Acceptance and commitment therapy

“While Western psychology has typically operated under the “healthy normality” assumption which states that by their nature, humans are psychologically healthy, ACT assumes, rather, that psychological processes of a normal human mind are often destructive.^[9] The core conception of ACT is that psychological suffering is usually caused by experiential avoidance, cognitive entanglement, and resulting psychological rigidity that leads to a failure to take needed behavioral steps in accord with core values. As a simple way to summarize the model, ACT views the core of many problems to be due to the concepts represented in the acronym, FEAR:^{[citation needed]}

• Fusion with your thoughts

• Evaluation of experience

• Avoidance of your experience

• Reason-giving for your behavior

And the healthy alternative is to ACT:

• Accept your reactions and be present

• Choose a valued direction

• Take action

Core principles[edit]ACT commonly employs six core principles to help clients develop psychological flexibility:^[9]

1. Cognitive defusion: Learning methods to reduce the tendency to reify thoughts, images, emotions, and memories.

1. Acceptance: Allowing unwanted private experiences (thoughts, feelings and urges) to come and go without struggling with them.

1. Contact with the present moment: Awareness of the here and now, experienced with openness, interest, and receptiveness. (e.g., mindfulness)

1. The observing self: Accessing a transcendent sense of self, a continuity of consciousness which is unchanging.

1. Values: Discovering what is most important to oneself.^[10]

1. Committed action: Setting goals according to values and carrying them out responsibly, in the service of a meaningful life.”