Those actions correspond to active (one-shot) gains: for example, use harsh treatment once, you will gain 1 absolutism.
There are only a few modifiers that let you passively gain absolutism (high crownland gives +1/year and one age ability gives also +1/year - the other ones are tied to government forms or to particular nations). It takes some time to get the age ability.
So try to reach crownland > 60% to have at least one passive gain (+ eventually the tier 7 government reform that gives +0.5/year to monarchies), decrease autonomy where you can and use harsh treatment (you already have +3 stab and max legitimacy but you can also contract some RM to decrease your legitimacy and use military points to increase it - that gives +2 absolutism).
Also, you probably have a lot of estate privileges (as your max absolutism is 40) - you should cancel some of them - they limit max absolutism.