Playing the Game of Life with ACT: Forming Networks in the Real World

What RFT Says About the Webs Behind Adult Behavior

Wilder opened with a small dose of relational frame theory (how words link into meaning). She said she does not teach what she called the technical side of RFT. Instead, she listens for RFT patterns in plain conversation. She also looks for them inside a person's own story.

Her shorthand comes from a rhyme she credits to Steve Hayes. Learn it in one, derive it in two. Put it in networks that change what you do. The point is that teaching is cheap and spread is fast. Teach one link, and the brain builds more on its own. Those extras are derived relations (links your brain makes on its own).

Then comes the clinical part. Those networks transform function (change how things pull at us). A word, a face, or a tone can start to steer feelings and choices. Wilder calls the result being tangled up. She says those webs of meaning making are where she starts with people. The goal is not to erase a web. It is to get some logic around it and interrupt it.

learning just a couple of relations allows you to instantly generate a web.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

How Childhood Survival Wires the First Network

Wilder tied network building to how young children actually live. A child learns by watching the people nearby. A child cannot yet care for themselves. So the child leans on caregivers for resources, access, and attention. From the child's seat, those moves are not strategy. They are what you do to get through the day.

That is why the patterns run so deep. The behavior did not just get reinforced (strengthened by what followed it). It worked when working mattered most.

She also named homeostasis (the state your system treats as normal). Whatever becomes normal is what we work to hold onto. We defend it even when we hate the results. On her slide, the baby self sits at the base of a mountain. From there, the climb goes up the adaptive peak (the survival climb a child makes). Down at the bottom, good equals good makes perfect sense.

The age matters too. A child's mind and emotions are still growing. Children take things literally and personally. Perspective taking (seeing things from someone else's point of view) is not built yet, so fairness rules everything. Wilder's claim is that development plus real events shape who we become.

that's why these patterns become so ingrained we literally Really did these things to live

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

The First Journal Prompt: Were We Built for a Process-Based Life?

The first writing prompt was short and sharp. What would you have needed to live a process-based life (a life guided by how you respond, not just results) from the very start? The alternative was ending up with problems instead. She gave real silence for it. People wrote, then shared pieces in the chat.

Her own answer pushed back on her own question. She proposes that we were not meant to live a process-based life from the start. She says there is nothing wrong with you if you did not.

Then she named the trap inside the prompt. RFT is exactly what leads us to frame one way as right and the other as wrong. So we end up chasing a new outcome: becoming process based. That is the same old game with a new label.

This matters for how you talk to clients and supervisees. If you hand someone process work as a finish line, you may have just built another should. Wilder treats the whole thing as a journey instead.

a process based life is what's right, and then an outcome based life is what wrong

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Why Even a Good Childhood Still Leaves Pain

Wilder read out the dream version of early life. Supportive parents or caregivers. You learn functional communication and functional behavior (ways of talking and acting that get your needs met). You learn to regulate your feelings. You learn who you are as a human. You get help through hard times. That is the ideal setup.

Her next point is the one practitioners need. Even then, things go wrong. Even when everyone involved is doing their best, failure and hard feelings still arrive. Traumatic events still happen. Her reason is simple: congratulations, you are a human with a brain. The same brain makes us the top animal and lets us create huge suffering at almost any turn.

She offered a second image for this. We each have our own plan in what she calls earth school. No two lives run the same script, and no moment repeats. Because of that, she does not believe the not-enoughness we shame ourselves for is even possible.

We all have our own IEP in this earth school.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Two Nourishment Prompts That Make Emotional Deprivation Visible

The next pair of prompts is the most portable part of the talk. First she asked a body question. If you want to grow up physically, you need proper nourishment. So what happens when you avoid it? The group wrote, then answered in the chat.

She listed what everyone can picture: weakness, malnutrition, hair loss, trouble with skin, and teeth that do not come in right. You can watch a body deteriorate from the outside. Nobody argues about whether the need was real.

Then she flipped it. If you want to mature emotionally, you also need proper nourishment. That means support and real understanding of your own feelings. Skip it, and a person may deteriorate behaviorally or emotionally instead. The skills and capacity to get what you want in the world never get built.

Here is her sharp edge. That second kind of deprivation gets no credit, because we cannot see it. So when the behavior shows up, the story shifts fast. It stops being a question about missing nourishment. It turns into a verdict that someone is bad or wrong.

if you're not functional then then you're dysfunctional.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

The 14 Patterns of Suffering, in Full

This is the core of the session. Wilder works from 14 patterns of suffering: habits built while playing the game of survival as a kid. Each one ties to symbolic rewards (payoffs that come from meaning, not real objects). She says those ideas come from recovery work on growing up in a dysfunctional household. She is also clear about one thing. You do not have to be traumatized to carry dysfunctional behavior (habits that keep hurting you). In her view, every human has some.

She gave about a minute and a half of silent writing for each item. Here is the full list. One: self-isolation plus fear and avoidance of authority figures. Two: becoming an approval seeker and losing yourself in the process. Three: fear and avoidance of angry people and personal criticism. Four: challenging personal relationships that leave you in a dysfunctional loop. Five: feeling like a victim and being drawn to people you can help or save in love and friendship. Six: an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, because being concerned with others is easier than looking at yourself. Seven: guilty feelings when you stand up for yourself instead of giving in.

The list continues. Eight: feeling addicted to excitement or chaos. Nine: confusing love and pity, and tending to love people you can pity and rescue. Ten: having stuffed or avoided childhood feelings until you lose the ability to feel, because it hurts so much. Eleven: judging yourself harshly and holding low self-esteem. Twelve: a dependent style with terror of being abandoned, which grew out of living with people who were not emotionally available. Thirteen: taking on these characteristics even though you made an effort not to. Fourteen: being a reactor rather than an actor.

The prompt stayed the same each time. Consider how this has come up for you in your life, and what it has looked like. Wilder told the group plainly that some items will not fit. Those may belong to someone else you notice later. She also said these 14 come back again later in the program.

Patterns of suffering from playing the game of survival as a child

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Becoming Your Own Loving Parent as the Next Move

Wilder named the weight of the material out loud. Then she used it to make a point about the field. Her claim is that conventional behaviorism's good equals good does not work the way it should. The reason, she says, is that we skip our own real human pain. We do not honor what we have lived through.

Without that step, she says, we carry the pain forward instead of learning from it. She points to one of the definitions of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). In her words, ACT is openness to learning from pain. That is a different job than removing pain.

Her solution is to become your own loving parent. She builds that as a conceptualized self (the story you hold about yourself), which is one of the ACT processes. This is where the program heads next.

The reason she gives is practical for anyone in this work. Give yourself what you need, and you can give others what they need. Then you can teach them how to get it for themselves. That order matters if you supervise or coach parents.

it's time to learn to give ourselves what we need.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

How the Session Was Run, and the Homework She Assigned

The format is easy to copy. Wilder opened with a self-rating. She asked the group to rate their clarity from one to ten on using ACT to understand how behavior patterns form in daily life. One means no idea. Ten means you have got this. She asked the same question again at the end.

Her setup rules were short. Paper and pen, always. Put the phone away, since avoidance can show up any second without being noticed. Open your hands, mind, and heart to what is coming. If your brain wanders off, no big deal. She said it happens to her every five to ten seconds.

A few props belong to the larger program. One is intake paperwork, shared with her ahead of time. Another is a noticing log, started the week before. She also asks for a baby picture, which she calls crucial for this part of the work. Sending it to her, though, is optional. You also pick your own icon. An optional theme is welcome too. She likes pirates and the magic carpet, because anything that shakes up the usual routine is the point.

The homework was specific. Before the next lesson, go back into your paperwork. Look at your problems and your greatest hits. Then ask which of the 14 patterns line up. She promised a plain list of the patterns, so nobody has to sit through the slides again. Her closing instruction was about credit, not insight.

celebrate each each and anything that you did at today.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder