ACT

ACT teaches mindfulness skills to handle unwanted private experiences, ie unpleasant thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, urges and memories. It aims to help people to live in the present moment, engaging fully in what they are doing, rather than getting lost in their thoughts, and allowing their feelings to be as they are, rather than trying to control them.

ACT holds that the ongoing attempt to get rid of symptoms creates a clinical disorder in the first place. As soon as a private experience is labelled as a 'symptom' it immediately sets up a struggle to get rid of it. By contrast, ACT aims to change our relationship to our troubling thoughts and feelings so that we no longer perceive them as symptoms. The idea is to see them as unpleasant but harmless and transient events.

ACT assumes that normal psychological processes are often destructive and create suffering for all of us, sooner or later. The root of this suffering is thought, which dwells on and relives painful events, scares us by imagining unpleasant futures, compares, judges and criticizes ourselves and others; and creates rules for ourselves that can be constricting or destructive. Thought creates suffering by setting us up in a struggle with our own thoughts and feelings. When we try to get rid of unwanted private experiences we often create extra suffering for ourselves. It is believed that almost every addiction arises as a result of an attempt to get rid of unwanted experiences such as boredom, low self-esteem, traumatic memories, fear of rejection, anger, grief, loneliness, depression and anxiety. The more energy we expend on avoiding unwanted private experiences the more we will suffer in the long term. The more importance we place on avoiding anxiety the more we develop anxiety about our anxiety. This is believed to be the mechanism behind panic attacks.

People who suffer from loneliness, depression or anxiety seek to avoid these feelings and these avoidance behaviors are themselves harmful. Thus depressed people often withdraw from socializing. In the short term this gives relief, but in the long term it makes them more depressed. ACT aims to replace these avoidance behaviors with therapeutic interventions. It does so by teaching people to reduce the impact of unwanted thoughts and feelings through the use of mindfulness. People cease to struggle with their private experience but expend this wasted energy on taking effective action instead. The two main processes are developing acceptance of unwanted private experiences which are out of our control, and commitment and action towards living a valued life.