In counseling, I do my best to avoid labeling my clients’ behaviors as good or bad, right or wrong. Instead, I ask a different question: In this particular situation, is this behavior helping the person move toward the aspirations they have for their lives, or is it getting in the way?
Tag: Psychotherapist Philippines
The Values and The Logic of Living
Values are not conclusions reached by logic.
They are directions of living that organize logic.
Values supply the direction, logic provides the route.
ACT at the Movies: Shawshank Redemption
@onelifeonlycounseling ACT at the Movie! Shawshank Redemption Welcome to ACT at the Movies. This is a series where we take some of the world’s most memorable films and look at them through the lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—or ACT for short. Now, just a quick caveat: I’m not saying these movies were written with ACT in mind. But what ACT offers us is a scientific framework—a way of understanding resilience, meaning, and growth—that shows up in the stories we love. Movies capture the struggles and choices that make us human. ACT helps us see the science behind why those struggles matter, and how people find the strength to move forward. So grab your popcorn, and let’s dive in. #onelifeonlycounseling #counselingphilippines #counseling #fyp #foryou
♬ original sound – One Life Only Counseling – One Life Only Counseling
Welcome to ACT at the Movies!
This is a series where we take some of the world’s most memorable films and look at them through the lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—or ACT for short.
Now, just a quick caveat: I’m not saying these movies were written with ACT in mind. But what ACT offers us is a scientific framework—a way of understanding resilience, meaning, and growth—that shows up in the stories we love.
Movies capture the struggles and choices that make us human. ACT helps us see the science behind why those struggles matter, and how people find the strength to move forward.
So grab your popcorn, and let’s dive in.
Before I begin, let me make a quick caveat. I’m not here to say that the writers, directors, or actors of The Shawshank Redemption were in any way informed by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—or ACT. Rather, what I want to share is how ACT, as a scientific model of therapy, gives us a framework to understand something timeless: human resilience.
The Shawshank Redemption is often remembered for hope. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things,” as Andy says. But when we look through the ACT lens, what we actually see are processes of psychological flexibility—the capacity to stay present, open up to difficult emotions, and move toward what matters, even in the hardest of circumstances.
- Acceptance & Willingness
Andy is wrongly imprisoned, and his suffering is immense. A purely control-based strategy—fighting, resisting, shutting down—could have consumed him. Instead, he embodies acceptance. He allows the pain of his situation to be there, while still choosing to act with dignity and purpose.
This doesn’t mean approval or passivity. Acceptance in ACT means dropping the struggle with emotions we can’t eliminate, and instead putting energy into what we can build.
- Values as Compass
Andy’s values are freedom, justice, and friendship. Those values guide him through years of confinement. His work in the library, his mentorship of Tommy, his efforts to bring dignity to the prisoners—all of these flow from what matters to him most.
ACT teaches us that when life narrows, values can open a path forward. Even in a prison cell, Andy lives by a compass bigger than his circumstances.
- Defusion from Thoughts
Red, Andy’s closest friend, often voices thoughts of despair: “Hope is a dangerous thing. It can drive a man insane.” Those are believable, sticky thoughts, especially in prison. Yet ACT invites us to notice thoughts as thoughts—not literal truths that must dictate our actions.
Andy doesn’t deny the despair, but he doesn’t fuse with it either. He chooses to hold hope lightly, and act on it, rather than be consumed by thoughts of hopelessness.
- Committed Action
The most iconic example: Andy’s years of digging through the prison wall. He doesn’t know when—or if—he will succeed. But each day, with patience and persistence, he takes committed action aligned with his values. That’s psychological flexibility in practice: consistent steps, even when outcomes are uncertain.
One of the most powerful but often overlooked parts of Andy’s story is how he responds to sexual abuse in prison. The film doesn’t sensationalize it, but it shows us enough to know that Andy suffered deeply at the hands of others.
What stands out is that he doesn’t let this experience define him. He doesn’t collapse into despair, he doesn’t wallow in self-pity, and he doesn’t passively allow the abuse to strip away his dignity. Instead, Andy keeps moving. He resists where he can, he protects his sense of self, and he continues to build toward freedom.
From an ACT perspective, this is a striking example of committed action. The pain was real, the trauma was real, but Andy chose not to let it dictate the direction of his life. He kept moving toward his values—dignity, freedom, and hope—even in the harshest of conditions.
That’s the heart of psychological flexibility: not the absence of suffering, but the courage to keep walking toward what matters, even in the darkest circumstances.
Closing Reflection
So when we look at The Shawshank Redemption through the lens of ACT, we see a scientific framework for resilience. Acceptance of pain. Defusion from despairing thoughts. Values as a compass. Committed action, step by step, toward freedom.
It’s not that Andy or Red were “ACT-informed.” But ACT helps us understand why their story resonates so deeply: it reflects universal processes of human growth and survival.
If you enjoyed this reflection, I’ll be doing more short talks on ACT and movies—exploring how science and storytelling come together to show us what resilience looks like. Thanks for watching.
Two MORE Shrinks Over Drinks! Video! Part 1
This is the second offering of our Two Shrinks Over Drinks series. This time we have a friend, who’s also a doctor and co-author of a book entitled, “Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention.”
Here you get another chance to eavesdrop on two MORE shrinks caught in a casual conversation. If you have ever wondered what it is like to listen to a couple of psychologists/counselors talk over a drink, well, here’s your chance!
We talk about a myriad of topics and it took two hours to do! In fact, this could have been topics that are fit for a whole day’s chatter!
So this will be the first part wherein we talk about:
– Dr. Villatte’s ACT story
– Philosophical framework in counseling or psychotherapy
– What Skinner referred to when he wrote about a pre-scientific way of explaining human behavior
– What we mean by an approach that has precision, depth, and scope; how this can affect the way therapists choose their approach or models of therapy, and how this can assist clients make decisions on the kind of therapy they want
Are you depressed? Video!
What makes One Life Only Counseling Services different? Video!
How to create lasting change in your relationship: Video!
Living with Purpose and Intent
by Nathan Chua
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever,”
Mahatma Gandhi
Have you come to a point in your life when you feel like as it says in the Bible, chasing after the wind? Have you ever felt like every day has become a pointless pursuit of comfort and tranquility? Has your life turned into an endless problem to solve? You go from fixing one problem after another. When’s the next challenge going to come? Will I be able to surmount the bigger ones down the line?
If you have, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I came from the same quagmire. Early in my career, I started believing that life was about fulfilling a role of being around to be the problem solver. Furthermore, I had learned from my history that the secret to the good life is the comfortable life. One in which I can be the great problem solver, conquering one obstacle at a time until there remain only the easier ones. I dreamt of eventually coasting along as I moved into old age.
I lived that way for the first 20 years of my working life. People around me would notice how I looked then. I often carried a tired and angry expression on my face; always on alert for the next challenge that comes my way. I was the hero who was always ready to come to the rescue.
To borrow a metaphor I saw in a YouTube video, you can view a rabbit running across from a window, but you wouldn’t know if that rabbit was going for a carrot or running away from a predator. I was like that rabbit that people saw from a window. One couldn’t tell if I was in business because I simply enjoyed doing it or if I was doing it to avoid the shame that comes if I had failed in business. For those who are new here, I spent the first 20 years of my career as a businessman. A failure in business meant I had failed my family.
You would probably understand why I often looked tired and angry. Tired because life has become a struggle and angry because I didn’t see any end in sight. Life was sending me challenge after challenge to surmount. Like the rabbit running away from a predator that eventually tires out, I was exhausted escaping from the jaws of my shaming, “Whatever happens, don’t be a failure,” thoughts.
One day I woke up and started noticing the hamster wheel I was on. It was as if I was living backwards. Like some of what I learned in psychodynamic therapy, I lived hoping to come back to the safety of my mother’s womb, wishing to get back to that fetal position of a tranquil life.
That tranquil life turns out to be a mirage. No matter how much we try to avoid it, life has its challenges and running away from the feelings and thoughts that these challenges come with, is like becoming a rabbit that spends most of its time fleeing a predator, although in my case the predator is my own worst fears.
You and I can pivot towards a life in pursuit of what truly matters to us. Rabbits run away from life-threatening circumstances. We humans though can run away from our thoughts and not just actual threats to our safety. It only takes the rabbit to notice when the noise behind the bushes was just a gust of wind to make it go and pursue food or a mate. Although it is difficult, we can start to make changes in our life directions by noticing if we are spending much of our energies running away from our unpleasant internal experiences, or if we are pursuing the qualities of being and living that matter to us.
The happy rabbit is the one that pursues nourishment and the possibility of a mate. Take it from there, are you willing to start pursuing the rich and meaningful life, even if it means that your fearful inner experiences will become more evident as you go. Maybe that’s what Gandhi meant in his words. His life was mostly about pursuing something that was good and noble, rather than about running away from the dangers his mind reminded him of. He pursued the irrational move to expose himself to the dangers of a life spent for the welfare of others, and paid the ultimate price. Nonetheless, he lived, not the tranquil life, but the meaningful one. He is the quintessential rabbit moving in the direction of what he wanted to do with his time…every single minute.
How to be OK even when everything else is not
by Nathan Chua
Multiple deadlines, challenges at home and at work, you’re about to lose your job, someone in the family has a serious ailment, pressure is coming from all sides…life happens and is coming at you like a savage beast hungry for a fight to the death! These are the times when people come to see me. The world has turned against my clients and there seems to be nothing they can do that has succeeded in changing anything. In fact, the more they try the worse the outcomes become!
It is also during these moments that our minds go on overdrive, drilling judgmental thought after judgmental thought into our consciousness. The key here is to reach a level of awareness of what is within or outside our control. If you ever wondered what it is that makes us feel that we are living ineffectual lives, it is our misdirected efforts to control that which is not subject to control.
Just be the human being that we had become through billions of years of evolution! We have an assortment of wonderful tools inside our nervous system. Turning against these evolved functions, is like working against gravity.
Ultimately, what happens to us in life is not within our control, but our responses are. The goal of psychology as a field of scientific study is to bring to bear what it is that makes us live ineffectually and then find ways to change or interrupt that process to get us moving towards a different, more effectual, and more life-enhancing direction. So it really does not matter as much what happens to us, as how we face them. How we handle ourselves in those moments is where we can bridge the gap between what we are and what we aspire to be.
The question we could keep in mind is, “Did we handle it well?” Here’s a paraphrase of Dr. Darin Cairns words reminding us that we can be okay even when everything around us tells us we’re not.
“I can’t promise you everyone’s going to like you.
I can’t promise you that people will always know you exist.
I can promise you this, if you like you at that time, if you liked how you lived it, then you’ll like that you were true to what you believed in.
That you liked how you handled yourself in terms of whatever you value, then you’re always ok.
You’re ok when you’re popular, you’re ok when you’re alone, you’re ok after a breakup, you’re ok when you’re scared to death, and you’re ok when you’re hurting.
You don’t have to stand tall but you do have to stand up. You don’t have to think that you’re better than anyone, you don’t have to have anyone praise you, but you do have to be willing to exist for you.”
So to you my friend, I can say that no matter how dire your circumstances are at this moment, take a look at yourself ahead of you by a year or so, and ask yourself, “Would your future you like how you, the present you, handled the situation?” I hope that brings you back in touch with what truly matters for you in each and every moment that comes. No matter how not okay these moments can get, you can be okay knowing you stood up for you!
Listen to the podcast version of this post on Spotify! Click here!
How language can affect your mental health
by Nathan Chua
Ah, the functions of language! Until recent years, I have never thought about how language played a role in our ability to sustain our mental health. As the theory behind this new approach that I am using is framed upon language and how we use it, I would like to introduce you to a few terms that we use in a way that can cause us to experience unnecessary depression, excess anxiety, and even attempts at suicide!
The first expression we use quite a lot in the field of counseling is the word, “healing.” I remember in the years I spent in graduate school, this word was used quite liberally. In fact, there was even a book that had, as part of its title, the words, “wounded healer.” Healing though connotes the idea that we are somehow broken and that we need to be put together like a puzzle or a broken vase in a clinical setting.
Reality though would tell us that this can be nothing more than a figure of speech that at the least, could be considered unhelpful. Because nothing inside of us is really broken. It is rather a form of learning to resort to certain strategies that provide instant relief from emotional pain that end up unproductive and futile; and thereby rendering us feeling more ineffectual and deserving of our sad fate. We are whole and complete. What we suffer when we are said to be having some psychological problems is that of being stuck in a pattern of behaviors that do not serve our best interests.
The next phrase or term I have learned to be used in unhelpful fashions is the idea that comes from stories of people who supposedly went from being dead to surviving a coma. It is often said that they see a great white light and felt immense peace! Attempts at suicide are basically logical responses to removing the difficult feelings brought on by our attempts at living what comes as meaningful to us. It is better to die, since one: it will remove the painful emotions we experience from our pursuits for meaning and purpose, and two: there will be unimaginable bliss thereafter. Unfortunately, allow me to paraphrase an expert in behavioral analysis who said in jest that there has so far been no one on record to have answered a survey from death that talks about how much better it is on that side.
The last term for this post is the word, confidence. We often combine this with the word, “feel.” This means that confidence is a feeling that we need to achieve in order to do something of significance. As Dr. Steven Hayes likes to use etymologies in his work, the word actually means having full trust or faith in Latin. We have somehow in our modern usage of the term used it to mean that it is something we feel rather than something we do. We can still put our full faith in ourselves even as we feel anxious about doing a certain task.
Remember that the best way to live is to focus on what we do rather than what we feel, because there is the possibility of redemption in the former. Our feelings are subject to change and outside of our control. If we hang our hats on them, we will find ourselves stuck in a cycle of frustration, and eventually see ourselves as broken vessels that need to be pieced together, or brought to a place where we choose to end it all permanently for temporary relief from the varied emotions we experience that come with truly living.