Designing ACT based career counselling framework (ACT-CF)

Abstract

Careers signify an individual’s personality, habits, and lifestyle. Not finding the right career can lead to poor self-esteem, lowered self-efficacy, a lack of life satisfaction, and even depression. Various negative emotions might be experienced before or during various stages of the career decision-making process and during their performance at work. In the context of “life-career” integrations, there is a need to design specific methods of Acceptance and Commitment therapy for career counselling. Even after many trials and attempts to use ACT for career counselling there still is a dearth of robust empirical data from ACT incorporated career counselling trials. 15 students of age between 14 and 28 were invited as volunteers to participate in 6-sessions (45-minute-long) career counselling programme for each.  A wide variety of issues were discussed including career indecision, procrastination, lack of interest in present career, expectations of family members in career success, high expectations from one self, negative self-evaluation in career, lack of focus in career development, avoidance of experiences related to “evaluation of one’s strengths and challenges”. In keeping with the spirit of the ACT, a non-reductionist and a de-intellectualized framework has been designed as a tool for designing case formulations while using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in career counselling. The framework outlines some of the prominent questions, discussions, implications of ACT strategies and some examples of metaphors and worksheets.