Stress Management Acceptance & Commitment Therapy

Stress Management

While stress is a normal part of our modern, everyday lives, it can also have dramatic side effects. Chronic stress can lead to behavioral issues, such as drug abuse that can harm relationships. However, most commonly, chronic stress can affect a person's physical health in a number of ways. Many people avoid asking for help in coping with stress management, accepting it as a common hazard of today's fast-paced life.

Yes, at some point everyone suffers from challenges with stress management, but if at any point in time you feel like you have trouble handling it, it is time to get help. Signs that you are not coping with stress management includes a change in your sleeping or eating habits, feeling physically unwell (headaches, ulcers, frequent colds and flu), reduced productivity and decreased pleasure in activities you enjoyed before.

Stress is common when dealing with life changes or situations such as job losses, getting married, breakups or divorces, discrimination, parenting, moving house, death of a pet or loved one, being diagnosed with a serious medical condition.  

Therapy can help you to better deal with stress management issues. Negative moods reduce the quality of several aspects of our lives, including productivity and interpersonal relationships. Through cognitive restructuring, negative thoughts can be challenged and rescripted to help you create a more positive mindset.

Stress can often cloud the validity of our interpretations of certain events and circumstances, and cognitive restructuring challenges those assumptions. In the case of invalid interpretations, the way we think about situations naturally changes, which has a positive effect on our moods and ability to handle stress better.

If you are looking for a counsellor or psychologist who will help you manage stress more effectively you may want to search the directory to find a professional whose approach will suit you best.

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, Integrative Psychotherapy

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy encompasses a range of six principles that aim to help clients develop greater psychological flexibility. The six principles include:

1. Cognitive defusion help to reduce tendencies to regard thoughts, memories and emotions as real and concrete events.

2. Acceptance is about allowing the thoughts to surface and pass without the need to allow them to interfere with daily life.

3.  Being present means being aware of current existence and being involved with the now.

4. Self observation helps the client to be aware of the self and the unchanging consciousness.

5. Exploring values to discover those that are most important to the person.

6. Committed action involves setting goals based on the explored values, and setting actions in place to reach those goals.

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy and is commonly used in therapy, and in it's sub-forms and helpful for a range of conditions, including OCD. If you require Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, have a look at the counsellors listed below.

Integrative Psychotherapy covers the many different aspects of human behaviour and functioning. Interventions in integrative psychotherapy are based on the notion that no single approach is effective or even adequate for every client. Instead, each approach offers some perspective into an aspect of the client's behaviour.

In order to facilitate completeness, integrative psychotherapy aims to maximize a person's being on an interpersonal, intrapsychic and socio political level, while regarding the client's personal limits and constraints.

The therapist has to also commit to the process of integration.  Integrative Psychotherapy therapists have an ethical obligation to immerse themselves in the field and to stay on the cutting edge of developments in the Integrative Psychotherapy field.

If you are looking for a therapist who offers Integrative Psychotherapy, please browse our list of practitioners below..

Marthe Lemire

M.S.W., RSW
Would you like to: Have a better understanding of the past. Clarify and work on acceptance in the present. Move towards a valued future. We are in a unique time, as advances in technology have created new... Read more