Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: the Processes

Last week we introduced Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with a brief overview, which you can check out here, but as a quick reminder:

The aim of ACT Therapy is to support individuals to develop the psychological flexibility to live a rich and meaningful life, all while recognizing and accepting that life can be hard and challenges are a part of life. 

So what is ‘psychological flexibility’ anyway? 

When you have psychological flexibility, you are able to be fully present and live in the moment, even when the moment provides challenges and pain. 

A common reaction to pain, whether emotional or mental or physical, is to want to shut down or run away. 

Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay present and to know that pain is inevitable- and what matters most is how you respond to it. You could run away or shut down, but when you have psychological flexibility, you stay present with it, and in so doing, you open yourself up to all that life offers- both the wonderful and the difficult- and can then live the life you choose.

Did you catch that? 

To say it a different way: when you have psychological flexibility, you are more capable of staying present even when life is tough- and by staying present, and not running away, you can keep moving forward! 

So you feel the pain. You recognize the challenge. And you stay engaged. 

And you choose your next step!!

Simply by staying flexible and staying present, you give yourself that option to choose your next step, and stay connected to your values and your goals!

Anyone else feeling like they really want to be able to be psychologically flexible? I know I do!

As I said, introducing ACT will be a series of posts, so this week I wanted to share with you a brief overview of the six processes of ACT therapy.

Processes is kind of an odd word for learning how to take care of your mental health, so you can also consider these to be pillars- whatever works for you.

So let’s check them out.

Contacting the Present Moment

Another odd phrase, but contacting the present moment essentially means mindfulness- being fully engaged in the present moment, whatever you are doing and wherever you are, instead of focusing on past regrets (or hurts) or future worries. When you are in contact with the present moment you can feel a sense of being open and receptive. And if you think about it, if you are open and receptive, you not only are capable of doing better work such as school work or your sport, but you are also more present with those around you and can connect more meaningfully.

Defusion

Okay. ACT has a few strange phrases and words, I’ll give you that!

Defusion is also known as Cognitive Defusion, and the simplest description I can offer is: getting unstuck.

As someone who has OCD, I can tell you, us OCD people know how to get stuck, but we all get stuck sometimes.

Being stuck is simply that experience of focusing a lot (or all) your attention on the challenging thoughts or feelings that you are having. 

You can be stuck thinking about how overwhelmed you are with your school work. Or a relationship that’s challenging you. Or if you’ll make the team. Or if you’ll perform well. 

When you defuse, you can begin to gain a little space from those thoughts and feelings. 

You can defuse by just noticing “I am feeling really stuck.” 

Noticing your thoughts is one quick way to defuse but there are so many more, and the ultimate goal is to simply realize that thoughts are going to come and go, and your job is to not give them so much of your energy that you are stuck, and not engaging in your life in ways that you want.

Acceptance

Ah, there’s an easier word to understand. Acceptance is all about acknowledging thoughts and feelings without attempting to control or avoid them. This involves allowing oneself to experience emotions fully, even if they are unpleasant or distressing. 

So in the example above when you’re stressed about a relationship? Acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean that you accept the challenges in the relationship, but it does mean that you accept the feelings you have. Challenging relationships will happen all your life, and making room for the feelings and thoughts that come with them- or any difficult situation- is the first step to being able to then calm and ground yourself and make decisions that you feel good about.

The Observer Self

This is another one that gets a little confusing, so we won’t spend a lot of time on it. The bottom line is this: you are not your thoughts. You are the person having your thoughts. 

You are stable, you are the observer. Your thoughts will come and go, but you are always you, and being able to recognize this idea can encourage you to connect with your deeper values and sense of self (the core of the commitment part of ACT).

Values 

Another concept you should already know at least a bit about- your values are essentially what is most important and meaningful to you. How do you want to treat others? How do you want to show up and represent yourself? How do you want to be remembered? What do you stand for?

The answers to these questions represent your values, and when you are able to do the above processes and principles and be present, defuse, accept and observe… then you are able to live according to your values. 

And we all feel better when we put our head on the pillow and know we did our best to live according to our values, right?

Committed Action

This is the Commitment part of the Acceptance and Commitment, and it brings all the other principles together!

So you’ve done your best to stay present, even when hard stuff happens and you have hard feelings and challenging thoughts. 

You’re striving to defuse and not let yourself be stuck when difficult stuff comes up. 

You are learning to accept all that life throws at you and even embrace it as part of what makes life rich and full and meaningful.

You get clarity on what matters most to you and define your values.

And now you can act, according to those values.

You can take committed action- action that helps move you towards the life you desire and the life you choose!

Can you see why we are big fans of ACT?

And for the record: Just because we love this framework doesn’t mean we think this is easy. Living in your values and staying present takes commitment and courage!

But with a framework and tools (coming soon in another post!), hopefully you can see that it is very doable!

Our goal and our wish and our prayer and our mission is that you can gain that psychological flexibility and stay present and grounded even while life continues to throw you curveballs and challenges- and then keep on moving towards the goals you choose.

We discuss stuff like this in our workshops, so if you would like the chance to dive deeper into this stuff, plus make great connections and build your support network, you can sign up below to get our emails…

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And as always, we are here for you. If you want to just say hi, or have something weighing on you and need support, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out!