Acceptance

Abstract

Acceptance refers to the active and aware embrace of unwanted private events. It is the cornerstone of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) interventions and is evoked whenever experiential avoidance interferes with valued living. This chapter provides a conceptual overview of acceptance, including the conditions that give rise to experiential avoidance and strategies to disrupt these ineffective behaviors and create a context for change. Included is a discussion of the use of functional assessment to identify targets for acceptance, and clinical interventions to evoke and reinforce acceptance or willingness in the presence of unwanted events and with progressively more challenging content. Also reviewed are current strategies to measure acceptance, which have relied heavily on selfreport, but also include frequency counts, session coding, and longitudinal high-density measurement, such as in ecological momentary assessment. The article ends with a brief review of the empirical evidence for acceptance as a process of change in lab-based and outcome studies, as well as directions for future research.