Hello, and thank you for sticking with me over the past few months for this multi-part series on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Today’s post is going to be my last one on the subject, tying the contents of the previous posts with the “final step” so to speak. As you might have guessed we are going to be talking about committed action.
Committed action is probably the most straightforward element in ACT, though there is some nuance. It’s doing the thing you came to therapy for. Making the change. Living your life. There’s a deeper meaning though. Committed action isn’t something that happens to you that solves your problems for you. It involves you making the commitment to make positive change in your life for yourself. You, whatever that is that you identify to be yourself, consciously makes the choice to change your own behavior based on your personal values.
Don’t worry, your therapist is there to help you out with that. He is getting paid for a reason after all. Certain therapeutic techniques that can come into play for this could be things like gradual exposure therapies, behavioral activation, mindfulness skills that you picked up earlier, social skills training, or any of the other potential homework possibilities that can be assigned during therapy.
The committed action stage is also where you put those other parts of ACT to use. You consciously accept your emotional experiences and separate yourself from the thoughts that take over your brain using things like mindfulness strategies. The committed action you choose to make is one dictated by your values, not one that someone else forces on you. Once you have been able to put all those elements into practice, you’ll noticing yourself living a life which looks a lot like the one you want to be living.
There you have it, ACT in five blog posts. Eagle eyed readers who have previous experience in ACT might notice a sixth part missing. That isn’t a refection of my approach to therapy but rather streamlining the process for an audience that may not have been exposed to ACT before. I hope this series has given you a little better insight into one of the approaches I use during therapy and made the process seem more approachable. Thank you for sticking around and I hope you enjoyed the read.
-Travis