Just in case you have stumbled across my blog and encountered my Willing Wednesday posts, I wanted to provide a little more background. By now you might know that I'm a practicing clinical psychologist. But what you might not know is that one of my main approaches is called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT for short (typically pronounced as a word). I am certified in ACT by the Veterans Health Administration, which allows me to help Veterans who struggle with depression, trauma and substance abuse.
ACT also helps me. I use the concepts every day in order to keep my life on track, that is, the track that I want it to be on. These concepts include:
- Being Open to and accepting of my own thoughts, feelings, experiences.
- Being Aware of the Here-and-Now
- Being Active in by moving in the direction of what is most important to me.
I'm starting Willing Wednesday posts with these two goals :
1) Keeping myself on track with being mindful, in the here and now, and moving in the direction of what is most imporant to me.
2) Sharing this approach to coping with life's struggles with all of you.
I hope you come back and enjoy Willing Wednesday posts!
I hope you come back and enjoy Willing Wednesday posts!
If you are interested in learning more, I've provided more detail below.
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More on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Developed by Steven C. Hayes, Kelly Wilson, and Kirk Strosahl, ACT is a scientifically-based cognitive-behavioral model of psychotherapy. ACT uses acceptance and mindfulness practices, along with commitment and behavior-change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility (explained below).
ACT proposes that our psychological suffering is usually caused by avoiding stuff (more on "stuff" below) and getting overly connected with our thought process, which results in psychological rigidity and a failure to act in ways that are in line with our core values.
ACT views the core of many problems to be due to the concepts represented in the acronym: FEAR
Fusion with your thoughts - (Being over-connected with your thoughts/ believing ALL your thoughts)
Evaluation of experience - (Being judgmental and self-critical of our own thoughts,
feelings and experiences)
Avoidance of your experience - (Avoiding thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, pain)
Reason-giving for your behavior - (Giving reasons instead of acting with willingness and moving towards
goals/vaules)
The healthy alternative is to ACT...
Accept your reactions and be present
Choose a valued direction
Take action
ACT uses six core principles to promote psychological flexibility:
- Cognitive diffusion: Learning methods stand back and look at our thoughts, images, emotions, and memories with a bit of distance.
- Acceptance: Allowing thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. to come and go without struggling with them.
- Contact with the present moment: Instead of worrying about the future or reliving painful memories from the past being present in the here and now.
- Observing the self: Accessing a transcendent sense of self, a continuity of consciousness which is unchanging.
- Values: Discovering what is most important to one's true self.
- Committed action: Setting goals according to values and carrying them out responsibly.
You can learn more about ACT here:
ACT is considered an empirically validated treatment by the American Psychological Association.