ACT therapy for anxiety distinguishes itself from older approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) through its focus on acceptance, values, and committed action, rather than primarily targeting symptom reduction. ACT aims to change one’s relationship with thoughts and feelings, rather than trying to control or eliminate them.
Key Differences in ACT Compared to CBT
- Acceptance vs. Control: Unlike CBT, which often involves challenging and disputing anxious thoughts, act therapy for anxiety encourages clients to accept unwanted thoughts and feelings without judgment. ACT views experiential avoidance as a core toxic process that makes anxiety problematic.
- Values-Based Action: Act therapy for anxiety places a strong emphasis on identifying and pursuing valued directions in life, even in the presence of anxiety. This helps clients to move towards a more fulfilling life, regardless of their anxious thoughts and feelings.
- Defusion: Act therapy for anxiety employs defusion techniques to help clients notice their thoughts as thoughts, rather than getting caught up in them or battling with them. This allows for a different perspective on internal experiences, reducing their impact.
- Mindfulness: Act therapy for anxiety uses mindfulness to help clients experience their anxiety without trying to fix it. It is not used as an anxiety control strategy, but as a way to become better at feeling while living better.
- Experiential Approach: Act therapy for anxiety integrates experiential exercises, metaphors, and paradox to help clients make contact with feared and avoided thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations. This creates a context where clients can re-contextualise and accept these private events.
What Someone Familiar with CBT Would Find Different in Act Therapy for Anxiety
- Less Emphasis on Thought Challenging: Clients accustomed to CBT may notice that act therapy for anxiety involves less direct disputation of thoughts. Instead, the focus is on defusion and acceptance.
- Focus on Values: Act therapy for anxiety places greater emphasis on values clarification and values-based action than traditional CBT.
- Acceptance of Inner Experiences: Clients will be encouraged to accept their inner experiences, rather than trying to change them.
- Experiential Exercises: Act therapy for anxiety uses experiential exercises to promote psychological flexibility.
- Mindfulness Focus: Act therapy for anxiety includes focus on mindfulness exercises to promote non-judgemental awareness of thoughts and feelings.
Lasting or Permanent Effects Compared to CBT
- Addresses Underlying Processes: Act therapy for anxiety addresses the underlying processes that contribute to human suffering, such as experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion.
- Promotes Psychological Flexibility: By fostering psychological flexibility, act therapy for anxiety equips clients with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and respond effectively to a wide range of challenges.
- Focuses on Life-Enhancing Targets: Act therapy for anxiety focuses on life-expanding targets, weakening experiential avoidance and client efforts to control their anxiety, loosening the dominance of verbal and evaluative forms of behaviour, promoting psychological and experiential flexibility, and fostering actions that move clients in the direction of their values.
- Encourages a Shift in Perspective: By helping clients to change their relationship with their thoughts and feelings, act therapy for anxiety promotes a more flexible and resilient way of being that can lead to lasting change.
In summary, act therapy for anxiety offers a unique approach to anxiety management by emphasising acceptance, values-based action, and psychological flexibility, which may lead to more lasting and meaningful outcomes compared to traditional CBT.
ACT, CBT, Anxiety, Acceptance, Values, Psychological Flexibility, Defusion, Mindfulness, Experiential Avoidance