about
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT helps people who are exhausted from trying to "manage" their experience learn how to simply "be"
Background about ACT
ACT is what's called a "transdiagnostic" approach to therapy--it's helpful across a wide range of struggles and challenges.
This is so because ACT focuses on how you live--instead of just teaching new things to do, it can help you uncover a different, more flexible way to be.
What's the goal of ACT?
The ultimate goal in ACT is to truly live—to live a rich, full, and meaningful life.
Rather than attempting to solve all your struggles one by one, the focus is on empowering you to better handle all it is to be human—struggle and pain included.
You can learn how to spend less time, energy, and attention on unhelpful or futile patterns.
You can be empowered to spend more time, energy, and attention on living a meaningful, full life.
How does ACT work?
ACT helps people build "psychological flexibility" which, essentially, is the ability to genuinely learn from your experience.
Instead of trying harder and harder at mental and emotional "control" strategies that don't work, ACT helps people pivot their energy to flexibly relate to their thoughts and feelings so they're freed up to invest their energy in what they care about.
ACT helps people learn how to:
- welcome their feelings instead of avoiding them
- notice their thoughts instead of just inhabiting them
- be present to living instead of attempting to control their emotional experience
- make decisions rooted in values instead of reacting on auto-pilot
While this sounds like a lot of specific skills, it's actually a single, larger shift in your way of being. When ACT is successful, you feel a sense of relief like, "oh, is this what it feels like to just be me?" It's not a to-do list, it's a process of experientially learning more flexible ways to relate to all that life is so that you can be more present and engaged in ways that move you towards meaning and purpose.
Interested in learning more?
I have few resource recommendations here:
If you want to learn more or get more information about whether ACT would be helpful for what you're facing, feel free to contact me.