The main style of therapy that I’m trained in and use with clients is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT, as we call it (we pronounce it not A-C-T but ACT)  has a specific component to it to deal with stress. It’s called psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility is defined as the ability to adapt to different situational demands when doing so is useful to lead us towards the life we want. And, for living a meaningful life.  Sometimes flexibility means we try to accept everything the way it is. Sometimes flexibility means we take an honest look at our life and decide that we want to make changes.  Stress can be sneaky. We often don’t know we’re at our limits until we’re at our limits.

Therapy can help us look at our past and present circumstances and see if we’re headed towards a stressful fall,  and if so, what we can do about it.  We may decide to eliminate something in our life that doesn’t fit within our values.  We may decide to postpone things so we are doing what’s in front of us, what’s important to us while moving aside the things we can put off until later.  And we may need to add some things to our life so we can deal better with the stress of the things we can’t change.