Learn How Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – ACT – Benefits Autism Patients Holisticcally

Therapists encourage individuals to acknowledge and accept their internal events including thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Acceptance helps people reduce harmful or interfering behaviors by no longer attempting to avoid or escape unpleasant experiences. Acceptance doesn’t mean liking or desiring these internal events. Rather, it involves making room for them and recognizing them as an inevitable part of the human experience.  

“Acceptance is about having a willingness and an openness to be with your experience.” –Lori Ochoa, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Co-Founder of Bloom Behavioral Health & Founder of Life By Design 

Cognitive defusion involves distancing oneself from their thoughts and objectively observing them. Thoughts are environmental stimuli. They are not necessarily based on fact. Oftentimes, people can get stuck in an unhelpful pattern of thinking, which affects their behaviors. For example, someone may think, “I’ll never make any friends.” This individual can engage in cognitive defusion by acknowledging this thought without judgment and labeling their response to it, then allowing the thought to go, rather than clinging to it.

Contacting the present moment involves being mindful of what is happening at the moment. Clinicians utilize mindfulness strategies to increase their client’s ability to attend to environmental stimuli in the present moment. In this, the individual avoids perseverating on past and future events. Living in the present also helps them avoid the common experience of engaging in day-to-day activities on autopilot, where one simply goes through the motions without attending to the experiences.

Also known as the “observing self”, self-as-context entails recognizing that you are more than your experiences, thoughts, and feelings. You can observe your internal events without being defined by them.

Values are a critical component of a fulfilling life. These are the principles that cultivate meaning in one’s life. They guide people’s actions across their lives. Therapists help their clients explore the values that are most important to them and guide them in living a life aligned with those values.  

While recognizing one’s values is critical, it is not enough without committed action. This entails continuously engaging in behaviors that reflect your values. Doing what it takes to live within one’s values improves their ability to contact reinforcement and live life to the fullest. Many behavior analytic strategies are used to promote and reinforce committed actions, including goal setting, behavioral skills training, shaping, and self-monitoring.  

Through each of these components, ACT can help individuals with autism live a more satisfied life by improving psychological flexibility, emotional regulation, and social functioning. CentralReach’s innovative tools and resources are designed to support the implementation of ACT and ABA therapies in clinical settings and enhance the delivery and effectiveness of these therapeutic approaches.