Acceptance and commitment therapy

And then during my internship as part of my doctoral program, I learned about this approach to therapy called ACT.

It was just an acronym for acceptance and commitment therapy.

It's a mindfulness-based therapy, which was groundbreaking to me because it was kind of pseudo-spiritual, and we don't talk about that stuff in therapy very much.

At least we didn't used to.

With over nine years of experience supporting thoughtful, high-functioning adults through anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, and life transitions.

Drawing on an integrative approach that weaves together CBT, DBT, ACT, emotion-focused therapy, attachment therapy, and trauma-informed care, Nicole specializes in the in-between seasons of life, the moments when what once fit no longer does.

She has a particular passion for working with millennial adults navigating the quiet pressure to holding it all together, including the profound identity shifts that come with parenthood.

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And there's a real fine line, I think, between the values orientation and drifting off, of course, right? The mission drift or being, as you say, blind to the context or the market data.

We use this tool called the ACT Choice Point in some various therapy models use it, but it came from a place called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

And the idea is that any given decision, behavior, the way you're internally framing something for yourself, you can either go closer towards the aligned way of being, the person you want to be, the life you want to live, live your values, or further away from.

And I think the trick there is that often... it's almost always harder to do the towards move, the more aligned thing.

... and I learned a lot, especially in the acceptance commitment therapy part, about emotional regulation.

But a lot of the behavioral stuff happened for me more so with the cognitive behavioral therapy, but the ACT stuff was really good to blend in at the end-

Yeah

... to help supplement-

Right? And that's to what you're saying, you know, and take those on as our identity.

And again, that's where ACT is so brilliant because it's, it's basically saying, "Look, you can, you can non-identify with these things.

You know, these...

Don't, don't take these as your identity," right? Just take them as a field of ph-phenomena that are just changing all the time and, you know, it's, it...

That is incredible.

Now, along with DBT, the Richling text introduces ACT, which is acceptance and commitment therapy, and specifically a technique called cognitive diffusion.

I love the visualization they use for this.

It leaves on a stream.

If the thought, I am worthless, pops into your head, you implicitly believe that the thought is a concrete, objective fact.

You are fused with it.

In ACT, you practice unhooking from the thought.

So how do you do the leaves on a stream exercise? Is it just a visualization?