Dr. Brummet, please explain Acceptance + Commitment Therapy.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an approach to treatment that aims to change your relationship to your own thoughts. It is based on the idea that we can gain more cognitive flexibility by creating distance between who we are and what we think, so we don’t let our thoughts push us around as much. This is achieved through mindfulness exercises, observing thoughts without engaging with them, de-fusion techniques – all done in the service to our particular values and what we believe makes a life worth living.
What are the benefits of treating OCD through an ACT lens?
ACT is indicated for OCD because, unlike traditional CBT, it is all about learning to disengage from disturbing thoughts instead of challenging or analyzing them. The goal for OCD treatment is to limit compulsions in response to obsessive thoughts, thereby proving to ourselves that simply having an obsessive thought is not dangerous. ACT asks us to disengage from assigning value to the random thoughts we may have throughout the day and to see them for what they are – thoughts.
How does one work past the thought of “it is difficult to be alive”?
It is hard to be a conscious being, almost by definition. But there is solidarity in the fact that this is a shared predicament between us. We have all known loss, we have all known suffering. And this is an inevitable through-line that connects us to one another – it is the basis for empathy.
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