Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Just like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is predominantly a time-limited therapeutic approach, adopting the view that by accepting negative thoughts and feelings, you can then choose a successful path in which to make positive changes. Therefore, whilst acceptance and commitment therapy does not aim to directly change or stop unwanted problems and experiences, it does aim to support you to make positive changes in your life. 

During Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), you will be taught how to develop a mindful relationship with your unwanted problems and experiences, encouraging psychological flexibility that associates healthy considerations with those thoughts. Through this mindfulness, you are able to reconnect with the here and now, realise your personal values and commit to a path of behaviour change.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy does not come with a specific set of techniques; however, it does contain some core processes that your therapist will most likely follow. Think of these core processes as a positive psychological skill which go against avoidance or trying to prevent negative thoughts and feelings.

The acronym that encapsulates the model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT is:

• Accept your thoughts and feelings and be in the here and now (present)
• Choose a valued direction
• Take action

If we look at this acronym a little closer, the following six core therapeutic processes demonstrate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as an amalgamation of mindfulness and behavioural therapy, supporting you to overcome your problems.

Acceptance

An alternative to experiential avoidance, acceptance involves embracing painful emotions and experiences, without attempting to change their form or frequency. You will be encouraged to willingly open up and let go of your fight with those unwanted problems, which will support you to learn ways of coping with them.

Cognitive defusion

This is also known as emotional separation and refers to a set of techniques that attempt to change the functions of negative thoughts and emotions, and how they affect you. Your therapist here may use techniques that encourage you to externally observe your unwanted problems by assigning them a shape, size, colour, speed or form.

By recontextualising these uncomfortable memories and experiences, you can learn to relate to them on another level, one that does not involves attaching value to them.

Contacting the present moment

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapy encourages you to be psychologically present by making a conscious effort to connect with whatever is happening in the here and now. This way, your experience of the world encourages your behaviour and thoughts to become more flexible and therefore ensure your actions are more consistent with your personal values rather than your negative thoughts. Here, language (both written and verbal) is often used as a tool for you to describe current events as opposed to predicting them and even judging them.

The observing self

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) considers the mind as a combination of two parts: the ‘thinking self’, and the ‘observing self’. The thinking self is responsible for a person’s thoughts, beliefs, judgements, fantasies and so on, whilst the observing self, deals with attention and awareness, which is the part of the mind that enables you to develop mindfulness skills – the ability to be aware of your experiences without attachment to them. I like to think of the observing self as the sky, and our thoughts and feelings like the weather…the weather is constantly changing and moving whilst the sky remains blue regardless of the most powerful hurricane…nothing can destroy the sky!

Values

Values are the chosen qualities that we live by and are actually an essential cog in the development of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) goals. A variety of exercises will be used in your Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) sessions that support you to choose a life direction in various domains, e.g., family and career. The realisation of these typically come from your ability to follow through the processes of acceptance, defusion and being at one with the present.

Committed action

This final stage of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model involves the creation of concrete goals consistent with your chosen values. It is essential that you commit to these goals in order to adopt then necessary changes and discover a far greater sense of well-being and life fulfilment.

This process is made up of elements of traditional behavioural therapy and often requires you to do homework in between sessions, which in turn, supports you to address any psychological barriers.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of behavioural therapy that draws on a variety of mindfulness strategies to support you to accept life’s challenges and difficulties. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Act) was developed in America during the late 1980s and has, since then, gained increasing recognition as an effective form of therapy when treating a range of mental health issues and psychological disorders.