Acceptance and Commitment Substance Abuse Therapy

Unlike most other modalities used in substance abuse treatment, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) doesn’t attempt to help you resolve a particular problem, but rather to accept it in such a way that it no longer has power or influence over your actions.

At Harbor Village, we employ ACT to treat certain co-occurring mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression that may directly contribute to your use of drugs and alcohol. We know that the negative impact of these disorders much be treated along with your addiction if you hope to achieve a successful, lasting recovery.

Acceptance and commitment therapy is based on two basic assumptions:

• It’s normal to suffer from negative thoughts. Through this approach, your therapist will help you get past the idea that you must remove emotional pain to have a happy, successful life. In most cases, you are never able to truly eliminate that pain, and attempting to do so often just makes the situation worse.
• Control is not the solution, it’s the problem. When you try to control your negative thoughts and emotions by using drugs and alcohol, you may succeed for a brief period of time, but the debilitating long-term impact far outweighs the benefits of your short-lived relief.

Using mindfulness to confront negative thoughts head-on

At Harbor Village, ACT is one of our evidence-based substance abuse treatments that employ mindfulness techniques to help you face the issues in your life head-on and not try to mask them with avoidance or substance abuse. By using what you learn during acceptance and commitment therapy, you can acknowledge your negative thoughts in a non-judgmental way and not allow them to derail your recovery journey. During this therapy, you are encouraged to develop goals for your recovery and your life in general. You learn how to spend less time worrying about the past and more time focusing on the present. With successful ACT, you increase your psychological dexterity to the point that you can embrace all your thoughts in a positive, compassionate manner.

Call Harbor Village today to see if Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is right for you!