How can you determine if you have depression? When you feel “depressed,” what changes in your life as a result?
Defusion and the use of acceptance views allow for more adaptable responses. Depression has manifested itself. You can learn to recognise and name the qualities and symptoms. However, you are no longer the depression, but rather the location where it manifests itself. You own it rather than it owning you. Learning to practise ACT requires time and effort, and it will not cure your depression. However, even if you are depressed, you may still engage with your beliefs right now.
Abstinence is difficult, according to RedChair Recovery Programs, because so many unpleasant emotions and sensations will surface. Past tactics will have differed if controlling and avoidant behaviours were used. Alcohol and drug misuse have historical advantages but also negative future effects. The good news is that ACT can now be used to treat depression instead of alcohol. The bad news is that you will always experience typical human emotions like anger, worry, and melancholy. The good news is that you can own them rather than being forced to use them as a captive. You are entitled to your freedom.
Practice using ACT. While depression continues to ebb and flow, you can add new reactions, acquire freedom, and live a rich and fulfilling life. Click on the button to buy the workbook now and start on change.
ACT as therapy or ACT as training invites you to notice when you are stuck in unwanted thoughts and behaviours, then to move into values and actions towards a rich and meaningful life.
Excruciating personal experience reveals that long-term attempts to manage depression and thinking are unsuccessful. When practising ACT, we accept ideas and feelings but may choose not to interact with them if they don’t align with our current moral principles. The paradox of accepting depression is that it gives you the freedom to go around, enjoy life, and live. Being depressed is not the same as having depression. The first is adaptable, the second is not.
We have a choice once we acknowledge all human emotions and thoughts. “Do they lead me towards or away from who and what I believe are essential to me if I buy these thoughts and sentiments and allow them to rule my life?”
Depression is not a destination; rather, it is a call to action from you to you.
I have to practice depression in order to suffer from it. Although my thoughts and feelings are enslaving me, depression is behavioural. ACT asks you to let go of avoidant behaviours and attitudes that, in the context of your reality, link actions to moral principles and make yourself open to experiencing life as it happens.