How does Acceptance and Commitment Therapy work?
STORY TIME!
Here is a real world example of how to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy using a fictional character named Jasmine. Setting: A colleague approached Jasmine, sharing that she didn’t experience understanding and compassion from her during a recent interaction.
Jasmine’s initial reaction was to defend herself - her colleague had challenged her and her body immediately reacted as though she was being threatened. Jasmine mentally pressed pause, assessed whether she was in any physical danger, and brought herself back to the present moment to focus on her colleague’s actual concern. This is one of the core tenets of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - to be able to stay connected with the present moment. When we find ourselves in potentially threatening situations, our bodies immediately enter into a fight/flight/freeze mode to keep ourselves safe. It’s an automatic process; we don’t have much control over it. But we do have control over being in tune with our bodies, acknowledging that our bodies are reacting automatically in the moment, and choosing to take action to soothe those automatic reactions.
Another core tenet of ACT is making space for difficult emotions. Jasmine is human, so throughout that conversation, she felt defensive, guilty, threatened, embarrassed, anxious, confused, vulnerable, hesitant, and disappointed. Others may feel variations of anger/frustration/irritation, sadness/powerlessness, anxious/nervous/inadequate, critical/humiliated, etc. Any and all emotions are valid; there are no right or wrong emotions - how you feel is how you feel. The key is how you choose to act on those emotions. Jasmine could have chosen in that moment to act on the defensive emotion and push the boundaries of assertive and direct communication into aggressive communication, dismiss her colleague’s feedback, and get into a confrontation. Depending on context, that could have been the most workable solution. Ultimately, she chose a different approach. Jasmine chose to sit with those emotions and be curious about where they came from and why they felt so intense. She also practiced self compassion for her own emotional experience - “my emotions make sense”, “my body is sensing a threat, so it’s reacting automatically”, “I am safe in this moment”, “emotions are waves, they will go away eventually if I just ride the wave”, and “other people in this position may feel this way too”.
The last core tenet of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is committing to taking specific action based on what’s most important to you. Jasmine reminded herself that she values openness, authenticity, growth, and challenge. She had to make a decision about how she would lean into and embody those values; how was she going to act like the person she ultimately want to be? Based on her values, if Jasmine were to dismiss her colleague’s feedback and assert that she was right in the situation without hearing her out with an open mind, Jasmine would be acting unlike the person she want to be. Instead, she chose curiosity about her experience, asked for the colleague’s opinion, thanked her for her feedback, and spent the weekend intentionally processing her thoughts to determine what pieces she wanted to keep and what pieces may have not had anything to do with her. She remained open to different ideas and the possibility that she could be wrong, communicated with the other party in an honest way that was true to who she was, challenged herself to sit with the difficult emotions without fixing them, and integrated the information into how she chose to move in the future.
Interested in developing some flexible thinking? Try this formula -
Contact the present moment to build an awareness of what’s going on within you and around you
Open up to your experience and practice a nonjudgmental stance with self compassion
Do what matters - take stock of your values! Make a decision or take action that will help you lean into those values.
