Quotes on Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)

[Daniel]

"Acceptance is a tricky word. It comes from a Latin root—ceptere—that means 'to receive,' as if to receive a gift."

“Is it gone yet? Is it gone yet? And every time you ask that question, the answer is no—because you’ve just recalled that thought.”

"Backing up and noticing your thoughts...that’s already way helpful. You’re changing your relationship to the thoughts.”

"The deep meta-message of CBT is that you can behave differently, even in the presence of these thoughts. And that's very helpful."

~ Steven Hayes

[Daniel]

“What if there’s nothing wrong with you?” is about building the skill of acceptance.

~ Daryl Chen

[Daniel]

ACT and Existential Therapy - Contemporary Psychotherapy
Arwa Hussein

ACT is rooted in Relational Frame Theory (RFT) (Day, 1969), which emphasises the human ability to utilise language as a tool for making meaning and to make links between concepts (Hayes, Strosahl and Wilson, 1999). Though ACT differs from second-wave CBT therapies such as RFT, it remains committed to building an evidence-base for itself, whilst appreciating the value of avoiding internal experiences that lead to psychopathology (Yovel and Bigman, 2012). According to RFT, humans are able to experience fear and anxiety in objectively safe situations due to our ability to establish language-meaning relationships. Anxiety can be triggered simply through making a connection between a thought or idea and a particular meaning...

Suffering remains a basic human experience and maybe we should stop focusing on eradicating it and more on owning it (Sharp et al. 2004).

[Daniel]

Living Beyond OCD Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Workbook for Adults

Stay "In the Moment," Not in Your Head!

[Daniel]

"With comparative and evaluative relations we can compare ourselves to an ideal and find ourselves
wanting, even though we are actually doing quite well. We can think we are much worse than others, or
(perhaps just as bad) that we are much better than others. We can be afraid of negative evaluations from
others, even if we haven't ever experienced them, and we can become socially inhibited as a result...

A person as complex as you are has all of the cognitive tools needed to be tormented."

~ Steven Hayes, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

[Daniel]

Acceptance in ACT is not an end in itself. Rather, acceptance is fostered as a method of increasing values-based action. This is a key distinction because clients may lose sight of why they are being encouraged to "accept" their symptoms to begin with. Who in their right mind would want to "accept" something that feels badly, right?

~ Sarah-Nicole Bostan, M.A.

[Daniel]

“If you’re living a goal-focused life, then no matter what you have, it’s never enough.”

“Stop trying to control how you feel, and instead take control of what you do.”

“The actions of confidence come first; the feelings of confidence come later.
Genuine confidence is not the absence of fear; it is a transformed relationship with fear.
Negative thoughts are normal. Don’t fight them; defuse them.
Self-acceptance trumps self-esteem.
True success is living by your values.
Hold your values lightly, but pursue them vigorously.
Don’t obsess about the outcome; get passionate about the process.
Don’t fight your fear: allow it, befriend it, and channel it.
Failure hurts—but if we’re willing to learn, it’s a wonderful teacher.
The key to peak performance is total engagement in the task.”

― Russ Harris