Acceptance and Commitment Coaching Overview & Tips

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was developed by Dr. Steven Hayes. He’s a Professor in the Behavior Analysis Unit at the University of Nevada. According to the ACT perspective, trying to change difficult thoughts and feelings can be counter productive. The ACT model has been demonstrated effective with non-clinical clients, thus we apply it as Acceptance and Commitment Coaching. This model involves supporting the client through one or all six domains of change - from inflexibility to flexibility.

ACT encourages people to 

• accept what they cannot change;
• learn practical, mindfulness-based skills to deal with thoughts and feelings that get in the way;
• clarify what is most important to them,
• take values-guided action toward goals that enrich their lives. 

Psychological Inflexibility

• When rigid thinking causes people to get stuck.
• We can contribute to our own suffering by the way we handle our thoughts and feelings as they come. 

Psychological Flexibility

• Steven Hayes defines psychological flexibility as “the ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being, and to change or persist in behavior when doing so serves valued ends” (Hayes et al., 2006, p. 8).

Six Domains of Change 

1. Dominance of the future or past to present moment awareness
2. Lack of clarity or contact with values to clarity and contact with values
3. Lack of action or impulsivity to committed action
4. Attachment to the story of oneself to sense of self as observer
5. Cognitive fusion to defusion
6. Experiential avoidance to acceptance and willingness  

Coaching Approaches

• Dominance of the future or past to present moment awareness
  • Coaching Focus: 
    • Building mindfulness skills to shift into the objective observer and take stock of evidence of reality today
      • Coming to your senses exercise – name five things you see, hear, smell, feel, taste
        • Naming without evaluation or opinions
        • Taps into objective observation mind
        • Use that state to take stock of the evidence present in the client’s life today re: whatever the stuck place is for the past or future

• Lack of clarity or contact with values to clarity and contact with values
  • Coaching Focus:
    • Identify values 
      • See Values Exercise

• Lack of action or impulsivity to committed action
  • Coaching Focus:
    • Supporting the client through identifying values and self-concordant goals that they are ready to commit to
    • Identifying the goal striving behaviors that will move them toward those goals
    • Supporting the client’s willingness to accept unwanted thoughts or feelings that accompany the goal striving behaviors and follow through anyway
    • Supporting the client’s use of creativity to generate novel ways to meet the goal when external hinderances are at play

• Attachment to the story of oneself to sense of self as observer
  • Self-as-content – perceiving ourselves as what we think, feel, or do
    Self-as-context – recognizing that we are the human who has thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all affected by various internal and external factors at the time 
  • Coaching Focus:
    • Building in the skills to shift from content to context
    • Awareness of
      • The part of you (thinking mind) that’s having the thought and viewing the situation through that perspective
      • The part of you (observing mind) that’s noticing you’re having the thought
      • Exercise:
        • Imagine your current life from the perspective of your 13-year-old self. What would that self think about your life today?
        • Imagine your life from the perspective of yourself 10 years from now. What do you believe that self would think of your life today?

• Cognitive fusion to defusion
  • Cognitive fusion is being caught in our thoughts, “hooked,” and living through them as if they are reality
  • Cognitive defusion is learning that our thoughts are things, a tool of our mind that, we can notice, check in with, challenge, use when helpful or let go (“unhook”) when unhelpful  
  • Coaching Focus:
    • Building mindfulness skills to shift into the observer perspective noticing and labeling thoughts as they happen (e.g., judgment, acknowledgment, evaluation, observation, problem-solving, openness, etc.)
    • Checking in on helpfulness or unhelpfulness in the moment
    • Shifting to more helpful thought processes intentionally OR
    • Allowing the thoughts to run in the background while focusing on committed action

• Experiential avoidance to acceptance and willingness
  • Exploring the avoidance and approach cycles, related consequences, and fit
    • See Avoidance & Approach Cycles Exercise
  • Building commitment to the positive change or benefits on the other side of the discomfort
  • Building positive coping strategies for the discomfort on the way
  • Generating tiered exposure experiences – pushing through the growth edge