ACT, and the psychologist who froze in a meeting
In 1978, a 29-year-old assistant professor called Steven Hayes stood up to speak in a heated department meeting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Nothing came out. His heart pounded and he was convinced he was having a heart attack. It was the first of years of panic disorder, and the harder Hayes fought his anxiety, the more of his life it took. The turning point, by his own account, was a quiet vow to himself: “I will not run from me.”
Out of that came acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. Its starting point is unusual. Most of us assume we need to get rid of anxious thoughts and painful feelings before we can live well. ACT suggests that the fight itself is often what keeps us stuck. When you spend your energy trying not to feel something, you tend to organise your whole life around avoiding it, and the life gets smaller while the feeling stays.
The aim of ACT is what Hayes calls psychological flexibility. That means being able to notice a difficult thought, such as “I’m going to make a fool of myself”, recognise it as a thought rather than a fact, and still do the thing that matters to you. In sessions we work on three things together: loosening the grip of unhelpful thoughts, making room for uncomfortable feelings without being run by them, and getting clear on what you actually want your life to be about.
ACT is not a fringe idea. The international body for the approach lists more than 1,500 randomised controlled trials of it. It is used for anxiety, low mood, chronic pain, stress and burnout, and it suits people who have tried to think their way out of a problem and found the problem was faster.
If you are in Tunbridge Wells or West Kent and you’ve spent years fighting your own mind, ACT offers a different question: not how do I stop feeling this, but what do I want to do while I feel it. Read more about how I use ACT, or get in touch.