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What is ACT?

Steven C. Hayes, the creator of Relational frame theory, developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 1986. An American clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology in the Behavior Analysis program at the University of Nevada, Hayes gravitated toward the impact psychology can have on mental well-being. He attended college in the 1960s and had some significant influences from the hippie culture in his life and ideologies. His personal experiences led him to form the core ideas that shape ACT. Incidents related to ostracization and his history of panic attacks elucidated him to accept his true self and not hide from it.

This treatment approach is an evidence-oriented form of psychotherapy that is factually the first of the "third wave" psychotherapies, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The "first wave" of therapies that came into existence in the 1950s to 1960s relied on apparent behavioral changes and used classical conditioning principles. The "second-wave" therapies incorporated cognitive interventions as treatment strategies. Cognitive Behavioral therapy is the most significant "second wave" to date.

Similar to other "third-wave" psychotherapies, acceptance and commitment therapy includes concepts of mindfulness, acceptance, and value-based methods. The fundamentals of the theory behind this treatment approach rely on the principal belief that every emotion is equally important. And sentiments like anger, grief, pain, dismay, or anxiety are generally considered negative. However, these feelings are inevitable aspects of life. Strong emotions like distress are as pure as optimistic emotions like happiness. They emerge from the effects of numerous facets and incidents of human life. However, it is in human nature to avoid and suppress them. The primary goal of acceptance and commitment therapy is to encourage people to build a constructive perspective toward emotional experiences. It helps build psychological flexibility, which enables people to take effective action for any negative thoughts that come to mind instead of trying to get rid of them or bury them away, which is ineffective and detrimental to their emotional state.

"There are only a few skills in life as important as the skill of acceptance. Whether it comes to your mental health, the quality of your relationships, your physical fitness, your career success, or your expertise in playing any instrument on the planet… all of it (and much more) depends on your ability to feel uncomfortable while doing the things that matter," writes Hayes in his blog, The Bittersweet Art of Acceptance.

ACT sessions aim to offer a transcendent sense of self, a state of awareness where individuals can detach themselves from their emotions to reach the potential to simply observe emotions and not try to control them but learn how to navigate them constructively. Even in the most unfavorable of situations, avoiding it can seem like the easiest way out. The prevalent notion of socially acceptable behavior accounts for challenging experiences as something that needs treatment. However, accepting them is much more beneficial.

What are the Benefits?

One of the central core values of acceptance and commitment therapy is that it is beneficial in building better psychological flexibility. In clinical psychology, psychological flexibility refers to the capability of constructively managing your emotions, the power to accept your feelings when they are productive graciously, and to let unproductive thoughts pass through you. It offers you the competence to assess your private experiences and avoid impulsive reactions that can only prove detrimental.

Furthermore, this therapy offers a perspective to better deal with unwanted private experiences or symptoms of certain mental disorders, such as anxiety or depression. This therapy type's mindfulness and humanistic approach allow you to pursue an optimistic and meaningful life.

Common Techniques

ACT practitioners primarily focus on destabilizing the idea of emotional control. Various practices like mindfulness activities, meta-analysis, and systematic review allow professionals to offer better compassion and empathy to their clients. Every fundamental step entails a significant set of procedures—a mental health professional guides their patient with the help of different activities and homework. Additionally, this treatment allows therapists to form and use metaphors unique to each patient. These metaphors are generally derived from an individual's personal values and private events that have taken place in their lives. After the individuals learn acceptance, they are introduced to six fundamentals of ACT principles, which help them develop psychological flexibility. And they are:

• Cognitive Defusion: This refers to a state of mind where you can sit back and observe thoughts rather than embody your thoughts. It is natural to get influenced by your inner experiences and see them as the only truth to exist. Following them is necessary, or handling your emotions is the only way to function constructively. However, when you merge your emotions with yourself, it impacts your entire behavior and your beliefs. Cognitive Defusions allow you to detach yourself from your inner thoughts. When you learn to defuse your thoughts, you recognize that your notions and ideas are temporary occurrences, constantly affected by different aspects. ACT has several cognitive defusion techniques, such as repeatedly wording a thought until it loses significance. Sometimes, your therapist might suggest you simply say thank you to your mind. This could be a grateful gesture for your brain to come up with such an interesting thought. It is often encouraged to be as creative as you want to create techniques that help you to defuse your emotions without assessing them.
• Acceptance: This refers to acknowledging and welcoming difficult thoughts and unpleasant emotions, making room for unpleasant feelings, urges, or any negative private experiences, and letting them pass through you without judgment rather than struggling to control them, avoiding them, or trying to suppress them. As explained by Hayes, "acceptance is the ability to feel the full range of your thoughts and emotions without needless avoidance or clinging in the service of what matters the most to you."
  In case of an anxious episode, your therapist might ask you to observe where in your body you feel most anxious. The answer can vary with every person. It can be a tightness in their chest, tension in their temples, or a knot in their stomach. The idea is to let the sensation grow and assess how it impacts your physical self and if you can interpret it in the form of a different sense, shape, energy, or weight. When you let that coexist with yourself and make room for it by taking deep breaths, you let it pass through you after some time. The same technique is also a part of your homework that your therapist might assign you.
• Contact with the present moment: This refers to being mindful of the present. Through mindfulness exercises, you can become completely aware of your experiences. The here-and-now approach lets you connect to the current events around you with a sense of wholeheartedness, interest, and consciousness while allowing you to focus on the task on your hand productively.
  It is not uncommon to become oblivious to your daily tasks or try to multitask every single job to become more productive. However, it can be detrimental to your mental health. When you become mindful of every instance, you better control your well-being. And practicing mindfulness is not only easy, but it is also gratifying. Practicing mindfulness can be as simple as being immersed in preparing your meal and eating or engaging in a mindful conversation with like-minded people.
• The Observing Self: This refers to the state of self where you get the power to unlock your potential to reach a higher self where your consciousness flows through you. A sense of calm, your thoughts about yourself don't control you, and you become enlightened to perceive your consciousness as a stable entity impenetrable to any reason or factor. This sense of awareness makes you capable of viewing yourself as a separate being from your beliefs, emotions, memories, urges, roles, or physical appearance.
  As an exercise, your therapist might ask you to delve into a mindfulness strategy of observing your thoughts by closing your eyes and taking deep breaths. Pay attention to how they feel, how they are moving, or what they look like. When you grasp it, they might ask you to bring your attention back to how you are simultaneously thinking and observing your thinking process. This point of view, achieved through the “Observing Self”, lets you understand that no emotion or thought is ominous or detrimental.
• Values: This refers to attaining the importance of personal values. Every individual has certain things they deem most important, ambitions, desires, and visions of the person they want to become in the future. And values are formed and discovered through different means. They can be done by building meaningful relationships, finding genuine friendships, and staying true to yourself.
• Committed Action: It refers to establishing goals that are in good regard to your values and building a strategy to accomplish them. The most crucial part of achieving a goal is committing to it and taking productive steps toward it. These objectives can be as simple as eating healthy or socializing more. Through constant encouragement, the goals can be more challenging and exciting.

These six principles represent that these techniques can significantly decrease symptoms without it being the core objective of the therapy type.

What Conditions Can it Help Treat?

ACT is suitable psychotherapy to treat various mental and physical ailments. Such as:

• Anxiety disorders: While it is a common belief that learning to control anxiety can be beneficial in treating it, the truth can be far beyond it. The more you try to control it, the further you aggravate it. This therapy enables a person to handle anxiety better.
• Depression: Recent studies show that this treatment approach can help with severe to moderate degrees of depression by allowing individuals to build a mindful thinking pattern.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Acceptance and commitment therapy techniques can help individuals to view themselves as separate from their thoughts. This allows people suffering from OCD to manage their symptoms better.
• Substance use disorder: The humanistic and mindful approach of ACT therapy can offer a very effective treatment of substance use. Mental health professionals actively use this brief therapy to help people with substance use issues.
• Eating disorders: ACT helps people to build a more positive sense of themselves and detaches their idea of physical appearance from their thoughts about themselves. Which can help them to deal with eating disorders.

Get Counseling from a Trusted Therapist With DocVita

It is essential to gain awareness about your mental state and how you can better care for yourself. ACT offers a refreshing outlook on receiving therapy treatments, where you are not solely focused on getting rid of the unwanted thoughts but instead creating a positive and meaningful perspective of life.

Finding a professional that caters to your unique issues is essential for a wholesome therapy experience. Get counseling from a trusted therapist with DocVita today! Here, you can access and select a professional according to your preference and opt for an easy booking process.