Acceptance & Commitment Therapy

What is ACT?

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a scientifically based treatment that has been used successfully to treat a wide range of disorders, including depression, addiction, anxiety, trauma, among many others. ACT teaches a wide array of skills, but at the heart of ACT, you learn how to identify your core values and how to structure your life so that you are acting in service of these values. Ultimately, ACT connects you with what really matters to you, and helps you identify how to live a life that is most meaningful to you. With this understanding, these values guide who you want to be and what you choose to do.

Rather than trying to eliminate difficult thoughts and feelings, ACT helps you change your relationship with them. Through mindfulness, acceptance, and defusion skills, you learn to notice painful experiences without being ruled by them and to take steady, committed action toward what matters most to you, even when life feels hard.

Acceptance And Commitment Therapy

How Does It Work?

The ultimate goal of ACT is to connect you with a more purposeful, meaningful life, while learning how to handle the pain that inevitably goes with this pursuit. ACT assumes that:

  • Life is difficult.
  • A full life experience includes the full range of emotions, both pleasant and painful.
  • Human minds naturally amplify psychological suffering.
In ACT, we assume that life inevitably involves pain. No matter how pleasant life is, we inevitably experience frustration, disappointment, rejection, loss, and sadness. On top of this, we have a mind that is very capable of conjuring up pain at any moment. ACT teaches you how to live a life that is most connected to who you are by identifying and connecting with your values and learning skills to maintain psychological flexibility in the face of life’s inevitable challenges. 

What Can I Expect With ACT?

You will learn how to identify what is most important and meaningful to you and how best to use this understanding to guide you to behave in ways that enrich and enhance your life.

You will learn mindfulness skills that will enable you to handle thoughts and feelings more effectively.

Notes About ACT

Contact with the present moment

A regular mindfulness practice builds your ability to stay in the present moment. You become more attuned to the world around you and to your inner experience.

Cognitive defusion

Defusion helps you step back and watch your thoughts instead of getting tangled in them. Holding thoughts lightly reduces the power they have over you.

Acceptance

Avoiding problems often makes them worse. Acceptance teaches you to make room for unwanted thoughts, emotions, and experiences instead of fighting them.

Self-as-context (the noticing self)

ACT separates the part of your mind that thinks from the part that notices. Strengthening the noticing self gives you distance from your thoughts and connects you with the present moment.

Values

Like a compass, your values point you toward what truly matters. Knowing them clarifies what you stand for and how you want to treat yourself and others.

Committed action

Committed action means taking concrete steps toward your values. Those steps are what make life richer and more meaningful.