Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a new cognitive-behavioral intervention to help us learn strategies to live a life focused squarely on our important values and goals – what really matters to us – and less focused on managing painful thoughts, feelings and experiences. It seeks to cultivate peace of mind and create genuine happiness from within.
Psychological pain is a normal and unavoidable part of our human experience. As humans we don't just have pain; we agonize over our painful memories, uncomfortable emotions, difficult self-evaluations. We worry about them, we dread them, we engage in all kinds of activities to avoid them. Our research and experience has shown that when we make repeated rigid attempts to control or eliminate this pain, we often produce more rather than less suffering–– we become pain managers rather than life managers.
So ACT helps us learn ways to let go of our futile struggle with pain by being more mindful of and embracing our experience with an open heart and with gentle kindness and compassion. The goal of therapy is not to eliminate certain parts of our experience of life, but rather to learn how to experience life more fully, without as much struggle, and with vitality and commitment.
In essence, ACT is about letting go, showing up to life, and getting yourself moving in directions you want to go. So let’s focus on these three steps that the letters represent: Accept what you are experiencing just as it is, and if you don’t like what you’re experiencing, respond differently than you used to—as a friendly observer with gentle kindness and compassion; Choose a direction for your life and focus on what what matters most to you in this life (e.g., your family, children, friends, work, play, spirituality, health and so on); and Take action in life directions that you cherish––Take action in life directions that you cherish––make a commitment to action and change what you can change by taking steps toward realizing your valued life goals
ACT is an empirically-based therapy in that its practitioners and researchers world-wide are dedicated to the development of strengthening the science foundation of ACT and the empirical evaluation of its effects. The effectiveness of ACT has been evaluated in over100 randomized clinical trials for a variety of life problems (e.g., anxiety, depression, PTSD, substance abuse, chronic pain, psychosis, eating problems, and weight management) in studies with over 5000 participants.
Ultimately, ACT is much more than a therapy. ACT is an approach to life and a path toward personal growth and fulfilment. Life is too precious to waste it with being at war with ourselves by combatting unwanted feelings and thoughts when they show up as barriers in our life. ACT teaches us effective skills to drop the rope in this tug of war with ourselves and instead focus our time and energy creating the life we really want. This is time and energy well spent!
If you want to learn more about how to drop the rope, cultivate inner peace, and create a more fulfilling life for yourself, you can check out one of our books here. This may be a good start, and if you really work with the exercises in the books, our research shows that it may be enough to give your life a new direction and increase the quality of your life. But if you still feel stuck and at your wits end, you can seek professional help by going to the ACBS website for tips on finding an ACT therapist.