South Carolina Acceptance Therapy
Many kinds of thoughts, emotional reactions, and behaviors can help promote excessive substance use. Some of the things you think, feel, or do may specifically involve drugs or alcohol. However, they may also form part of a more general life pattern. In both cases, these unhelpful tendencies must receive attention during rehab for substance abuse and addiction. Otherwise, they can interfere with your ability to reach a substance-free state and maintain it.
Psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for addressing unhelpful thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A variety of therapy options can prove useful in the right circumstances. One option your treatment team may consider is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). This therapy seeks to increase your or your loved one’s ability to handle the stresses of daily life. By doing so, it can help make you less susceptible to everyday temptations to drink or use drugs.
Looking for a South Carolina rehab facility that offers ACT? Turn to top-rated drug rehab in Bluffton at Southern Sky Recovery. Our South Carolina acceptance and commitment program can help support your efforts to recover from any substance problem. That’s true whether or not your treatment plan also includes other therapy options.
The Basics of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy takes an indirect approach to the treatment of mental health issues. It does not attempt to address any specific symptoms affecting you. Instead, it addresses psychological tendencies that help keep those symptoms active. Common examples of these tendencies include things such as:
- Overly rigid thinking
- Difficulty adapting to disappointments and other kinds of setbacks
- Lack of perspective regarding yourself, other people, or life in general
- Rejection of life when it doesn’t give you what you want
Several key principles help guide ACT’s approach to psychotherapy. These principles include:
- Acknowledgment of our relative inability to choose the things we spontaneously, think, feel, or remember at any given time
- A focus on our much greater ability to decide how we behave in response to our thoughts, feelings, and memories
- An additional focus on the need to act in ways that support our well-being, even in the face of unpleasant or undesirable experiences
During ACT, your therapist helps you change in ways that fall in line with these core principles. Specific areas of change include:
- Learning how to accept the aspects of your inner reality that you can’t change
- Not getting so wrapped up in your thoughts and emotions, especially when they negatively affect your well-being
- Increasing your ability to sit with your emotions and find out more about them
- Learning how to take better care of yourself both mentally and physically
- Becoming more aware of your own personal tendencies
- Learning how to identify unhelpful behaviors and break free of them
- Improving your ability to interact harmoniously with other people
Acceptance and commitment therapy is not just used in substance treatment or mental health care in general. It can also support the well-being of people dealing with serious medical issues.
Want to know more about the basics of ACT? Contact our Intensive Outpatient Program in Bluffton at Southern Sky Recovery today.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
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What Happens During ACT?
How does acceptance and commitment therapy work? The first step in the process is assessing your situation. During this assessment, your therapist will ask you questions that can help reveal unhelpful patterns in the ways you:
- Think
- Respond emotionally
The most important patterns to identify are those that show you trying to control things that just can’t be controlled. Your therapist will then use various methods to help illustrate the difference between the controllable and the uncontrollable. Examples of these methods include:
- Saying the self-critical things you think about yourself out loud
- Looking at those thoughts as just words so you can gain some distance from them
- Learning how to stay in the present with your thoughts, rather than projecting them into the past or future
- Thinking about past traumas and unpleasant experiences as just chapters in your story, rather than the story itself
ACT is highly flexible. During treatment, you and your therapist may come up with new ways to better accept your thoughts and emotions.
Once you learn to accept what you can’t change, your therapist helps you set goals for the future. This is the commitment aspect of the therapy. The goals you set aim to support your new, healthier outlook on the things you think and feel.
Have more questions about how a South Carolina acceptance and commitment therapy program works? Talk to our knowledgeable in-house professionals today.
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The Benefits of an Acceptance Treatment Center
General Benefits
No matter your mental or physical health issue, participation in ACT can benefit you in several important ways. That includes such things as:
- Helping you think about your problems without feeling ashamed, guilty, or anxious
- Decreasing the odds that you will fixate on a negative view of your thoughts and feelings
- Making it easier for you to live with unpleasant emotions rather than letting them drive your behavior
- Improving your ability to identify and achieve goals that support a sense of wellness
Benefits for Substance Treatment
ACT also has specific benefits for people in drug or alcohol recovery. That’s true for both the acceptance and commitment phases of the therapy. On the acceptance side, ACT can help you accept thoughts and emotions that favor substance use without acting on them. The therapy can also help you accept the reality of addiction’s effect on you.
On the commitment side, ACT helps you set goals that reduce your susceptibility to unpleasant thoughts and emotions. In turn, you may find it easier to make significant gains in your rehab program. The therapy can work as a standalone treatment. You may also receive it in a treatment plan that includes additional therapy options.
Consult us today for more details on the potential benefits of participation in acceptance and commitment therapy.
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Seek South Carolina Acceptance and Commitment Therapy at Southern Sky
Inflexible, negative thinking is a common issue for people affected by substance problems. Along with negative emotional responses, this kind of thinking can drive you toward drug or alcohol use. In acceptance and commitment therapy, you learn how to halt these driving forces. You do so by accepting the things you can’t change and committing to positive goals for the future.
Do you or your loved one need a South Carolina acceptance and commitment provider? Call on the regional specialists at Southern Sky Recovery. We feature ACT as part of our wide array of psychotherapy options. With our help, you can incorporate this therapy into a customized recovery plan designed just for you. To learn more about ACT at Southern Sky, contact us today.
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