| I don't think these two things are necessarily incompatible. "Emotions is meaning" is not "happiness is meaning", but that "feeling is meaning". I imagine that the acceptance in ACT involves allowing oneself to feel the feelings and understand them. I think Dr Jonice places most of her focus on this. She makes it clear that feelings do not directly imply action, but that feelings imply relationship to a need, so understanding an emotion through the context of your needs helps inform the right action for the emotion. She says neglect means your parents never helped you understand the relationship between emotions, meaning, and actions or never treated your emotions as valid and meaningful in the first place, resulting in suppression (she doesn't use the term experiential avoidance, but it sounds like the same idea). > The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. It says it right here and this is consistent with her works. I think she would define "not emotions" or "not feeling" as experiential avoidance. I imagine the approaches and techniques both schools would exercise are probably similar. Honestly, reading what you wrote, without any real context of who you are or how you think, it sounds like you might still be experientially avoidant. I don't understand the difference between stoicism and experiential avoidance. "distancing" seems much different than "accepting," "embracing," or "treating as valid." But maybe words like distance mean different things to each of us. I also am a total layman here, so I am probably ignorant. I am not sure how a person would have values without emotions. I would expect values to be a product of emotions. |
I agree with you that I see a lot of people using stoicism as experiential avoidance, but there is a difference between experiential avoidance and healthy stoicism.
Healthy stoicism recognizes that many (perhaps even most) unpleasant experiences are quite survivable and that feeling poorly is no inherent reason to panic.
To use an example with physical 'emotions': Stoicism recognizes that standing outside without a jacket in the mid 50s (F) might be uncomfortable but that's it. You're not going to die. You're not going to have any lasting damage. You just have to deal with being uncomfortable. Another example is that I have MS and find standing in one place to be quite uncomfortable but it doesn't cause any permanent harm - therefore instead of freaking out when I'm uncomfortable the answer is to ask myself 'do I want/need whatever thing I'm in line for?' and if the answer is 'yes' then I'm going to experience some discomfort and that's okay because humans have evolved over millions of years to experience some discomfort and as long as the discomfort stays at the 'not dangerous' level it's fine. Keep an eye on it but proceed.
It's also in being able to practice this skill so you can tell the difference between discomfort (warning) and acute danger signals. The more familiar you are with your body's reactions to chill, the easier it is for you to sense when that danger line is crossed and frostbite might set in or your body temperature is dropping perilously. The more I practice being uncomfortable, the more I can tell the difference between 'this thing is harder for me than an able-bodied person but I can do it if necessary' and 'this is not right/something is wrong and I need to disengage'.
> I am not sure how a person would have values without emotions.
Social values can be managed in my experience, but personal ones are hard. I had a very firm idea of what the social contract should look like (so like me with no emotions still followed the rules of the road and returned my carts to the corral) but next to zero personal direction. So I had the value that education is important and a society with an educated populace functions better, but no ability to decide what I should learn next. Emotions help you add nuance to your values so they're something other than principles that you get angry when other people transgress.