What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy? What is its scope?

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a psychotherapy protocol based on mindfulness used to:

• increase psychological flexibility
• change or persist in behaviour that are useful to reach the desired goal in the presence of discomfort situations
• reduce cognitive fusion

Is ACT effective? Is effective also in non clinical context?

Some researches suggest that ACT does not fulfill the criteria for being considered a empirical validated therapy, while other researches suggest that ACT is effective for several mental and mood disorders. The American Psychological Association has included ACT as as an empirically supported treatment. I have not found enough data about ACT effectiveness in non clinical context. Therefore my personal conclusion about ACT effectiveness is that it is promising but the effectiveness has not yet been sufficiently proved.

What is self-esteem?

Self-esteem is what you think about yourself, it is the value that you assign to yourself.

High self-esteem means giving high value to ourselves. Low self-esteem means giving low value to ourselves.

Self-esteem is a belief and therefore it may not reflect reality.

Self-esteem can be seen as the difference between our ideal self, that is what we want to be, and our perceived self, that is how close we think we are near to our ideal self.

How to change how we interpret past experiences?

• There is a method called Cognitive reframing that consists in the following steps:
  1. Identify the past experience that we want to reinterpret
  2. Identify what is the thought that is useless and bring us to feel negative emotions.
  3. Do what follows:
     1. Question the thought to prove that it is not always true
     2. Find other meanings of the past experience that are more useful and bring us to feel positive emotions.
• Although I think that reframing a past experience only by question the thought and find useful meanings is not sufficient and it is necessary also to live experiences that support the new meanings and beliefs.

More in general reframing means considering a situation under a new perspective.

What is the cognitive dissonance?

• Cognitive dissonance is the situation we live when we receive new information that are in contrast with our existing beliefs.
• When we experience cognitive dissonance, our brain tends to:
  • do not considerate the new information that are in contrast with our existing beliefs
  • reinterpret the new information to align them to our existing beliefs
  • find new information that supports our existing beliefs (confirmation bias) instead to be open to the new information and try to revision our beliefs.

References

• Fattore 1%. Mazzucchelli L.

What is psychological flexibility?

Psychological flexibility is the ability to:

• adapting to a situation, including the ones that cause us pain, and acting coherently with our values.
• be aware of the present moment and all the emotions, thoughts and sensations we experience.
• sometimes living in the future to clarify and plan goals, sometimes living in the past to lesson learned but always in a positive way without continuously returning on negative thoughts without taking action.
• balance needs and values across various life domains.

Let’s say that Paul has an important test to do in few days. He would prefer to spend time doing other things and he is starting to feeling stressed and worried because of the test. Instead continuing to think about the test in negative way, he decides to remind himself that it is ok to feel stressed. He then thinks what he has done in the past to be adequately prepared for tests and he reminds himself that passing the test is very important to him.

What is self affirmation and why is it important?

Self affirmation means:

• reflect on our own life values and on what matters for us
• acknowledge that our life has value.

It is important because various researches suggest that self affirmation reduce stress level.

Higher stress level indicates low happiness and viceversa.

The stress is the result of a tension. A tension is caused by at least two difference forces that act in different directions.