Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

I first learned about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in my graduate program, and it resonated immediately. It started as one of the main pillars of my practice and its stayed there, even as a lot about me and my work has changed over the years. 

I truly believe one of the most important guides for living is deeply knowing and connecting with our values - this can sound obvious - who doesn’t want to live in alignment with their values?

Sounds nice.

Sounds expected.

But I don’t think a lot of us truly examine our values. I think we know what we’re expected to value. We know what we’re taught to value by our families, communities, religions, cultures, society – and maybe a few (or even a lot!) of those values deeply resonate with who we are. But we’re not always encouraged to go within and inquire for ourselves what truly matters to each of us. 

I think every human values things a bit differently than anyone else - two humans could both agree that “authenticity” is one of their top values, but how they express that value could be wildly different.

Sometimes we get confronted by values erupting to the surface: a teen leaving home and going to college and acts “wild”, a midlife crisis where someone “changes overnight”, overwhelming burnout that forces career change or unemployment - these are all common examples of when someone’s untended or unexamined values assert themselves in potentially life-altering ways. 

ACT asks: what do I actually care about? What actually matters to me? And once I know, how do I act (get it?) in alignment with my true values. 

Again, this can sound obvious. But our values, and the barriers to living in alignment with them, can be subtle and even sneaky. 

For example, a lot of people value the act of writing and maybe even identify as “writers” - but do they actually write? Do they write every day? Every week? Every year?Or do they value the idea of being a writer without aligned action behind it? 

Not to pick on writers who struggle to write, I’m one myself. 

But it’s a solid example of how we can know, to the depths of our being, that something matters to us but we don’t do it. 

So what gets in the way? And even if I know what gets in the why, how can I shift? 

Now, ACT is a behavioral therapy and can value external action above all else - which isn’t bad, but it’s not my primary mode of operating. 

In between “what I value” and “what I do” can be major psychic gaps. Chasms, even. It’s not often as simple as “if you really want it, you’ll just do it”. 

We can get really good at performing actions that align with values we don’t really hold - maybe we work a soul-sucking job because it pays really well and we’ve been taught to value financial stability. 

Maybe we perform in our relationships in ways that harm us because we’ve been taught to put others first. 

The amount of clients I’ve worked with who give most of their energy to things they feel should be important and then ask themselves why there’s nothing left for themselves…is a lot. 

In fact, in our Western US culture, I feel like one of the most insidious and unexamined values is the idea that our energy should be endless. That you should be able to “have it all”. That any challenges or limitations you encounter are character flaws - weaknesses to overcome with discipline and strategies. 

Now, discipline and strategies can have their place in our lives - we all have the capacity to grow and learn new things in our own ways.

But before we decide our inherent being is the problem, where is our energy going? And do we actually care about those things?

Before I demand my body, my nervous system, to just produce more energy - how do I steward the energy I already have?

ACT helps us ask those questions and find those personal, internal answers. Once we know those answers, often the external path forward appears. 

Please reach out if you have questions or want to learn more!