Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Less about getting rid of difficult thoughts, more about loosening their grip.
A great deal of effort goes into trying not to feel things. Pushing a thought away, talking yourself out of an emotion, avoiding the situation that triggers it — these work briefly, and then the thought comes back, often louder. ACT takes the position that the struggle itself is frequently the thing causing the most damage.
The shift it asks for
Rather than asking whether a thought is accurate, ACT asks whether holding onto it is useful right now. “I am going to embarrass myself” might be worth examining, but it might be more useful to notice it as a thought your mind produces when you are nervous — and then go to the thing anyway.
That small distance between having a thought and being the thought is what ACT calls defusion, and it is a skill that gets easier with practice.
What a session involves
Sessions tend to be practical and often experiential rather than purely analytical. You might work with a brief mindfulness exercise, a metaphor, or a small experiment to try between sessions. There is usually a thread running through about what you want your life to be about, and whether avoidance has quietly been making those choices for you.
The commitment half of the name matters: the point of loosening the grip of difficult thoughts is to free you up to do something.
Where it is useful
ACT is used across anxiety, depression, chronic pain, stress and life transitions. It tends to suit people who have tried to argue themselves out of a feeling and found it did not work, and people whose difficulties are less a single problem than a pattern of shrinking their life to avoid discomfort.
Sophia practises from an eclectic lens that includes ACT, alongside EFT, Narrative Therapy and Somatic Experiencing.
Who you would work with
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MSW, RSW, B-Ed., BA(Hons)
Common questions
Does acceptance mean giving up?
No, and this is the most common misreading of the name. Acceptance here means stopping the exhausting fight to not have a feeling, so that your energy goes into living instead. It is the opposite of resignation.
Is this the same as mindfulness?
Mindfulness practices are part of ACT, but they serve a specific purpose: creating enough space between you and a thought to choose your next move. ACT pairs that with clarifying your values and acting on them.
What if I do not know what I value?
That is a common starting point and a reasonable thing to spend sessions on. Values work in ACT is less about picking from a list than noticing what you are drawn toward and what you have been avoiding.
Ready when you are.
Send us a message and we will get back to you. If you would rather talk first, a free 15-minute consultation is always an option.
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