Acceptance and Commitment Training
The harder you push a feeling away, the louder it gets. That is the founding observation of Acceptance and Commitment Training, known as ACT, developed by psychologist Steven C. Hayes. Fight the nerves before the pitch and the nerves grow. Argue with the doubt and the doubt gets the floor.
So ACT does not argue the thought down. It changes your relationship to the thought, names what matters to you, and puts your feet in motion toward it. Values are not goals. A goal can be finished. A value is a direction you feel and live toward.
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.Steven C. Hayes and colleagues, defining psychological flexibility, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2006
The Six Core Processes
Acceptance Make room for the feeling instead of fighting it.
Cognitive Defusion See a thought as a thought, not a command.
Being Present Attention here, not on the last mistake or the next worry.
Self as Context The part of you that notices, and is never the storm.
Values What matters to you sets the direction.
Committed Action Small, real steps in that direction, taken with the pressure present.
Where Hypnosis Meets ACT
Hypnosis builds the new state: you rehearse the finished outcome as if it is already real. C. Roy Hunter, teaching Charles Tebbetts, puts the reason plainly: when imagination and logic are in conflict, imagination usually wins.
But some minds cannot make themselves believe the future yet, and that is often why they came. That is where ACT still works. Notice the thought I’m not ready, do not argue with it, and act anyway. Knowing which lane to reach for, and when, is the craft.
Hypnosis installs it. ACT keeps it working
when the pressure is real.
Prosocial
Flexibility is not only a personal skill. In Prosocial, Steven C. Hayes, Paul W. B. Atkins and David Sloan Wilson join Acceptance and Commitment Training with Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel‑winning work on how groups learn to cooperate. A team that can hold pressure together, and still act on what it shares, is trained the same way one person is.
A groundbreaking, comprehensive program for designing effective and socially equitable groups of all sizes — from businesses and social justice groups to global organizations.The publisher’s description of Prosocial, New Harbinger, 2019
Acceptance and Commitment Training here is performance training, not therapy or treatment. Source: Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1–25. Atkins, P. W. B., Wilson, D. S., & Hayes, S. C. (2019). Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups. Context Press / New Harbinger.
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