Willingness and commitment: putting ACT into action
ACT is not only about defusing and defining life values. Essentially ACT is all about living, action. This chapter focuses on the commitment part of ACT: "getting the client engage in valued actions while making room for their intended or unintended consequences".
Theoretical focus
Willingness & behavioral commitment = actively engaging in actions that may invite the presence of negative evaluated thoughts, emotions, and bodily states.
This induces a confrontation with the unworkable aspects of old rule systems.
Verbal and nonverbal aspects are important here.
Verbal: formulating valued ends & intermediate goals
Nonverbal: through action, actual movement, behavior can actual contingencies be met. Nonverbal behavior is necessary to find out what actually works.
The difference with systematic exposure and behavior change lies in the focus on overt situations + on private events.
The emergence of the old rule systems is helpful in the defusion process.
Goal of this phase = to elicit behavior & to support the client's commitment to sustaining such change.
Comments:
- ultimately ACT is no talk therapy, it's behavior therapy. No behavior therapy without action. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
-old rule systems can be very though. Is it possible to change them in old people, with problem histories of tens of years?
