Acceptance Not Approval
As acceptance is actually within the name acceptance and commitment therapy, it’s obviously a very important concept in ACT. In many ways, ACT is considered an acceptance and mindfulness-based intervention, a sister to dialectical behavior therapy or a brother to mindfulness-based stress reduction. It’s in the category of cognitive behavioral therapies that use the concept of acceptance and see the dialectic between acceptance and change.
However, when we talk about acceptance with clients, it can be the last word they want to hear. People can have a very negative reaction to that word. So it’s in the service of flexibility that we be flexible with even the language we use. It’s very important to help clients identify what we mean by acceptance and what we don’t.