When something bad happens to us, our natural reaction is to reject it.
Whether that means telling ourselves it didn’t happen (a.k.a. denial), or letting it take hold of our lives through negative beliefs, rejecting what is can create a whole host of issues and problems in our lives.
But what if there was a different way?
What if the best way to get through your trauma or struggles was by wholeheartedly accepting them?
Sounds like a crazy—and maybe unappealing—idea, but let’s go with it.
This wild concept is actually a scientifically proven method called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
ACT is a type of mindfulness-based therapy that focuses on your behavior and the context in which it occurs.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’s 3 core values are accepting your reactions and being present, choosing a desired direction, and taking action to move in the desired direction.
Utilizing ACT, your therapist will focus on understanding your current problems while also considering your past and present environment and how those things are contributing to your problems.
In order to transform your pain, it’s absolutely vital to feel into and understand it rather than running away, ignoring, or avoiding it.
The goals of ACT are to help you objectively understand what you’re feeling and thinking, according to your values and desired outcomes, while also taking into consideration your past experiences in a way that helps you make peace with them.
Another important goal of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is developing psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is defined simply as the ability to be present with your experience, open up emotionally, and do what matters to you.
The Core Principles of ACT
The core principles of ACT are overlapping and interconnected, not separate:
ACT’s core principles are developed through the direct experience of what is most helpful and important to you.
ACT emphasizes the importance of accepting a situation that’s out of your hands such as a personality trait that may be hard to control or an emotion that may take over against our will.
ACT focuses on coming to terms with reality and working with the cards that you’re dealt.
In other words, accepting what is.
This means allowing yourself to feel your feelings or think your thoughts without needing to change or act on them, allowing yourself to be imperfect, and allowing your emotions, feelings, and reactions to just be.
ACT isn’t just about getting rid of your symptoms.
Rather, we focus on changing your relationship with your symptoms, which can lead to powerful shifts.
When we change how we relate to our symptoms rather than simply trying to make them go away, we change our experience of ourselves and our problems.
This creates resiliency.
After all, the more you fight against certain things, the more power and energy you give them.
As the old saying goes, “what you resist, persists.”
Retooling your personal interpretations of events and creating new narratives about your experiences can completely change your life.
So often, we get stuck in a limited way of thinking that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As we work together to teach you new ways of seeing yourself, others, and your life, you will experience a greater sense of freedom, peace, and vitality.
The Six Core Processes of ACT
ACT looks at six interrelated processes: acceptance, defusion, contact with the present moment, self as context, values, and committed action.
Let’s break these skills down for you:
Using these six processes, you will be able to better understand yourself and therefore accomplish your goals and aspirations.
Acceptance does not mean you have to like your experience or current conditions.
Instead, acceptance explores the concept of willingness to experience our feelings “fully and without defense,” whatever those feelings are––pleasant or unpleasant.
Through ACT, we recognize the importance of taking responsibility for what is within our control and accepting that which is not.
Our ACT-trained therapists are ready to help you take empowered action to achieve your goals and discover a greater sense of peace, vitality, and freedom.
Our Therapy Methods
Therapy can successfully improve your life by helping you minimize your anxiety, identify and changing underlying thought and behavioral patterns that contribute to your struggles, and provide you with strategies to decrease discomfort while restoring an overall sense of peace.
ACT is an evidence-based, scientifically proven intervention that is demonstrated by research to be effective in addressing a wide range of psychological issues including depression, anxiety, and addiction, among many others.
Learn more about our empirically based therapy modalities by visiting our Methods page.
We find you the perfect therapist – or your money back.
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