Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:
Stop Fighting Your Thoughts and Start Living Your Values
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:
Stop Fighting Your Thoughts and Start Living Your Values
Online ACT Counseling in Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado
Online ACT Counseling in Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado
ANTHEM | BCBS | AENTA | CIGNA
CARELON | ASCENSION | PRIVATE PAY
You have probably already tried to think your way out of anxiety, talk yourself out of sadness, or push a painful memory somewhere it cannot reach you. And yet, do to not fault of your own, those same feelings continue to impact the quality of your life. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy takes a different route. Instead of asking you to argue with your thoughts or wait until you feel better to start living, ACT helps you loosen the grip those thoughts have on you and move toward the life you actually want, even while the hard feelings are still along for the ride. At Lotus Counseling Services, our therapists offer ACT informed care in virtual sessions to individuals across Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado.
ANTHEM | BCBS | AETNA | CIGNA | CARELON | ASCENSION | PRIVATE PAY
What Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, usually shortened to ACT and often pronounced as the word "act," is a form of behavioral therapy built on a simple but uncomfortable premise: pain is part of being human, and the effort to eliminate it often costs more than the pain itself.
Consider someone with social anxiety who declines every invitation. Each decline brings relief in the moment. Over time, the relief shrinks the life. The anxiety has not gone anywhere, and now there is loneliness on top of it. ACT calls this pattern experiential avoidance, and it shows up in nearly every struggle people bring to therapy.
Rather than working to change or dispute the content of your thoughts, ACT changes your relationship to them. A thought like "I am going to embarrass myself" can be something you obey, or something you notice passing through. Learning to tell the difference is a skill, and it can be practiced.
The goal ACT works toward is psychological flexibility, which is the ability to stay present with what you are feeling, hold your thoughts lightly, and still choose actions that reflect what matters to you. Six processes support that flexibility:
Acceptance. Making room for difficult feelings instead of spending energy fighting them.
Cognitive defusion. Seeing thoughts as thoughts rather than as instructions or facts.
Present moment awareness. Coming back to what is actually happening now instead of rehearsing the past or the future.
Self as context. Recognizing that you are the person noticing your experiences, not the experiences themselves.
Values. Clarifying what you want your life to stand for, in your own words.
Committed action. Taking real steps in that direction, based on what is possible today.
What Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Helps With
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy was designed to address the avoidance that runs underneath many different presentations, which is why it applies across a wide range of concerns rather than targeting one diagnosis. Our therapists commonly draw on ACT with individuals working through:
Anxiety and worry, especially when the anxiety has quietly rearranged what someone is willing to do
Depression, particularly the withdrawal and loss of motivation that keeps it going
Trauma responses, when avoidance of reminders has narrowed daily life
Obsessive thinking and rumination, where the struggle with a thought is what gives it power
Grief and loss, where the pain is not a problem to solve
Burnout and work stress, often paired with a sense of drifting away from what once mattered
Life transitions and identity questions, where values work provides direction when the next step is unclear
Perfectionism and harsh self criticism
Sessions are held by secure video, one to one with your therapist, at a frequency that you both agree to.
Early sessions usually spend time on what you have already tried. Your therapist will be curious about the strategies you have used to manage the difficult feeling, and about what those strategies have cost you. This is not a critique. It is a way of noticing, together, where effort is going and whether it is buying you the life you want.
From there, values work tends to come early. Your therapist may ask questions that sound less like symptom checklists and more like, "What kind of parent, partner, friend, or professional do you want to be?" and "What would you be doing more of if fear were not the deciding factor?" These answers become the compass for everything that follows.
You can expect experiential exercises alongside conversation. ACT often uses metaphor, imagery, and brief mindfulness practices because these tend to teach the skills more effectively than explanation alone. Your therapist may invite you to observe a thought instead of debating it, or to notice where an emotion sits in your body without moving to fix it. Some of these exercises feel a little unusual the first time. That reaction is common and worth naming out loud with your therapist.
Between sessions, you will usually have something small to practice or a specific action to take in the direction of your values.
What ACT Sessions Look Like
How Effective Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been studied for more than three decades and has accumulated a substantial research base across a wide range of conditions.
Research supports ACT for anxiety disorders, depression, chronic pain, substance use, and psychological distress associated with chronic medical illness. The American Psychological Association's Division 12 recognizes ACT as having research support for chronic pain and for depression. Studies of ACT for chronic pain in particular have found improvements in daily functioning and quality of life even when pain intensity itself does not decrease substantially, which reflects the model's central idea.
When compared directly with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, most trials find the two approaches produce broadly similar outcomes for anxiety and depression. Neither is universally superior. What differs is the path: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works to examine and restructure unhelpful thoughts, while ACT works to change how much authority those thoughts hold. Some people respond better to one than the other, and that is a genuinely useful thing to discuss with your therapist rather than something to guess at in advance. Fortunately, many of our clinicians offer both ACT and CBT, and will be able to integrate whichever option you respond to better.
Online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado
Lotus Counseling Services is a fully virtual practice. ACT translates to telehealth well, since the work is conversational and experiential rather than dependent on anything in the room. Practicing these skills in the setting where you actually live your life tends to help them transfer.
Access to therapy remains uneven across many areas, and finding a therapist who works from a specific model can mean long drives or long waitlists. Virtual sessions remove the geography from the equation. Your schedule and your location don’t have to determine whether you get consistent care that fits your specific needs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Mindfulness is one component of ACT, not the whole of it. ACT uses present moment awareness practices to help you observe your thoughts and feelings without getting swept up in them, but it pairs that awareness with values clarification and concrete behavior change. The mindfulness serves the action, rather than being the destination.
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No. Acceptance in ACT means dropping the exhausting struggle against a feeling, not approving of it or resigning yourself to it. People often find that when they stop spending energy fighting anxiety, they have more energy available for the things they care about, and the emotion itself frequently becomes less intense as a side effect rather than as the goal.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy examines your thoughts and works to reshape the ones that are inaccurate or unhelpful. ACT is less interested in whether a thought is true and more interested in whether obeying it moves you toward the life you want. Both are supported by research, and many people benefit from elements of each.
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Not at all. Most people arrive without clear answers, and clarifying values is part of the work rather than a prerequisite for it. Your therapist will guide that process.
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Yes. ACT relies on conversation, metaphor, and experiential exercises, all of which carry over to telehealth without loss. Research on virtual delivery of ACT has found outcomes comparable to in person sessions.
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Yes. At Lotus Counseling Services, sessions that use ACT as the treatment modality are covered the same way as any other therapy session. We accept Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Cigna, Carelon, Ascension, and many EAP plans, and we offer private pay at $150 per session. Our team verifies your benefits before your first appointment so you know what to expect.
Ready to Take the First Step?
You've already done something brave by looking for support. Our experienced therapists are here to help you move forward, at a pace that works for you. Reach out today to get matched with a therapist and schedule your first session.
