Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, known as ‘ACT’ (pronounced as the word ‘act’) is a mindfulness based behavioral therapy. It utilizes a diverse mix of metaphor, paradox, and mindfulness skills, along with a wide range of experiential exercises and values-guided behavioral interventions. ACT has proven effective with a varied range of clinical conditions including: anxiety, depression, OCD, workplace stress, chronic pain, anxiety, PTSD, anorexia, heroin abuse, and marijuana abuse.

The goal of ACT is to create a full and meaningful life, while accepting the pain and discomfort that inevitably goes with it. ‘ACT’ is a good abbreviation, because this therapy is about taking effective action guided by your deepest values, and in which you are fully present and engaged. It is only through mindful action that you can create a meaningful life. Of course, as you attempt to create such a life, you 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, allowing them to exist in your life without having power over you. Mindfulness is a term often used throughout and it can be defined best as: ‘Consciously bringing your awareness to your here-and-now experience with openness, interest and receptiveness.’

In ACT, there is no attempt to try to reduce, change, avoid, suppress, or control these private experiences. Instead, you will learn to reduce the impact and influence of unwanted thoughts and feelings, through the effective use of mindfulness. You learn to stop fighting with your private experiences and, instead, to open yourself up to them, make room for them, and allow them to come and go without a struggle. The time, energy, and money that you may have  wasted previously on trying to control how you feel is then invested in taking effective action (guided by their values) to change your life for the better.

ACT interventions focus around two main processes:

1)     Developing acceptance of unwanted private experiences which are out of personal control, then

2)     Commitment and action towards living a valued life you want.