Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Guelph

For adults working on anxiety, avoidance, and difficult emotions

A Guelph OCD therapist in Alberta climbing on rocks on a hike

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is a therapy approach for dealing with thoughts and emotions that leave us feeling frustrated, especially pushy or anxious ones. Instead of fighting with those thoughts and emotions, ACT teaches you to make room for them while you get on with your life.

The “acceptance” part means you stop fighting your own brain, because the fight itself is what eats up your energy. The “commitment” part means you get specific about what matters to you, and then you start moving toward it, whether or not you feel ready yet.

This skill is called “psychological flexibility.” It means a hard thought or feeling can show up without taking over your whole day, and you don’t have to wait until you feel calm to start living your life.

You’ve probably tried a lot of things already. Most of us can understand our anxiety very well and still find that understanding it hasn’t made it go away. That’s what ACT is for.
Some of what we use ACT for:
- Anxiety that takes up most of your day just to manage
- Anger, guilt, or grief that you’ve been trying to reason your way out of
- Perfectionism and people-pleasing, especially if you’re living by standards that aren’t yours
- Avoidance (like the meeting you don’t schedule or the conversation you don’t start)
- Burnout, especially the kind that comes from being the person who “handles everything”
- Low mood, when the things that used to matter feel out of reach
- Big life changes when you find that your old plan doesn’t fit anymore
- Self-criticism that won’t stop, no matter how much reassurance you get
These patterns have a history in your family or your relationships, so we’ll work on both at once.
We’ll focus on the things anxiety has you stuck in. We won’t debate whether the fear is logical, because we know you’ve already had that debate with yourself a hundred times. Instead, we’ll look at what it’s costing you to keep avoiding.
We’ll then get clear on what you want your life to be about, and the type of person you want to show up as. We’ll explore what your day-to-day might look like with a little more of you in it, and before you leave, we’ll pick one small, meaningful thing to get you avoiding less and living more.
ACT won’t talk you out of your thoughts and feelings. It asks you to let them be there, and to be OK with that while you go do the things that matter to you anyway. If reading that feels like a relief, you’re probably in the right place.

A bookshelf with 7 books in a Guelph ADHD therapist's Ontario counselling office.

No, although they’re related and often used together. CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) teaches you to question an anxious thought and check it against the facts. ACT teaches you to let the thought be there without obeying it. We use both.
No. In ACT, “mindfulness” just means learning to notice what you’re thinking and feeling in the moment, instead of only realizing it afterward.
Yes, you might leave with a small experiment to run between sessions, but we’ll choose it together.
Yes, Golden Horizons can meet virtually with you anywhere in Ontario or Alberta.
Yes. The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, the professional body behind ACT, keeps a public account of the research. Whether it fits you is a different question, and the easiest way to answer it is to give us a call.