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Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) · Foundation
ACT Foundations
Psychological flexibility, the hexaflex, and why the struggle with feelings is the problem ACT treats.
Most people, and many therapies, assume that difficult thoughts and feelings must be reduced before life can improve. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy begins from the opposite observation: that the struggle against inner experience is itself the engine of much suffering. This course teaches ACT from the ground up, for trainees and practitioners meeting the model for the first time.
You will begin with the ACT stance: creative hopelessness, the discovery that the control agenda has been tried and has failed, and acceptance properly defined as willingness rather than resignation. You will learn defusion, the skill of seeing thoughts as thoughts rather than obeying them as orders, and meet the observing self, the perspective from which all experience can be held. The second module completes the model: values as chosen life directions rather than achievable goals, and committed action as the behavioural discipline that turns direction into a life, drawing the whole hexaflex together.
Full written lessons, each with key points and an experiential practice task, because ACT is learned by doing, with a built-in study tutor available throughout. Six hours of CPD, around six months of access, a final assessment, and a personalised certificate on passing.
▶ See inside the digital classroom1 minute 36 seconds · how a course is laid out, how each lesson is taught, and how the tutor helps
Before you start
This is a Foundation course in the ACT pathway. It assumes nothing: it is written for someone meeting the approach for the first time. What it adds is the working model, its vocabulary and its evidence base, so that the Practitioner course can assume them; it revisits the foundations only as far as it needs to before building on them, so it does not repeat the course below.
When you have completed it, ACT in Practice is the next step in the pathway.
The ACT pathway. Acceptance and commitment therapy from the six core processes to process-based work with complex presentations.
13.5 study hours13.5 CPD hours certified6 months of accessAI tutor in every lessonCertificate on completion (pass mark 70%)
What you will be able to do
✓Explain ACT's view that suffering grows from experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion, not from feelings themselves
✓Describe the six hexaflex processes and how together they constitute psychological flexibility
✓Demonstrate simple defusion techniques that change a thought's grip rather than its content
✓Distinguish acceptance as willingness from resignation or approval
✓Help a client clarify values as chosen life directions distinct from goals
✓Use the ACT matrix to sort towards and away moves in everyday situations
What you will study
Module 1: The ACT stance
Creative hopelessness, control as the problem, and acceptance properly defined.
The struggle is the problemInternal control strategies work poorly and the struggle narrows life
Defusion and the observing selfFusion: being had by a thought; defusion restores the gap
Defining Acceptance and the Control StanceAcceptance is a process of willingness, not a feeling of liking or resignation to fate.
The Cycle of Change: Breaking the Trap of Experiential AvoidanceThe Psychological Flexibility Cycle describes the loop of experiential avoidance, inflexibility, and suffering that maintains psychological distress.
Module 2: Values and action
What matters, and doing what matters with the mind along.
Values: chosen directions, not goalsValues are directions; goals are completable stops along them
Committed action and the whole modelCommitted action: valued behaviour with obstacles carried, not removed
Cognitive Defusion: The Bridge Between Values and ActionCognitive defusion changes the relationship with thoughts rather than suppressing them.
Assessing and Monitoring Valued Living: Tools for Clarifying DirectionThe Valued Living Questionnaire quantifies importance and consistency across ten life domains, revealing valued‑living gaps.
The Role of Present‑Moment Awareness in Valued ActionPresent‑moment awareness creates psychological space that allows values to guide action rather than avoidance.
Module 3: Psychological flexibility in the room
The model as a clinical map rather than a diagram: present-moment contact, working out what a behaviour is for, and the opening move that makes the rest of the work possible.
The hexaflex as a clinical map, not a diagramThe six processes are one process described six ways; they are not six techniques to be applied in turn
Contact with the present momentPresent-moment contact is flexible attention, not relaxation and not meditation
Functional analysis: what the behaviour is forTopography is what a behaviour looks like; function is what it is for, and only function guides the work
Creative hopelessness, done kindlyThe hopelessness is about the strategy, never about the
