Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): I love my Feelings!

Feelings are our friends!

“Please lock me away and don’t allow the day here inside where I hide with my loneliness. I don’t care what they say I won’t stay in a world without love. Birds sing out of tune and rainclouds hide the moon. I’m ok. Here I’ll stay with my loneliness. I don’t care what they say. I won’t stay in a world without love.”

-Lyrics from the song “A World Without Love” written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Despite the short-term benefits that come from squashing your emotions and mastering a poker face, a long-term relationship with your own happiness means you have to value your emotions. All. Of. Them. The good, the bad, the ugly, etc. Unfortunately, numbing and avoiding are temporary solutions that throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s easy to forget that replacing your emotions with distance and apathy also makes it harder to feel joy, love, trust, and connection.

Suppressing your emotions never works. When you push your feelings away, they wait for you for later and sometimes they grow in that darkness and solitude.

As a therapist, the main reason I was drawn to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), is its emphasis on mindfulness and acceptance of our emotions. ACT therapy is an evidence-based therapy method that teaches a better relationship between your thoughts and feelings as well as emphasizing values-based action. I was raised, like many, to put my feelings aside. However, the disconnection that comes from repeatedly putting your feelings last, comes at a price. Feelings are a useful guide to understanding your needs. It’s important to me that the science behind therapy is understood, so I’ve reviewed some of the research and will be sharing a little bit about this underrated therapy approach.

As a counselor, I like to use a blend of different therapeutic approaches. When it comes to teaching emotional coping skills, I turn to the basics of ACT. This therapy approach teaches clients how to increase awareness of their thoughts, emotions, and behavior, much like another commonly recommended behavioral therapy: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This makes it a great approach for anyone who struggles with focus, low motivation, or difficulty meeting goals.

However, there are some key differences. To begin with, While CBT focuses on teaching you how to analyze and change your thoughts, ACT doesn’t challenge your thoughts or beliefs. ACT is focused on healing the relationship you have between your behavior, feelings, and thoughts. Meanwhile, with a therapist that uses CBT you will learn about “thinking errors” and focus on changing your thoughts. ACT moves the focus away from trying to control or regulate emotions, to nurturing and understanding them. Our emotions are not good or bad. Just like a petulant child, “negative” feelings usually just need some attention and help solving the problem. Much like when pets bother you for mealtime, your emotions are reminding you that something needs attention. Taking a nurturing and nonjudgmental approach of acceptance towards emotions can be a huge relief for clients that struggle with overwhelming feelings. ACT can help you master mindfulness and calm as you learn to embrace any emotion with an open mind and curiosity instead of judgment.

Another little-known fact about ACT, is that she’s the queen of improving psychological flexibility and has been shown in meta-analyses to be more effective at improving psychological flexibility than CBT. (Fang & Ding, 2023).Psychological flexibility is the ability to ‘recognize and adapt to various situational demands; shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies compromise personal or social functioning; maintain balance among important life domains; and be aware, open, and committed to behaviors that are congruent with deeply held values.’ (Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010)

Mindfulness and psychological flexibility are especially important to wellness because things change and so much of life is about weathering the storms and doing the best you can with what is there. It’s not helpful to prepare yourself for a perfect way to think about problems. You can’t control what happens around you, but you can find what matters to you and keep your peace and sanity along the way.

I see ACT as an approach that focuses on the long term. This is not a short-term quick fix, but a long-term shift towards identifying and then acting in alignment with your values. Everyone has different values, but when you can identify them and act in alignment with them, you can leave doubt behind and live a more meaningful life. What’s grounded in you and is right for you, will lead to the right things.

I hope this was helpful and if you are in Florida and looking for counseling and think this approach might help you, please feel free to fill out an inquiry on my contact page and I will be happy to assist!

References:

A-Tjak, J. G., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A., & Emmelkamp, P. M. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 84(1), 30–36. https://doi.org/10.1159/000365764

Cleveland Clinic. (2024, September 30). Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): What it is. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy-act-therapy

Fang, S., Ding, D. (2023). The differences between acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioral therapy: A three-level meta-analysis. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212144723000352

Kashdan, T. B., & Rottenberg, J. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical psychology review, 30(7), 865–878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.001

Zou, Y., Wang, R., Xiong, X., Bian, C., Yan, S., & Zhang, Y. (2025). Effects of acceptance and commitment therapy on negative emotions, automatic thoughts and psychological flexibility for depression and its acceptability: a meta-analysis. BMC psychiatry, 25(1), 602. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-025-07067-w