Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a common name for a technique that is becoming quite popular in OCD treatment, and there is a good reason for it. While it is easy to us to get entangled in the endless obsessions and compulsions and to lose sight of what actually matters to you, ACT ensure that you keep living your life the way you should and do not wait until your OCD gets better. ACT provides he compass that allows you to start taking steps toward being the person you want to be immediately.
No one’s life is easy and it is full of emotional and physical pain, rejections, disappointments, failures, and losses. To add to these painful experiences, our minds tend to constantly ruminate about the past, worry about the future, warn us about the real and imagery dangers, and discourage us from taking any healthy risks.
Our minds are the culprits. They throw all kinds of intrusive and unwanted thoughts at us and at times, the thoughts becomes so sticky that they pull us away from the present moment.
When we follow ACT as an OCT therapy, the difficult thoughts and feelings no longer remain the problems. ACT promotes developing psychological flexibility. The core processes can be summarized as:
Being present in the moment
Opening up to whichever thoughts and feelings come up without any need to fight them.
Doing everything that matters to you and taking steps to become the kind of person you desire to be.
When you imbibe psychological flexibility, you tend to have some self-compassion and curiosity. You stop running away and this opens up a road toward the freedom to choose what kind of person you want to be in the moment.
With the grip of OCD, you start reacting in a psychologically weird way, which means you have a very narrow range of responses to your obsessions. On the other hand, when you respond in a flexible way, you will do whatever you choose making room for the obsession without engaging with it. When you respond to your thoughts and feelings in a flexible way, you notice them, allow them to be there, and continue taking steps towards anything that matters to you in life.
Act emphasizes on the fact that we do not get stuck with one or more feelings or experience. We start to accept our life as it is bestowed upon us and simply try to accept things as they enter our lives.
If you want to know more about OCD therapy, reach out to us. We approach OCD with a different perspective and our team will help you with a personalized angle to reduce the symptoms of this condition.
