Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a type of psychotherapy that emphasizes acceptance as a way to deal with negative thoughts, feelings, symptoms, or circumstances. It also encourages increased commitment to healthy, constructive activities that uphold your values or goals.
ACT therapists operate under a theory that suggests that increasing acceptance can lead to increased psychological flexibility.1 This approach carries a host of benefits, and it may help people stop habitually avoiding certain thoughts or emotional experiences, which can lead to further problems.
Unlike cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the goal of ACT is not to reduce the frequency or severity of unpleasant internal experiences like upsetting cognitive distortions, emotions, or urges. Rather, the goal is to reduce your struggle to control or eliminate these experiences while simultaneously increasing your involvement in meaningful life activities (i.e., those activities that are consistent with your personal values).
This Process Involves Six Components:
This means allowing your inner thoughts and feelings to occur without trying to change them or ignore them. Acceptance is an active process.
This involves learning to see your thoughts about yourself as separate from your actions.
These are the areas of your life that are important enough to you to motivate action.
Cognitive defusion is the process of separating yourself from your inner experiences. This allows you to see thoughts simply as thoughts, stripped of the importance that your mind adds to them.
ACT encourages you to stay mindful of your surroundings and learn to shift your attention away from internal thoughts and feelings.
This process involves changing your behavior based on principles covered in therapy.