Therapies Practiced
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is best described as a mindfulness based cognitive behavioral therapy aimed to help people build psychological flexibility to live meaningful lives. The goal of this therapy is not to eliminate emotions, but to learn how to accept them in order to live in alignment with core values. Acceptance in this context means to make room and normalize emotions as part of your experience without changing them or labeling it as bad or good. In this approach, ACT will allow you to simultaneously experience negative emotions while acting in alignment with what matters most, hence the term psychological flexibility. This is achieved by using the six core practices (interventions) of ACT:
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Acceptance: Making room for difficult and uncomfortable thoughts and emotions. Essentially allowing them to exist without changing it or getting rid of it.
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Cognitive Defusion: Seeing thoughts and emotions as what you are experiencing and not a descriptor of what is true.
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Present Moment: Allowing yourself to be in the here and now by intentionally engaging with the moment. Think of mediation but instead you are actively participating with your environment.
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Self-as-Context: Being able to differentiate yourself from your thoughts and emotions. In addition, being able to see yourself as you are now and not as you were then.
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Values: Identifying what matters most. I.e. the person you want to be and the life you want to live.
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Committed Action: First identifying actionable and realistic behaviors that are aligned with your values, then seeing it through even when negative thoughts and emotions arise.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, known as the first form of cognitive behavior therapy, teaches you how to identify, dispute/challenge, and restructure thoughts and beliefs that lead to, cause, or reinfroce depression and anxiety. The aim here to help people move from rigid, self-defeating thoughts that lead to unhealthy emotions and behaviors to thoughts that are flexible, accommodating, and evidenced-based that encourage and empower. This approach is best used for addressing cognitive distortions such as black or white thinking, catastrophizing, mental filtering, and should statements (often experienced in depression and anxiety episodes). In this approach, you learn how your thoughts and beliefs are often central to emotional well-being and behavior. In addition, you learn to be more accepting of yourself, others, and life. This is achieved by using the ABC model:
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A (Activating Event): Identifying the situation in which you experienced the negative emotion
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B (Beliefs): Your thoughts about the event. Usually this is a conclusion you've come to that you feel certain it's true.
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C (Consequences): This is identifying the response you had as a result of experiencing the event. The response can be emotional (such as feeling depressed or anxious) or behavioral (such as avoidance).
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D (Disputing): Challenging beliefs using exercises like socratic questioning and reality testing.
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E (Effective new belief): Once the core belief is identified and the relationship between the belief and consequences are acknowledged, you then reframe or replace beliefs with one that is more flexible, evidenced-based, and realistic that aim to alleviate depression or anxiety.