Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers relief from suffering and an opportunity to lead a meaningful, vital, satisfying life.

1. ACT: Basics Concepts
J. Ryan Fuller, Ph.D.
New York Behavioral Health
New York, NY

2. ACT in Context
Rooted in Relational Frame Theory (RFT)
Grew out of Contextual Behavioral Psychology
Directly tied to basic research

3. ACT Definition
Steve Hayes has defined Acceptance & Commitment Therapy as:
1.“ACT is a functional contextual therapy approach based on Relational
Frame Theory which views human psychological problems dominantly as
problems of psychological inflexibility fostered by cognitive fusion and
experiential avoidance. In the context of a therapeutic relationship, ACT
brings direct contingencies and indirect verbal processes to bear on the
experiential establishment of greater psychological flexibility primarily
through acceptance, defusion, establishment of a transcendent sense of self,
contact with the present moment, values, and building larger and larger
patterns of committed action linked to those values.”
2.“Said more simply, ACT uses acceptance and mindfulness processes, and
commitment and behavior change processes, to produce greater
psychological flexibility.”

4. ACT: Acronyms
Psychological
Inflexibility
A
C
T
F
E
A
R
Psychological Flexibility

5. ACT: Acronyms
Psychological
Inflexibility
A
C
T
F
E
A
R
Psychological Flexibility
usion with thoughts
valuation of experience
voidance of experience
eason-giving for behavior
ccept reactions
hoose a valued direction
ake action

6. Psychological Inflexibility
Psychological
Inflexibility
Psychological Flexibility
• Experiential avoidance
• Unclarified values
• Inaction, Impulsive
action, Persistent
Avoidance
• Cognitive fusion
• Conceptualized self
• Conceptualized past and
future

7. Psychological Flexibility
Psychological flexibility is contacting the present moment
fully as a conscious, historical human being, and based on
what the situation affords changing or persisting in behavior
in the service of chosen values.
06/24/16

8. Hayes Overview of ACT
“ACT / RFT embraces a vision we had almost lost:
empirically validated interventions, a link to basic principles,
and (like Skinner’s expansive vision) actively seeking a
comprehensive psychology more adequate to the challenge
of the human condition”
“So far as I know, ACT / RFT is now the only empirical
clinical approach with its own comprehensive and highly
successful basic research program in cognition”

9. Essential
Components
of ACT
There are six
essential
sub-processes
in ACT

10. Acceptance
Essential
Components
of ACT

11. Acceptance
Noticing private experiences without attempts to alter or
prevent them, allowing them to run their course without
defense

12. Defusion
Acceptance
Essential
Components
of ACT

13. Defusion
Perceiving private events as private events, not what they
symbolically represent

14. Self as
Context
Defusion
Acceptance
Essential
Components
of ACT

15. Self-as-Context
The self as perspective or the observing self

16. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Essential
Components
of ACT

17. Present
Contact with the present moment, i.e., the “here and now”

18. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance Values
Essential
Components
of ACT

19. Values
Chosen life directions; what one wants to be about

20. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Essential
Components
of ACT

21. Committed Action
Committed behaviors that are value-congruent

22. Psychological Flexibility
Capacity to experience the present moment and behave
according to chosen life direction(s)

23. Defusion
Acceptance
Let Go
Undermine
Excessive Literality
Shared
Property
Relations
There are several
kinds of relations
among these six
essential sub-
processes. “Shared
property relations” are
those in which each
component together
forms a functional
unit. Defusion and
acceptance are both
about undermining
excessive literality, or
(more colloquially)
“letting go.”
Colloquially:
More technically:

24. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Let Go Show Up
Undermine
Excessive Literality
Verbal and
Non-Verbal
Shared
Property
Relations
Self as context and
contact with the
present moment both
involve verbal and
non-verbal aspects
of “here and now”, or
more colloquially,
“showing up.”
These processes are
in the center of the
hexagram because
issues of being are
central to all of the
other processes and
at one level of
analysis ACT can be
distilled down into a
single word: Be.
Colloquially:
More technically:

25. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Let Go Show Up Get Moving
Undermine
Excessive Literality
Verbal and
Non-Verbal
Build Positive
Use of Language
Shared
Property
Relations
Values and
Committed
action
involve
positive uses
of language
to choose and
complete
courses of
action ...
that is they
are about
getting
moving
Colloquially:
More technically:

26. Dialectics
1 the art of investigating or discussing the truth of
opinions.
2 enquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their
solutions.
the existence or action of opposing social forces, concepts,
etc..

27. Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Facets of the
Acceptance and Change
Dialectic
Dialectical relations exist between undermining and promoting
language functions in the service of acceptance and change

28. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Facilitative
Relations
Some
relations are
simply
mutually
facilitative ...
for example
defusion
helps make
contact with
the present
moment
possible
while
contacting
the present
moment
provides the
events that
may need to
be defused
from

29. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
This then is the
overall
ACT model

30. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Acceptance and
Mindfulness
Processes
You can chunk
them into two
larger groups

31. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Commitment
and Behavior
Change Processes
Thus the name
“Acceptance and
Commitment
Therapy”
and

32. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
is this
psychological
space
The Essence of
ACT Work
and what it is,
is the answer to
this central ...

33. Self as
Context
Contact with the
Present Moment
Defusion
Acceptance
Committed
Action
Values
Psychological
Flexibility
(1) Given a distinction between
you and the stuff you are
struggling with and trying to
change
(2) are you willing to
have that stuff, fully
and without defense
(3) as it is, and not
as what it says it is,
(4) AND do what
takes you in the
direction
(5) of your chosen
values
(6) at this time, in
this situation?
ACT Question
If the answer is
“yes,” that is
what builds...