The ACT Hexagon Model is traditionally used to introduce
practitioners to Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy.
There are six essential components to the ACT approach
and they’re integrated together to help build psychological flexibility.
We have
reviewed five of the six components so let’s turn to committed action now.
In the last video where we discussed the lifetime achievement award as a way to
work with clients for them to clarify their values, we
ended by saying clarifying your
values can help you move forward on important committed actions in your life.
That
is an essential understanding for ACT therapists.
Clarifying your own personal values
is necessary but it is critical to have those values lead to behavioral change.
In ACT, committed action is behaving in the service of chosen values.
Because ACT
comes from the behavior therapy tradition, ACT therapists with the collaboration of
their client are going to encourage behavioral change
to make the individual have
opportunities to respond differently in their world perhaps to persist at chosen
actions related to what’s vital and meaningful in your life
or to alter how you typically
respond in clinically relevant situations.
And the commitment is defined as action in the direction of what you care about
even in the presence of obstacles.
Let’s unpack that definition.
A commitment is action.
The word commitment is a noun but it’s the kind of noun
that requires action.
We want to see some kind of behavior happen if you are
committed to something.
When you’re committed to some kind of task, process or
direction, you keep moving in that direction with your actions.
And even if there is an
obstacle coming up, you keep moving with your actions through that problem, over
that problem, around or under that problem.
Action is necessary to show that you
are making a commitment.
We also say that a commitment is in the direction of what you care about.
Right
there, we’re talking about values, what’s meaningful and purposeful in your life.
You
start to clarify or author for yourself these are the things
that I care about and that is
what motivates me to engage in these actions.
And finally, the definition says a commitment happens even in the presence of
obstacles.
You continue acting in the direction of what you care about even if there’s
some kind of problem, issue or some kind of obstacle that gets in the way.
These
obstacles can be emotions or distracting cognitions or self-denigrating thoughts or
mindlessness.
And hopefully, you can see that these obstacles are addressed by the
different components of the ACT hexagon most notably
acceptance, defusion, self-as-
context and contacting the present moment.
A commitment means you make a
behavior change according to your values and accept,
defuse, stay aware of your core
self and contact the present moment in order to support such behavioral change.
There are 3 key components in this video.
One, clarifying values helps the client move forward on
important committed actions
in their life.
Two, commitment is defined as action in the direction of
what you care about even in
the presence of obstacles.
And three, in this definition, action is supported when the obstacles that impede
commitment are helped by acceptance, contacting the present moment, self-as-
contact work and defusion.