Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is a type of cognitive behavioural therapy that uses compassion and mindfulness to help clients overcome struggles and live a fulfilling life. We don't always describe ourselves as ACT therapists, as ACT is not in the public vanacular. But ACT is at the heart of what we do at Leeds Anxiety Clinic.
What is ACT?
Acceptance and commitment therapy is an integration of cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based techniques that has proven highly successful in delivering long-term meaningful change.
ACT differs from traditional CBT in several important ways. First, ACT reasserts the therapeutic relationship as a key process of change. Acceptance and commitment therapists focus on compassion, empathy and collaboration to help clients feel safe and in control of the process.
Second, ACT targets the way we think, rather than the thoughts themselves. Let's say we have a fear of food poisoning. Traditional CBT may ask us to debate whether it is likely we will get food poisoning or not, whereas ACT will encourage us to see such intrusive thoughts merely as thoughts, that we can choose to react to, or not to react to.
Third, ACT goes beyond solving the immediate problem and helps clients identify what a meaningful life looks like to them, and gives them tools to persue that life while overcoming their current struggles.
How ACT helps with anxiety and OCD
Traditional CBT often has us engage with our worries. We worry we might be in a car accident, and CBT asks us to debate whether that is likely or not. The limitation of this approach is that even when we have evidence our worry is "irrational", we often simply find something else to worry about.
ACT, on the other hand, changes the way we think. It gives us tools to stop the worry drawing us in. This is a technique that can be applied to any worry, regardless of whether it seems to have evidence for it or not.
Similarly, with OCD, ACT will encourage us to see our intrusive thoughts as mental events, rather than objective reality, taking the sting out of them and reducing the need to engage in compulsions.
How we use ACT
ACT is at the heart of our integrative model. We draw heavily on the ACT concept of defusion and committed action to help clients detatch from their worries and intrusive thoughts, and make positive changes in their lives.