Do you have the right Acceptance and Commitment Therapy worksheets for your clients / patients? If not, download our ACT worksheets bundle below:
In this post, we will highlight 3 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy worksheets that can help you deliver acceptance and commitment therapy more effectively to your clients.
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT, is an approach to psychotherapy that stems from behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. With acceptance and commitment therapy, clients learn to accept their inner emotions caused by hardships, and commit to making the required changes in their behavior to move forward in their lives.
According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), the goal “of ACT is not elimination or suppression of these experiences. Rather, ACT emphasizes pursuit of valued life areas and directions, such as intimate relationships, meaningful work, and personal growth, in the face of these painful experiences.”
6 Principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is made up of 6 core principles or skills. These 6 core skills offer great flexibility through a unified model of behavioral change that has many favorable outcomes. Let’s dive in:
1. Acceptance
The acceptance principle, or expansion principle, is the practice of making room for recognizing and accepting unpleasant feelings, urges, and sensations rather than burying them inside or pretending they don’t exist. By allowing these feelings to come and go freely, they will bother us much less and we will be able to move forward more quickly.
2. Cognitive Defusion
Cognitive defusion is a skill that teaches one to perceive thoughts, memories, and other cognitions as nothing more than normal language and imagery instead of threatening ideas, rules, or objective truths. Cognitive defusion seeks to change how clients react to their unhealthy thoughts and feelings.
3. Being Present
Another principle of ACT is being present, or connection. This principle teaches us to allow ourselves to experience the present moment full of feelings, sensations, and thoughts. It is very common for us to be thinking about the past or future, and be missing out on the present. Not only can this make us feel cloudy mentally, it can cause significant stress, anxiety, and more.
4. The Observing Self
Western psychology mostly ignores this next principle of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, known as the observing self. According to the AIPC, connecting to the observing self is “to access a transcendent sense of self: a continuity of consciousness that is unchanging, ever-present, and unable to be harmed.” The observing self can be likened to a tropical beach, with your thoughts like the weather. Hurricanes, storms, hail, and big waves will come, but if you wait patiently, the calming waves with blue skies will return. Your troubled thoughts will leave you and while you wait patiently, you will develop a mental calmness.
5. Values Clarification
The 5th principle of ACT is defining your values, or the deepest part of ourselves and what we truly care about. Our values provide us direction for our lives and can motivate us to make major changes in our life.
6. Committing to Action
The final principle of ACT is committing to action. This involves a client setting goals and committing to taking effective action, knowing that it get them closer to their values.
How Can Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Help?
Acceptance and commitment therapy is a clinically effective treatment that can help clients struggling from:
1. ACT 5 Senses Worksheet
The ACT 5 senses exercises is a great activity that will help your clients practice mindfulness, or being in the present moment. In this worksheet, your client will list 5 things for each of their senses:
- What they see
- What they feel
- What they hear
- What they smell
- What they taste
Our ACT 5 Senses Worksheet will help your client calm their mind by focusing on their environment in the current moment.
2. ACT Values Worksheet
An ACT Values list will help your client identify what is truly important in their life. Our ACT Values Worksheet will allow your client to determine what is important and what is not important through more than 90Â set values. Also included is a blank template that you can add your own values and descriptions to.
3. ACT Values Clarification Worksheet
What is deeply important to your client and what are they striving for in their life? These are known as their values.
Our ACT Values Clarification Worksheet will help your clients understand their values, where they stand in achieving them, and an action plan they can take to achieve them.
Conclusion on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Worksheets for your Practice
ACT Worksheets are a great way to help your clients using the powerful and proven ACT treatment method. Our worksheets are built to help mental health professionals streamline their practices by allowing you to collect information from your clients in an organize, safe way. If you need more worksheets, you can browse our library of private practice templates.
Want all of the above ACT Therapy worksheets and more? Download our ACT worksheets bundle below:
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References:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509623/
- https://www.aipc.net.au/articles/six-principles-of-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/
Author: Anthony Bart
Anthony Bart is a huge mental health advocate. He has primarily positioned his marketing expertise to work with mental health professionals so that they can help as many patients as possible. He is currently the owner of BartX, TherapistX, and TherapyByPro.
