Humans have ideas, memories, feelings and we react to them. We give them value, meaning and connection. According to researcher Dr. Carmen Luciano, acceptance and commitment therapy allows us to understand human behavior and aims for people to learn to interact with themselves and build the life they want to live, making the things that are more present. important to themselves.
Acceptance and commitment therapy increases resilience and meaning in life. In this Psychology-Online article, we will learn in depth about the acceptance and commitment therapy, its background, principles, components, techniques and exercises.
What is acceptance and commitment therapy?
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a set of psychological intervention techniques and processes whose main objectives are accept emotions, thoughts and events that are experienced and commit to one’s own values.
What is ACT? Acceptance and commitment therapy is the most complete of the third generation therapies. It is framed in a functional philosophical position and is based on a new theory of language and cognition. ACT defends a new vision of psychopathology in which many disorders are understood as a consequence derived from the unconscious desire not to feel pain.
ACT is a treatment oriented to the values of each person, it defends discomfort as something normal and aims to reveal the paradox of behavior: the more one tries to avoid it, the more suffering one obtains. He affirms that what produces suffering is the resistance to discomfort and that the objective must be tolerate discomfortin order to generate flexibility in the regulation of behavior and direct the person’s life towards the goals they consider valuable.
Background of acceptance and commitment therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy is included in a type of therapy called . According to Steven C. Hayes, we find three generations of therapies with scientific evidence:
- First generation: classic behavior therapy. They were useful, but the need to address the cognitive part was revealed.
- Second generation: the . These are aimed at changing thoughts and emotions as well as changing actions. They have been widely studied and applied and their effectiveness is proven.
- Third generation: , functional analytical psychotherapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, among others. What are contextual or third generation therapies? Third generation therapies are oriented towards the responsibility of the person’s choice and not their symptoms. They focus on altering the context that makes symptoms problematic. For this reason, they are also called contextual therapies.
Principles of acceptance and commitment therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy postulates that the above therapies propose techniques to solve symptoms that are sometimes natural, as long as they are human.
Acceptance and commitment therapy is based on the approach that the more effort is dedicated to solving or putting aside something that bothers us, the more present it becomes. How does acceptance and commitment therapy work? The following principles explain acceptance and commitment therapy:
- The human condition: both the experience of pleasure and suffering are part of being human. It is as inevitable to enjoy as it is to have unpleasant sensations.
- What guides behavior: behavior can be guided by the most basic, the search for pleasure, or by ideals or values such as honesty and respect.
- Experiential non-avoidance: against the tendency to flee from pain and eliminate discomfort with all possible resources, experiential non-avoidance is born, arguing that when we try to prevent or avoid thoughts and emotions that are unpleasant, what is achieved is that they increase. Experiential avoidance is an inflexible and limiting pattern of functioning and is one of the components of affective disorders, anxiety, addictions, eating behavior, impulse control, psychotics, and coping with illnesses.
- Cognitive fusion: consists of the error of taking as true what is thought without it being so.
The goal of acceptance and commitment therapy is May life have greater meaning. Since the problems will still be there and negative thoughts and unpleasant emotions will continue to be experienced, however, the actions will be aligned with the values and will have greater meaning. Acceptance and commitment therapy aims to help people live a full lifewhich does not free us from unpleasant experiences, through the provision of meaning.
Components of acceptance and commitment therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy is made up of the following components. The 6 components that make up ACT are:
- Mindfulness: be present here and now, paying attention to the current moment.
- cognitive defusion: cognitive defusion or thought defusion consists of the separation between internal events and identity. The person is not his thoughts or his emotions, these are products of the mind. It is about observing one’s own sensations, thoughts and emotions as passengers in the mind.
- Acceptance: acceptance is the abandonment of the fighting attitude. Stop fighting unpleasant sensations, allow them to occur and observe them with curiosity.
- contextual self: not identifying with thoughts, since these are events that occur in the mind and the self can perceive and observe them. You can contemplate what happens in the mind and who observes is really the Self.
- Values: values are what is really important to each person. It is important to identify them and keep them in mind so that they guide behavior.
- Action: carry out actions aligned with the values. The acts that must be aligned with the objectives based on values.
Techniques and exercises of acceptance and commitment therapy
The techniques used in therapy are the following:
Meditation
Meditation is full consciousness. It consists of being present and aware of sensations, impulses, thoughts and emotions. It serves to realize that you have a thought or an emotion, knowing that you are much more than that. Observe with curiosity what happens inside, releasing fears and prejudices. In the following article, you will find several.
Regulation augmenting
From a behavioral perspective, it would be necessary to reinforce a behavior so that it has a greater probability of occurring again. For example, giving a prize after a passed exam for a person to study. What the ACT proposes through regulation augmentation is that a behavior acquires meaning with a reinforcing function. For example, if the title (which will mean applying for the desired job position) is related to studying today for tomorrow’s exam, the behavior is reinforced due to the meaning given to it.
The exercise, in this case, consists of reflecting, detecting socially established associations and redefining some concepts.
Non-avoidance of unpleasant emotions
If emotions such as fear or sadness are identified as “bad”, the tendency is to want to avoid them and escape from them, something that increases discomfort. It can even go to the extreme of total avoidance, which would be suicide.
However, from experiential non-avoidance, suffering is reduced. To do this, one of the techniques of acceptance and commitment consists of contextualizing pain, emotions and unpleasant sensations as something normal and human from which it is not necessary to escape, but rather from which we can learn.
One of the exercises in acceptance and commitment therapy consists of the predisposition to perceive and feel emotions, sensations, thoughts, etc.
Acceptance and normalization of discomfort
Currently, the functioning of society has no place for discomfort and pain, associating well-being with immediate pleasure and linking pain with something abnormal.
How to work on acceptance in therapy? Acceptance is about stopping fighting unpleasant sensations, allowing them to occur and observing them with curiosity. Tolerance to discomfort is worked on by being willing to experiment without resisting thoughts and emotions.
No control of the uncontrollable
The thoughts and emotions that run through the mind cannot be avoided or controlled. Trying to control internal events such as memories or sensations is not possible, and it reduces the ability to live fully. It can lead to destructive experiential avoidance, which involves the need to control or avoid thoughts, memories, sensations and the circumstances that generate them.
The technique proposed by ACT is to avoid controlling what cannot be controlled.
Observation of thought
It is about becoming aware of thoughts and differentiating ourselves from them. Distance ourselves from our cognitive events by understanding them as products of the mind. You can practice, for example, the observation of thinking to achieve cognitive defusion. It is about understanding that the person is not the thought, but that the person is behind it and can observe the thoughts, sensations and any cognitive content.
By observing thought, you can choose how to act on it.
Values Clarification
It is about finding what is truly important to you, the objective is to clarify what the person wants for their life and the reason for their choice. The exercise to achieve this consists of reflecting on questions such as:
- What would you be doing every day if you could dedicate yourself to something other than trying to take away your suffering?
- If you could spend an afternoon with anyone you wanted, who would it be? And if it were your last afternoon, would it be the same person?
- What would you give to the person you love most for their birthday if you had infinite money? And if it were his last birthday, would you give him the same gift?
Commitment
Commitment translates into acting responsibly towards the chosen direction. Set objectives based on the values, place the person in charge of their actions, create a strategy to direct the action towards the values and act based on the values.
Use of metaphors
Metaphors, comparisons and examples are very useful to illustrate the paradoxes of psychological functioning and, therefore, are a widely used strategy in acceptance and commitment therapy. Next, we will look at several metaphors for acceptance and commitment therapy.
Metaphors of acceptance and commitment therapy
Some of the metaphors used in acceptance and commitment therapy are the following:
Chess metaphor
The black tiles can be negative thoughts while the white tiles can be positive thoughts. While the self is the pieces, but the board. This…