What Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?

Abstract

Human beings use language to shape their world: to structure it and give it meaning. Language builds our skyscrapers, imparts the strength to our steel, creates the elegance of our mathematics, and forms our art’s depiction of beauty. Language has been the source of so much human achievement that it is only natural that we look to it first to identify a problem and craft a solution. But it is precisely because language can be so useful that it can also be problematic. Language not only enables human achievements, but also our ability to project fearsome futures, to compare ourselves to unrealistic ideals and find ourselves wanting, or to torment our souls with the finitude of life itself. Language is at the core of the remarkable human tendency to suffer in the midst of plenty.