ACT with Love: Stop Struggling, Reconcile Differences, and Strengthen Your Relationship with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

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In Part Two, you’ll find space for writing down any perceived barriers between your client’s current and ideal life. In this same space, there is a rating system that can be used to estimate how powerful this barrier is perceived to be, from “ Doesn’t prevent me at all” to “ Prevents me completely”.

Below we discuss a few valuable questionnaires and surveys. 1. Revised Acceptance and Action Questionnaire Adapted from an experiential exercise by Monestès & Villatte (2013), this intervention encourages your client to act independently of their thoughts. It’s a form of exposure in a sense, fostering their ability to behave as per their values rather than reacting instantaneously to their mental processes. So, it’s about developing psychological flexibility. As a therapist, invite your client to conjure up all the characteristics they can think of which are related to the thought—Masuda et al. (2009), of course, used “milk”. So, white, cold, creamy, and so forth.Have you tried any of these? How would you describe your own personal variants on any of the activities above? Let us know in the comments, or ask us any questions you might have. Happy practice!

After you or your client have filled out the sheet, it is generally useful to reflect on the insights gleaned from the exercise. Can you spot any patterns? Any alternative behaviors or approaches you could have adopted? Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2, 85-102. In 2009, Dr. Akihiko Masuda and colleagues released a paper that analyzed the cognitive defusion exercise Milk, Milk, Milk. This uses wordplay to cognitively defuse a painful or persistent thought that we might be taking too literally, and which may be contributing to upset or anxiety. In addition, we hope there is something useful for either yourself or your client among this article’s many resources, but if you’ve spotted a super exercise is missing, let us know. Our Positive Psychology Toolkit is also full of worksheets, exercises, meditations, interventions, and informal practices that you can access alongside more information on the theory behind each. Therapists can work with clients to recognize when they are cognitively trying to escape distress through common habits like distraction or rumination (Moulds et al., 2007; Wolgast & Lundh, 2017).By no means is ACT limited to one-on-one counseling. As an analytical and applied framework for behavior change, its potential uses cover a wide working envelope: