When Acceptance is the Road to Growth and Healing: Incorporating the Third Wave of Cognitive Therapies into Pastoral Care and Counseling

This paper will explore the third wave of cognitive behavioral therapies, specifically mindfulness- and acceptance-based therapeutic approaches, to determine their usefulness for the practice of pastoral care and counseling. The introduction of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) will provide pastoral and clinical practitioners with important frameworks to situate their work, from which they can make more informed and effective interventions with clients and congregants struggling with internal distress and conflict. We will see that cultivating an acceptance of the full range of internal experience has the capacity to calm the anxious mind and brain, more so than does a stance of experiential avoidance and resistance.