Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) approaches have been a pillar in my work with clients as an empowering evidenced-based therapeutic intervention. As the popular saying goes, the only constant in life is change. Many external factors exist in our life that are beyond our control. Things beyond our control can sometimes this can lead to stress and anxiety caused by uncertainty or even a felt sense of helplessness or hopelessness. The ACT framework has valuable applications when it comes to allowing the self to experience a wide range of emotions in the face of change without letting unhelpful thoughts get in the way of living a meaningful life. ACT does so with a wide range of tools and acceptance of a range of emotions.

ACT was developed in the late 1980s through the work of clinical psychologist Steven Hayes and his colleagues. Today, popular training and knowledge about ACT principles has been made accessible on a wide scale by psychotherapist Russ Harris. I have found that ACT is useful when tailoring treatment plans because it is not manualized. There is no concrete place that you must start making it very flexible. Some therapists may use strictly ACT techniques in their approach, and others may incorporate in more of an integrative way.

ACT has been built upon the traditional CBT approach but more directly addresses the interplay between thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. The main difference between CBT and ACT is that CBT focuses on changing unhelpful beliefs whereas ACT focuses on working toward committed actions that lead to a meaningful life even in the face of difficult emotions. This can be very valuable, as sometimes pushing down our emotions only makes them stronger. Acceptance refers to accepting thoughts and feelings as they come up rather than fighting them or avoiding them, and commitment refers to taking committed action toward your values despite challenges.

Happiness Myths

The ACT framework addresses the following myths about happiness.

Happiness is the natural state for human beings. Happiness is actually a fluctuating emotional experience. It may be counterproductive to expect that you will be happy all the time, as it might lead to frustration when you encounter another normal emotion. Think of the emotion wheel for a moment and the wide range of emotions and feelings that can be experienced. We are complex human beings and it can be helpful to remember that “natural state” is an everchanging flow of emotions like the weather.
Happiness means feeling good. Rather than attributing our definition of feeling good exclusively to experiencing happiness, a more balanced perspective of feeling good according to ACT is living a rich, full, and meaningful life in which you experience a wide range of human emotions.
If you’re not happy, you’re not normal. When we think of our natural state as an everchanging flow of emotions, if you’re not happy at all times and experience a different emotion, that is normal and to be expected.

The overarching goal of ACT is to support increased psychological flexibility. Our nervous systems and the evolution of the human mind has been shaped with a safe-first functionality. In a more primal time, the mind had to be constantly on the lookout for things that hurt or harm us to stay safe and survive. It is no surprise that we inherited this safety-first functionality, and there is now a disconnect between the demands of our environment. When our mind starts to do unhelpful things such as worry or predicting the worse it’s simply doing what it was evolved to do to, and what would have been useful in the past. ACT is about empowering ourselves to see that we have choice. It can be helpful to visualize our mind as a stream or conveyor belt of constant thoughts that run in the background of our life. We have the choice to tune into those thoughts that are helpful and simply observe but not engage with thoughts that are unhelpful. The six core processes of ACT, are tools that can help us change our relationship with our thoughts and feel more in control of our next steps. These concepts of acceptance, committed action, values, thought defusion, self as context, and contact with the present moment all strive towards supporting meaningful existence, presence, and flexible coping with life’s challenges.

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