An ACT therapist practises acceptance and commitment therapy, an approach that starts from a fairly counterintuitive observation: fighting an unwanted thought or feeling tends to give it more power over you rather than less. Instead of the usual battle to control or eliminate difficult internal experiences, the work splits into two connected strands, accepting what cannot immediately be controlled, and taking action that lines up with what genuinely matters to you.
Practical rather than analytical
Sessions in ACT are practical and often make use of metaphor and short experiential exercises rather than lengthy discussion or analysis of where a difficulty came from. Progress is measured by what someone is able to do in their life, going to the event they were avoiding, having the conversation they were putting off, rather than solely by whether they feel better in the moment.
Where it is used
ACT has a solid evidence base across a wide range of difficulties, including anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain and burnout, and its practical, values-driven approach makes it well suited to people who want tools they can use between sessions rather than an open-ended exploration of the past.