Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Process 1: review of evidence

• The six core processes of ACT and their common target: flexible, value consistent living
• Process one: acceptance versus experiential avoidance
• Identifying the pervasiveness of emotion control.
• Learning to see experiential willingness as an alternative to experiential control.
• Making contact with willingness as a choice, not a desire.
• Understanding willingness as a process, not an outcome.

Process 2: undermining cognitive fusion

• Seeing thoughts for what they are – thoughts– so that those thoughts don’t have to dominate the person’s life.
• Help people attend to thinking and experiencing as an ongoing behaviour process, and help them move away from the literal meaning of thoughts.

Process 3: getting into contact with the present moment/mindfulness

• Help people discover that life is happening right now, and to return to now from the conceptualized past or future.
• Making contact with the life that is happening now, whether it involves sorrow or happiness.
• Help people to notice what is happening in relationships in the moment

Process 4: distinguishing the conceptualized self from self as context

• Making contact with a sense of self that is continuous, safe, and consistent, and from which people can observe and accept all changing experiences.
• Differentiate this consistent sense of self as the context, arena, or location in which all experience happens, from the content of experience (e.g., Emotions, thoughts, sensations, memories).

Process 5: values

• Contact and clarify the values that give your life meaning
• Link behaviour change to chosen values, while making room for automatic reactions and experiences

Process 6: building patterns of committed actions

• Develop behaviour change in the service of chosen values, while making room for automatic reactions and experiences.
• Take responsibility for patterns of action, building them into larger and larger units to support effective value-based living.