What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy(ACT) and its principles?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aims at helping the person to accept the difficulties that are part of life. Therapists across the world have been using ACT to help their patients for a long time.
ACT helps individuals reduce stress and help with mindfulness. The therapy helps the patient to overcome negative thoughts and feelings. During acceptance and commitment therapy, the therapist analyzes the character traits and behaviours of the person, addresses his or her commitment to making the necessary changes in life and provides support when a person faces difficulties in sticking to the goals.
Principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:
There are six basic principles of the ACT. Each of the principles works simultaneously with others towards the main goals of creating a mindful and vital life by handling negative thoughts and experiences effectively. The principles are:
● Cognitive diffusion
● Acceptance
● Being in the present moment
● Self-observation
● Setting values instead of goals
● Committed action
Cognitive diffusion:
It is about learning to understand thoughts, memories, images, and other cognitions for what they are. Often individuals suffering from depression and other mental issues take simple cognitions negatively.
Individuals often don’t accept things as they are and depend on our thoughts to evaluate them. It is called the state of cognitive fusion, thoughts are taken as reality, thoughts are considered as the truth, thoughts are important and need to be followed or obeyed, and thoughts are taken as threats. The therapist helps the patient to get a clear perspective of these thoughts and see them for what they are.
Acceptance:
Acceptance involves creating space for unpleasant feelings, urges, sensations, rather than suppress them or avoid them. The therapist helps the patient open up about these emotions and let them come and go without struggling with them or running from them. When an individual learns how to let these thoughts come and go easily, they become less bothersome.
The therapist may ask the patient to create a hypothetical situation. For example, a woman who considers herself socially inept may be asked to imagine going on a date. Later she is asked to scan her body in that situation and find where the anxiety is most intense. Suppose if she has found it in her throat as a lump, then she is asked to observe it from every aspect, height, weight, pulsation, etc. The therapist encourages her to acknowledge the sensation of the lump or other sensations related to anxiety.
Being in the present moment:
To experience feelings, thoughts, and sensations, we have to be in the present moment. ACT helps the patients to focus on the present moment. We often do things without being thoroughly involved. Doing things consciously is essential for being completely connected with what is happening right now. To achieve mindfulness, we must be fully aware of the present rather than dwelling on past events or worrying about the future.
It includes focusing on simple tasks. The therapist may give a piece of food to the patient and instruct to focus on just eating and nothing else. If the distracting thoughts or feelings arise with the task, the patient is instructed to let them come and go being focused on eating. Later, the patient may be asked to engage in a conversation with another person, focusing on the person and not his or her thoughts. However, such contact with the present can be established with self-observation.
Self-observation:
Self-observation or Observing Self is the most significant aspect of our consciousness. It is about having access to a transcendent sense of being oneself. When an individual is aware of the thoughts, two processes are occurring, one is thinking, and the second is of observing the thinking. The therapist helps patients draw attention between thoughts running and the self, and who is observing these thoughts.
Setting values instead of goals:
The therapist helps the patient understand the difference between values and goals by asking questions like what is meaningful and what the patient wants to stand for in this life. The values play a significant role in setting the direction of life and make decisions. Mindfulness can be achieved if the values and not the goals guide the actions.
Those who have experienced a lot of frustration or failure to live or achieve their chosen values are often afraid of acknowledging their values or set new values. These feelings can be overcome by recognizing that these are just mere thoughts and not their reality.
Committed action:
The last principle of ACT is to take committed action. A person learns how rich and meaningful life is, and the desired life can be created by taking effective actions guided by the values that they have chosen.
Summary:
Cognitive diffusion, acceptance, being in the present moment, self-observation, value clarification, and committed actions are the basic principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Find a reputed clinic in Ottawa [ https://ocpsychotherapycentre.com/] where you can learn how to lead a life with mindfulness from an experienced therapist.
