflexibility, such as in the case of experiential avoidance that arises because some internal events, such as thoughts or feelings, are perceived as aversive or evaluated negatively. In ACT, individuals should become aware of and examine their thoughts and change the relationship they have with their thoughts. The action of distancing oneself from ones thoughts is an important tool. ACT rejects cognitive restructuring because the focus is on addressing the function of cognition, not the content. Mindful-based cognitive therapy was developed to treat major depressive disorder. It builds on Beck’s model of cognitive therapy, focusing on how habitual thinking patterns become reactive and trigger symptom relapses during times of stress. It incorporates mindfulness to reactivate adaptive patterns of thinking through nonjudgmental awareness of cognitions, emotions, and sensations. Schema-based therapy was developed to address specific needs of individuals with characterological issues, such as borderline personality disorder and chronic depression or anxiety. Individuals cope through schema avoidance (where they rearrange their lives so problematic schemas are not activated), schema surrender (where perceptions and behaviors are changed to conform to their schemas), and schema neutralization/overcompensation (where they act to neutralize the schema by behaving in a manner opposite to what is predicted by the schema. Together, acceptance and commitment therapy, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and schema-based therapy are also known as THIS.
What are Third-wave cognitive-based therapies?