Be Present, Open Up, Do What Matters: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Flexibility and Vitality

By Megan Porath, MSW Intern

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an evidence-based behavioral therapy that emphasizes mindfulness and values-based action to improve quality of life and become more like who we truly want to be.

Before I became a full-time employee in my early twenties, I used to write songs on my days off. It was my favorite thing to do, and I found it so fulfilling and joyful. But for almost 8 years, once I took on full-time work and was learning to cope with all of the many obligations of adulthood, I never made time for it. Not once did I sit down with my guitar and let an idea come to me.

Instead, I fell into some unhelpful but powerful habits to cope with stress: consuming TV shows and movies, mindless scrolling, and packing my social calendar with scarcely any moments to myself. I knew something important was missing in my life, but I found these patterns difficult to break on my own steam because of how they provided a sense of immediate relief and gratification.

It wasn’t until a few years ago when I began noticing how much of my time and energy was being consumed by these patterns of mindless entertainment and constant socializing that I decided I had to make a change. Because I can be a drastic person, I took two full weeks off from all digital media and most social activity.

It wasn’t fun at first. A lot of difficult feelings and thoughts came up for the first many days that I didn’t know what to do with. I wanted to escape into my old self-soothing habits to run away from the pain. But I had become so tired of the person that I had become through these habits that to give in now felt like a far worse choice.

Near the end of those two weeks, I took a 15-minute walk around my neighborhood, only to rush home to try to get down the song that came into my mind, almost fully formed before I even opened my front door. I wrote it down and recorded a rough voice memo of the melody.

In the coming days, it was as if my mind had forgotten that I no longer write songs. All of the sudden, I knew I could do it again – because I had just done it. I wrote a song almost every day for a couple weeks. Some were better than others, but the joy of making things again was far more precious to me than their artistic value.

Stumbling Into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Without realizing it, I had been practicing some skills of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In this blog series, I will be sharing the basics of this model of therapy so that you can begin exploring how to grow in the skills and processes it teaches, both on your own and with your therapist.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’s name comes from acceptance – which reduces the impact and influence of painful thoughts and feelings – and commitment – which supports us in taking action that builds richer, fuller, and more meaningful lives by behaving in ways that are more aligned with our core values.

We all have an innate longing to become the sort of person we feel we truly are, and to act based on what matters to us in the deepest places in our hearts. The tools and processes of ACT help us increase psychological flexibility so that we can respond in new and more effective ways to the problems life will inevitably bring us as we live out our values.

Mindfulness and Committed Action

The six key processes of ACT can be summarized into three overarching themes: be present, open up, and do what matters. In the next few posts, I will provide a brief overview of some of the processes involved with growing in these psychological skills so that we can compassionately and mindfully choose actions that are aligned with how we want to show up in our lives.

With this series, I encourage you to reflect, journal, and begin experimenting with some of these concepts even now. You don’t have to wait until your next appointment with your therapist, coach, or mentor. One of ACT’s greatest strengths is how it builds upon the strengths and self-awareness we all already naturally and uniquely have! I look forward to sharing more about this powerful set of tools with you over the coming weeks.

"True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving."

Mark Manson

Questions for Reflection

When you reflect back on your life, what are the most meaningful experiences you remember having? What matters to you about those experiences?

What are some of the ways you might begin making different choices to have more experiences like that now?

References

Harris, R. (2019). ACT made simple (2nd ed.). New Harbinger Publications.