Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is an action-oriented approach to psychotherapy that stems from traditional behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives. With this understanding, clients begin to accept their issues and hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives, and how they feel about it.

We can further our lives in many amazing through the process of thinking and the language we use to communicate thoughts. We have the ability to look prospectively at a problem, brainstorm a hundred solutions to that problem, pare those solutions down to the two or three that are viable, then even to lay out how each of those solutions might work out. This allows us to select what will likely be the best solution- all within the space of our minds before even lifting a finger. Our thoughts and calculations allowed us to theorize the existence of black holes long before there was even any evidence that such things might exist. There are many ways that our thoughts and language become things that we find ourselves controlled by rather than reflecting what we value in life. They become barriers rather than constructive, useful tools.

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ACT is about developing a new, more flexible way of living based on what we value.  In ACT, we say that we become stuck, not broken. The problem isn't our lives. It is the fact that the thing we believe is control is not control. Control, as we often understand it, is an illusion. Again, don't just buy this because it is written here, check it all against your own experience.