What and Why of REACT

What is REACT?

As a counseling intern, I saw clients for individual therapy in agency and school setting, and had some exposure to couples and family therapy. After doing X number of progress notes in soap format, I began to notice common themes and patterns cropping up in what was said in session and my assessments of clients.

Clients would present with challenging emotions and connected to these emotions would be patterns of negative thinking such as self-defeating thoughts and thoughts of resentment. And, at least in my limited experience, I found that the process of change would be activated when a client could reflect on their thoughts in an objective rather than emotionally-driven way.

At least for all my clients, the thought patterns always boiled down to the common themes of: Respect, Empathy, Acceptance, Courage, Trust, and a client’s capacity in these areas.

Respect: how much do we respect ourselves and others? Having self-respect is recognizing that we have value/worth despite our failures or social status. Respecting others is recognizing that others deserve our respect despite how much we think they have failed.

Empathy: how much empathy are we giving ourselves? How much empathy are we giving others? Empathy is seeking to understand ourselves or others by giving space rather than pre-judging and jumping to conclusions about ourselves or others. Or, do we presume to know what others are thinking?

Acceptance: are we accepting that we are human therefore limited? Are we accepting that others are not perfect? How well do we accept that we can’t do everything on our own? Do we accept that here’s such a thing as authority?

Courage: do we acknowledge that it takes courage to make healthy choices? Do we have the courage to be vulnerable? Do we know where are our courage comes from? 

Trust: do we trust that there is more to life than we presently know? Do we trust that things can get better for us?

Using R.E.A.C.T. as a template or inventory to reflect on emotion-driven thoughts is essentially a mindfulness exercise of objectivity, building self-awareness of thought rather than perpetuating what is emotion-driven and being stuck in a negative loop. A client’s constant negative anger-driven thoughts of his wife of “what’s wrong with her?” “why does she have to be that way?” reframed with R.E.A.C.T. would be “I am lacking in my ability to accept that she is limited and less than perfect,” “I am lacking in trust that things can get better.” “I am jumping to conclusions about her rather than seeking to understand her”, “I am afraid the being vulnerable makes me open to being attacked.”

Reframing thought with R.E.A.C.T. engages a client in cognition which is what is needed for grounding (as opposed to perpetuating the emotion-driven thinking) as well as what is necessary for facing the problem at hand (as opposed to escaping it). The process of change would be complete when the client would then realize what areas of R.E.A.C.T. they needed to strengthen to better navigate through their emotions, and experience a sense of agency over their problems.

High School REACT

I think it is important to use REACT in mental health education for our 8th graders to understand the connection between their thoughts and emotions, and grow in self-awareness. Being attentive to the common themes of REACT promotes a sense of agency – that there are areas that are within their control when it comes to mental health challenges. Having a system or toolkit of conceptualizing mental health and finding patterns in our thought offers a sense of agency. One way to help 8th graders visualize REACT as a system or toolkit is offering the metaphor of a sailboat. 

Challenging emotions and external factors of life are like the waves in the ocean and stormy weather. We are the sailboat and each R, E, A, C, T are the parts of our sailboat. When navigating through the rocky waves and stormy weather, there is much within our control. How well we are attentive to each of the parts, such as using the rudder of Respect to steer, will have an impact on our mental health outcomes. How much of the sail of Trust we allow to be opened up will allow us to capture the windpower needed to power through. And so on.