The Openness pillar:
Willingness: The process of acceptance of emotions, thoughts, sensations and life situations, the counterpart is experiential avoidance, which means to escape or resist by pushing away unwanted thoughts and emotions.
Defusion: The process of undermining language and noticing ongoing thinking. The counterpart is fusion, which is to be fused with the “mind” through reacting, reasongiving, and unhelpful evaluation which lead to psychological barriers from living a meaningful life.
The awareness pillar:
Contacting the present moment: The process of deliberately bringing ones focus to the here and now experience. The counter part not being present to the moment, which is to be distracted by being stuck in worrying or ruminating and missing the joy of life that is happening in the surroundings.
Self as context: The process of making contact with a deeper sense of self that can enable the individual to take a perspective of noticing the context for experiencing ongoing thoughts and feelings from a distance. The counterpart self as content, which is to identify strongly oneself through the contents of personal history, thoughts, feelings and sensations.
The engagement pillar:
Values: The process of identifying your hearts deepest desire for valued living, such as being loving, empathetic, authentic, honest, humble and connected. Values live inside of the important parts of life such as family, friendships, community, work, community, spirituality and health. These values are the compass that guide you towards living a meaningful life. Counterpart distance from values, the process of not showing up to your values by either not knowing them or the life struggles, thoughts and feelings are preventing from living by them.
Committed action: Takes you to that values based life. This process involves creating and moving in the direction of behaviors that reflect the individuals chosen values. Unlike goals there is no arrival or end concerning your values. Taking action on your values can be completed, but there is no end to engagement in the creating of meaning, when you show act upon your unique values. The counterpart unworkable action which is the process of doing actions that take you away from values based living and leading a meaningful rich life.
ACT is taught through direct experience. This experiential way of doing therapy is done through metaphors, exercises, mindfulness techniques and practical skills. From this way of doing therapy, you, as the client, are able to make a healthy relationship to your thoughts, feelings, memories and sensations, that previously where either feared or avoided all together.
By gaining further ACT skills you are able to decontextualize and accept your personal life events, getting in contact with your unique values and committing to life enhancing behavioral change. This will help you alleviate your suffering and bring you closer to living a meaningful life, where you experience true freedom.