ACT for Individual Therapy

Question 1

What is ACT?

Answer 1

ACT is a type of therapy that encourages acceptance of experiences, thoughts, and behaviors, even if they are painful, as a means of moving forward. Focusing on accepting experience, building nonjudgmental self-awareness, clarifying values, and moving towards them can allow us to interface with our own lives and react to new and old situations in more flexible ways.

Question 2

What are the central assumptions of ACT?

Answer 2

1. There are 2 core psychological processes responsible for suffering
   Cognitive fusion - getting caught up in and entangled in our thoughts
   Experiential avoidance - struggle to avoid, suppress, or get rid of unwanted thoughts, feelings, etc.
2. Most common human emotions are inherently painful i.e. anger, sadness, guilt, etc.
3. Pain can be experienced at any time through memory, negative judgements, comparisons, etc.

Question 3

What is psychological flexibility?

Answer 3

The ability to be in the present moment with full awareness and openness to our experience (even the uncomfortable parts), and to take action guided by our values.

Question 4

What are the 6 core processes of ACT?

Answer 4

1. Contacting the present moment
2. Defusion
3. Acceptance
4. Self-as-Context
5. Values
6. Committed Action

Question 5

What is contacting the present?

Answer 5

Consciously engaging in whatever is happening in this moment, psychologically present.

In ACT we aim to develop the ability to flexibly bring our attention to various aspects of our current experience. That might be attending to our breathing, our feelings, our actions, thoughts, what we see/sense, and so on.

Question 6

What is defusion?

Answer 6

Step back and detach from our thoughts, images, and memories. Thinking something doesn’t make it true.

Seeing thoughts for what they are (i.e., something we behaviorally produce) as opposed to buying into them as “truth”. Thoughts and feelings aren’t in charge and we don’t have to fix or get rid of them.
Ex. I am a failure → I am having that thought again about being a failure (defusing from the thought)

Question 7

What is acceptance?

Answer 7

Making room for painful feelings, sensations, and emotions & letting them be.

The ability to experience the present without engaging in some sort of control or change strategy, in other words trying to escape, alter, or ignore the thoughts, feelings, or bodily sensations present at any given moment.

Question 8

What is “self-as-context”?

Answer 8

The observing self: The part of ourselves that is aware of what we are thinking and feeling in any moment.

The you that is observing and noticing never changes. Being able to differentiate that you are not the changing parts of yourself

Question 9

What are “values”?

Answer 9

What do you want your life to be about?
Different from goals: you never a achieve values, you are always just living them. Clients identify what they care about and how they want to move through the world.

In Session: What do you want your life to be about? What do you want to stand for? What truly matters to you in the big picture?

Question 10

What is committed action?

Answer 10

It is only through value-driven action that life gains meaning, doing what it takes to live by our values.

Translating work done into clients living in a way that is moving towards their values.

Question 11

What’s the goal of ACT?

Answer 11

Increased psychological flexibility

Decreased experiential avoidance

Changing Cs relationship with their thoughts

Question 12

What’s the role of an ACT therapist?

Answer 12

Attuned to Ct (noticing verbal & physical responses)

Exercises/develops emotional intelligence (awareness of our own emotions & that of others)

Open honesty around natural challenges with mindfulness (“coming clean” when finding yourself distracting while working with your Ct), which models for our Ct honesty & the practice of staying present, & that mindfulness can get easier over time
Essentially, TH practice what they teach to be effective.

Question 13

What are some specific ACT interventions?

Answer 13

Establish willingness, defusion, and contacting the present to set up exploration of self-as-context

Leaves on a stream meditation

Exercises:
1. Tug-of-war: using a rope and tugging on it every time you’re trying to avoid something, what happens if you just put the rope down? You can see what it is you’re wrestling with, the rope doesn’t go away.
2. Another metaphor is the finger catcher
3. Pushing against book/ therapist

Question 14

What are 3 aspects of self-experiencing?

Answer 14

1. Experiencing self-as-process:
   -Noticing and diffusing from thoughts
   -Learning to attend to what one is experiencing in the moment
   -Notice the ability experience the present
   -Can be explored with experiential exercises
2. Flexible attachment to the conceptualized self:
   -View concepts of self as concepts they have learned via language, which they then learned to attach to themselves as identities
   -Get a sense of how members self-identify
   -Aim is flexibility, being able to identify helpful and harmful aspects of self-concepts
3. Experiencing self-as-context:
   -Being able to differentiate that you are not the changing parts of yourself