"You don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you."
- Dan Millman
What is Acceptance & Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) gets it name from one of its core messages: accept what is out of your personal control, and commit to action that improves and enriches your life.
The aim of ACT (which is pronounced as the word 'act', not as the initials) is to create a rich and meaningful life, while accepting the pain that inevitably goes with it. It achieves this by:
a) teaching you psychological skills to deal with your painful thoughts and feelings effectively - in such a way that they have much less impact and influence over you (these are known as mindfulness skills).
b) helping you to clarify what is truly important and meaningful to you - i.e your values - then use that knowledge to guide, inspire and motivate you to change your life for the better (Harris 2013).
‘ACT’ is a good abbreviation for this style of work, because this therapy is about taking effective action guided by our deepest values and in which we are fully present and engaged. It is only through mindful action that we can create a meaningful life. Of course, as we attempt to create such a life, we will encounter all sorts of barriers, in the form of unpleasant and unwanted ‘private experiences’ (thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, urges, and memories). ACT teaches mindfulness skills as an effective way to handle these private experiences. Mindfulness as defined in ACT is ‘Consciously bringing awareness to your here-and-now experience with openness, interest and receptiveness.’ mindfulness can help us to transform our relationship with painful thoughts and feelings, in a way that reduces their impact and influence over our life (Harris 2006).