A "Secret Kindness" Intervention for Working with Anxiety and Depression, with Steven Hayes

How do you work with anxiety that turns into depression?
Steven Hayes, PhD, is a psychologist and the founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, also known as ACT.
Some practitioners will help clients work through issues of anxiety and depression by using an exposure-based approach. This can have its pros and cons. One downside is that this kind of approach could lead to more anxiety.
In this video, Steven will present a gentler strategy for working with these two issues that can be highly effective with clients.
Steven says that there are usually two things at play when you see these two problems together. One is psychological inflexibility. And the other is experiential avoidance.
To help shift this, Steven will sometimes focus on the person's values. One exercise he will give is to have the person do one new thing every day that is connected to their values. And by "values," Steven is looking less at judgments or actions, and more at the quality of being and doing that fuels the person's sense of self.
One important aspect of this approach is the secretive "behind-the-scenes" nature of the work. Steven would often have the client try to do their one daily thing without anyone else knowing it. What this did was orient them toward their presence in those moments and how their actions were fueling a deeper meaning and purpose to what they were doing.
There's another reason it might be helpful to use this approach, too. Depressed people tend to worry a lot about the judgment of others and this can make them anxious and very unkind to themselves. One way to look at depression is that it can sometimes be a projection of a fear of judgment from others. So what this exercise does is to help people connect to the joy of connecting with others, but without the need for external accolades or approval.
It can create a habit of mind that helps the person tune into the deeper positivity that their actions and intentions bring.
Once you can take the focus away from the judgment of others and from the critical self, the client can start to reconnect with their sense of meaning and passion.
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