Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Living a life Guided by Values
Do any of these sound familiar?
I struggle to make decisions.
I’m having a hard time letting something go.
I’m unsure of what I want from my relationship.
I’m struggling to accept something I can’t change.
If so, ACT may be a good treatment fit for you.
What is ACT?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a therapy approach focused on experiencing and understanding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a new way. Instead of trying to solve problems, ACT offers a new perspective of accepting experiences and choosing to live a life guided by values. An important goal of ACT is increasing cognitive flexibility, rather than trying to change or get rid of thoughts and feelings. Therapists using an ACT approach support these changes in thinking through acceptance, mindfulness, commitment, and behavior change.
How ACT Came to Be
The first wave of therapy approaches, psychoanalytic, focuses on understanding unconscious desires and developing insight. The second wave of therapy approaches, behaviorism, concentrates on measurable behavioral change. The third wave of therapy approaches, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), centers on the idea that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected. Negative experiences in one of these areas affect the other two. Their solution to improving well-being is to reframe thoughts, for example, to see positive impacts in how you feel and behave. In response to CBT, ACT agrees that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected; however, ACT locates the solution outside of these variables in becoming flexible in thinking.
Goals of ACT
The primary goal of ACT is to switch the mind out of problem-solving mode and build psychological flexibility, which is learning to experience things as they are, without judgment or trying to change them. This goes along with learning how to live in the present and choosing values to guide your actions and, ultimately, your life.
Cognitive Defusion
One way that ACT addresses inflexibility and not living in the present moment is by altering cognitive fusion, which is keeping your thoughts close and viewing them as ultimately true. This can be helpful for logistical problem-solving tasks, but it can make situations where thoughts are not necessarily true or useful more impactful and even harmful. ACT, on the other hand, focuses on practicing cognitive defusion to distance clients from the thoughts that cause them suffering and stop them from living a satisfying life. Cognitive defusion involves looking at a thought with some distance and perspective. This process changes how the client interacts with thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Experiential Acceptance
To help clients be more flexible, ACT also focuses on shifting avoidant tendencies, known as experiential avoidance. While people tend to avoid situations that cause them pain, using avoidance as a problem-solving method does not protect them from their own thoughts and memories of these situations. ACT proposes acceptance as an alternative to avoidance, but it does not simply mean tolerating life’s painful experiences. Experiential acceptance allows you to be aware of and experience your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations openly, without trying to change or avoid them. Acceptance can promote positive changes in sense of self, attention, values, and action, leading to more openness, awareness, and active engagement.
Perspective-Taking Sense of Self
ACT strives towards fostering a perspective-taking sense of self, which is the ability to shift perspectives on who you are. This leads to the conceptualized self, or the grand narrative of who you are. Understanding how the self extends beyond this story and learning to shift perspectives more flexibly can help build this new sense of self.
Flexible Attention
Attention can often fixate on the past and future. ACT helps clients acknowledge their uncomfortable thoughts and shift their attention away from the past or future towards the present. This helps lessen the impact of fear in the present and moving forward, lowering rumination.
Values
To guide forward movement, ACT focuses on making decisions based on values. Values act as a compass for living, rather than relying on behavior patterns that do not lead toward a desired life. Positive and negative experiences help to identify values. This flexibility encourages living by values rather than looking for a solution to suffering.
Committed Action
To work towards a life led by chosen values, ACT encourages engaging in behaviors that support values. Homework between sessions encourages clients to discover and practice these new behaviors.
Techniques
Specific techniques from ACT support the goal of becoming more flexible. The process is more important than individual interventions.
Accepting Where You Are
A good place to start is discussing what problem-solving attempts have been made and how they have worked or not worked. Unfolding behavior patterns and their consequences can help clients learn to accept where they are and increase their flexibility and workability.
Control Is the Problem
Attempts to control thoughts and experiences can lead to greater suffering. If life becomes a problem to be solved, it is not being experienced presently and fully.
Defusion
Trying to get rid of a thought makes it more important and takes up time in the present, which can make it more frequent. Cognitive defusion brings in aspects of flexibility, being present, choosing action, and understanding your thoughts as just thoughts and not facts. Some concepts about thoughts include:
Ubiquity: Thoughts are always there.
A technique to challenge ubiquity is the Thoughts on Clouds exercise. Imagining your thoughts as resting on passing clouds can support defusion. Look at thoughts rather as something separate and something that comes and goes.
Literality: We tend to experience our thoughts as truth.
One technique to increase is to think of bad thoughts as a radio station that cannot be switched off.
A second technique to encourage defusion is to say thoughts in silly voices.
Automaticity: Thoughts can be spontaneous or they can be conditioned responses.
A technique to understand thoughts that have been linked together is to say what comes to mind automatically in response to certain phrases. You can choose to live your life even when conditioned thoughts come up; you can let them not be important.
Reasons and Rules: We learn to give reasons for our behavior, even if we have none, and we often believe them.
The actual truth of the reasons matters less than whether seeing them as true is helpful. You can choose how to act, with or without reasons or rules.
Right versus Wrong: We place a value judgment on our thoughts.
Having a goal of being right restricts flexibility. Choose to live your life guided by your chosen values rather than being right. It is your life; it does not have to belong to or be controlled by your history.
Who Is ACT for?
ACT can be a helpful therapy approach for a diverse range of people from many backgrounds. It can be used with any age, from children to older adults. Specifically, ACT studies have shown positive outcomes for people of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. It is also helpful in reducing prejudice towards ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and substance users, alleviating shame and self-stigma.
Although ACT is not focused on treating specific diagnoses, it can be helpful if you are experiencing or are looking for help with
Adjustment concerns
Anxiety
Chronic pain
Depression
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Relational concerns
Self-esteem
Stress management
Substance use and abuse
Effectiveness of ACT
Many studies support the effectiveness of ACT components (including defusion, acceptance, and psychological flexibility) in isolation and combination. Multiple studies comparing ACT to other evidence-based therapies, like CBT, found that ACT works at least as well, and in some cases better.
Benefits of ACT
There are many benefits of ACT:
Emotional resilience
Less avoidance
Self-awareness
Self-compassion
Clarity about values
Confidence in decisions
Relief
Feeling more in control
Is It the Right Lens for Me?
If any of the opening statements sound familiar, ACT may be a useful therapeutic orientation for you.
Sources
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. (n.d.). About ACT. https://contextualscience.org/act
Cleveland Clinic. (2024, September 30). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-act-therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Los Angeles. Part 3: The CBT Triangle: How Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors Connect. http://cogbtherapy.com/cbt-model-of-emotions
Columbia Mental Health. (2025, July 14). What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?https://www.columbiapsychiatry-dc.com/counseling-blog/what-is-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/
Hayes, S. C., & Lillis, J. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (J. Carlson & M. Englar-Carlson, Eds.). American Psychological Association.