Clinically Reviewed by Dr. Kate Smith
What Is The Goal of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
The goal of acceptance and commitment therapy is to eliminate unnecessary emotional dwelling and reduce negative thinking. This is accomplished by using a variety of approaches that:
- Pull from decades of behavioral analysis
- Incorporate a healthy mindfulness
- Practices acceptance
- Uses deliteralization, which aims to create distance between you and your feelings so that they will have less of a hold over you.
A licensed professional therapist will help you develop a personalized set of life skills and coping mechanisms that are ideal for you and your situation. These tools are what you will rely upon throughout the rest of your happier and healthier life.
Additionally, ACT will keep you centered in the present day, grounding you in the here and now because you cannot move forward safely and productively if you don’t fully grasp and appreciate where you are currently.
How Does ACT Work in Addiction Treatment?
Often enacted during a partial hospitalization program, this kind of therapy has a treatment time that will vary from person to person. When you are ready, you will begin peeling away the harmful effects of the negative emotions you have been experiencing to reframe your way of thinking. This process also helps treat depression, anxiety, or other mental disorders that are causing you to suffer. Your experience with acceptance and commitment therapy will differ from the next client’s.
During ACT, you will be confronting and processing difficult emotions, including that:
- You have control over your body, even if you are not always in control of what is happening around you.
- You will not be good at everything you try, and that is okay.
- Ultimately, your many strengths are more valuable than any of your weaknesses.
- You do not need to act on every single thought you have.
- The past is in the past. The things you did and what happened to you years ago are not happening in the present day.
ACT works in three main areas:
Accept Your Emotions With Mindfulness
ACT will help you accept that some things are out of your control. When you learn to focus only on the things without your purview, your distress over those things outside your control will begin to fade away.
Choose a Direction After Rehab
In this step of therapy, you begin to take charge. You have now gained autonomy over your life and have selected a healthy path forward. You are now ready to proceed with the best of your life. Drug addiction and alcoholism are setbacks, but they do not need to destroy your dreams. Finding the right rehab can help you find direction in life.
Act Accordingly
The time to strike has come. The action phase of ACT will propel you forward, healthier and happier, instead of remaining stagnant in a toxic stew of negative emotions.
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