​

​​​What is ACT?

 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT (pronounced like the word "act"), is a modern, evidence-based therapy that takes a fundamentally different approach to psychological distress.

​

Most of us have been taught, either by life or by traditional therapy, that the goal is to feel better. To challenge the negative thoughts, reduce the anxiety, eliminate the problem. ACT asks a different question entirely: what if the problem isn't the thoughts and feelings themselves, but our relationship with them?

​

ACT doesn't aim to fix you, reduce your symptoms, or help you think more positively. It teaches you to relate differently to your inner experience, to make room for difficult thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them, and to build a life guided by what genuinely matters to you, even when that life includes discomfort, uncertainty, or pain.

​

The result isn't a life free from struggle. It's a life that isn't controlled by it.

​

​

How ACT is Different from Traditional CBT

 

I trained as a CBT therapist, and CBT has genuinely useful elements. It's particularly good at identifying unhelpful thinking patterns and building practical coping strategies. For many people, it works well.

​

But I noticed something over the years. For clients whose difficulties ran deeper, whose anxiety or low mood was rooted in long-standing beliefs about themselves or the world, CBT often helped at the surface while leaving the deeper stuff untouched. We'd challenge a thought, find a more balanced perspective, and yet something fundamental hadn't shifted.

​

I experienced this personally. I carry a deep sense of being unworthy. That kind of belief doesn't really respond to being argued with. You can challenge it logically all you like, and part of you just doesn't buy it.

​

Traditional CBT asks: "Is this thought true? Is there evidence for and against it?" ACT asks a different question: "Is engaging with this thought helping you live the life you want?" It's not about whether the thought is accurate. It's about whether you're letting it run the show.

​​

​

My Own Experience of ACT

 

I came across ACT when a colleague shared a training they'd recently completed, along with a YouTube video by Joe Oliver called "The Unwanted Party Guest." I'd encourage you to watch it. It's a few minutes long and captures something essential about how we relate to difficult thoughts and feelings.

​

(Link: The Unwanted Party Guest, Joe Oliver, YouTube)

​

That video, and what followed, changed how I understood myself.

​

I had always struggled to feel or express my feelings. I grew up believing that needing things from people made you a burden, that showing vulnerability was weakness. I was highly functional on the outside and highly disconnected on the inside.

​

CBT gave me tools. ACT gave me a framework for understanding my own human condition, and crucially, for accepting it rather than fighting it. I learned that my sense of unworthiness, my difficulty with feelings, my tendency to withdraw, these weren't flaws to be fixed. They were understandable responses to a particular life history. I didn't need to eliminate them. I needed to change my relationship with them.

​

ACT didn't just give me techniques. It gave me a new framework for how to live, one I come back to in my own life as much as I use it with clients. It has helped me become more open with myself and others, which helps me to deal with the problems in my life. It underpins the daily routines that have kept me relatively depression-proof for many years. It isn't something I learned and put down. And given I am an imperfect human being just like everyone else, it's something I continue to practice. It even helped me to stop smoking!

​

When I work with clients using ACT, I'm not teaching theory from a distance. I know what it feels like to sit with the discomfort of opening up, to choose values-based action when every instinct says retreat, to accept a part of yourself which feels incredibly toxic or shameful. 

​​

​

What ACT Does​

 

At the heart of ACT is the idea of psychological flexibility: the ability to be open to your experience, stay present, and take action guided by your values, even when difficult thoughts and feelings show up.

​

This involves learning to:

​

Accept what you cannot change about your inner experience, rather than fighting it or resigning yourself to it.

​

Step back from your thoughts, seeing them as passing mental events rather than facts or commands you must obey.

​

Stay present with what's actually happening, rather than being pulled into past regrets or future fears.

​

Understand yourself as more than your thoughts and feelings, you are the observer of your experience, not the experience itself.

​

Clarify your values, the things that genuinely matter to you, so your choices are guided by what you care about rather than what you're afraid of.

​

Take committed action, moving toward the life you want, in small or large steps, even when it's uncomfortable.

​

These six areas are sometimes called the ACT Hexaflex, and together they build psychological flexibility. Each is explored in more depth on its own page:

​

• [Acceptance: learning to feel and understand yourself]

• [Cognitive Defusion: stepping back from your thoughts]

• [Being Present: connecting with the here and now]

• [Self as Context: you are more than a few one dimensional stories]

• [Values: what genuinely matters to you]

• [Committed Action: living it, not just knowing it]

 

If you're curious about the science underpinning ACT, including Relational Frame Theory and why human language creates suffering in ways it doesn't for other animals, that's explored here too:

• [The Geeky Bit: the science behind ACT]​​

 

 

Who ACT can help

 

ACT has a strong evidence base across a wide range of difficulties, including anxiety disorders, OCD, depression, chronic pain, stress, and trauma.

​

In my practice, I work primarily with OCD and anxiety, and ACT is central to how I approach that work. OCD in particular responds well to the ACT framework, partly because the core problem in OCD is precisely the struggle with unwanted inner experience, the attempt to control, fix, or eliminate thoughts and feelings that can't be controlled, fixed, or eliminated.

​

ACT doesn't promise to rid you of intrusive thoughts, anxiety, or distress. It offers something more durable: a different relationship with those experiences, one where they no longer need to dictate your choices or define your life.

​

If you'd like to explore whether ACT might be right for you, feel free to get in touch.

​

​