ACT - Acceptance Commitment Therapy

Hi! I wanted to share some info on a very interesting, very unknown topic. ACT is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and is fairly new. I actually borrowed a book from my therapist about ACT, written by a dutch psychologist. Sadly it is not translated into English so I can't share any links, so I'm just going to tell you some of the basics.

As you may have guessed from the title, ACT is all about acceptance. It works on the understanding that there are 2 forms of emotional pain. The first is ''Pure Pain''. Pure pain is part of human life. This pain is unavoidable and everyone will experience it in one way or another.

The second form of pain is ''Tainted Pain''. This comes from resisting and struggling against pure pain. For example, let's say one afternoon you get incredibly anxious. You fight it with all your energy, you try to make it go away, you try to distract yourself from your anxiety, but nothing works. The anxiety is still there, and it's even worse than before. What's even worse than all this is you feel completely defeated and emotionally and physically drained. You feel like you failed because you're still experiencing anxiety. In most cases the struggle against pain is actually more painful than the pain itself. Now, instead of dealing with pure pain that's part of human life, you have to deal with the pain you created by resisting as well.

ACT works on the premise of accepting your pain. Instead of fighting or cursing your pain, accept it for what it is. A part of life, and something that will pass in time. By not accepting pain you're only making it worse. If you regularly take steps on the growth path, chances are you've seen the ''Unwanted house guest'' video. Try and consider the same perspective here. The guy in the video was upset because his neighbour, who he didn't like, was at his house, messing up his party. So he kicked him out and spent all his energy making sure he wouldn't be able to get in again. Doing this, he completely missed out on his own party. When his neighbour returned again and instead of fighting it he just let him stay, he noticed that his neighbour wasn't actually a bad guy. Once he accepted and welcomed him, they had fun together and he could enjoy his party again. (I'm not sure I've got the entire video right, it's been a while since I've watched it) (''I had a black dog, his name was depression'' is also a good video, eg accepting the black dog instead of fighting it)

Ofcourse this is all easier said than done. Pain, in any form, is unpleasant and it's a natural reaction to want to get rid of it. The point I want to get across is: fighting your pain only makes it worse. Even if you do manage to get a temporary relief from your pain by fighting it, in the long run it's going to come back to you even stronger. By accepting your pain you regain power over it because you change your perspective.

Thank you taking the time to read this. I didn't really have the time to fully go in depth on this but if you have any questions I'll gladly answer them.