ACT therapy encourages increased commitment to healthy, constructive activities that uphold your values or goals.
Find out which option is the best for you.
It is about recognizing what you want to be about and stand for.
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Commitment to Action
This process involves changing your behavior based on principles covered in therapy.
These specific actions can either move us closer or further toward our values.
Cognitive Defusion Skills
Cognitive defusionis separating yourself from your inner experiences.
Acceptance is an active process.
This involves a conscious and deliberate effort to focus on the world around you in the moment.
These no longer have to be barriers to moving towards values.
Subsequent sessions then focus on helping people connect to those values and apply them in their lives.
Your therapist may assignhomeworkto practice between sessions, such as mindfulness, cognitive, or values clarification exercises.
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Benefits of ACT Therapy
One core benefit of ACT is the impact it has on psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility can improve your ability to accept and function with symptoms like anxiety or depression.
Often, those symptoms may lessen significantly due to this increase in psychological flexibility.
ACT therapy also helps people cultivate greaterself-awarenessandself-compassion.
How Effective Is ACT Therapy?
ACT is sometimes referred to as a “third wave” or “new wave” psychotherapy.
Historically, third-wave treatments were seen as appropriate for people not benefiting from pre-existing treatments like classical CBT.
Recent theories suggest that attempting to resist or change thoughts and feelings can make them stronger.
So, instead of challenging them as one would in traditional CBT, ACT takes a different approach.
ACT also appears to improve quality of life and may help people deal with physical conditions and chronic pain.
ACT has also faced criticism for its similarity to other forms of therapy.
Some proponents of CBT claim that ACT, like other third-wave therapies, doesnt represent a significantly different approach.
The ACBS also providesfree resources about ACTin the form of videos, audio clips, and mindfulness exercises.
Your therapist will also want to discuss your values and goals during therapy.
This is another crucial part of treatment, as these values will inform your actions moving forward.
A systematic review.Front Psychiatry.
2011;7(1), 54-65. doi:10.1037/h0100927
