ACT Therapy in Salt Lake City
Less arguing with your thoughts. More of the life you actually want.
“So I’m just supposed to accept feeling terrible?”
It’s closer to the opposite. Acceptance here means stopping the exhausting fight with a feeling so you have energy left for what matters. You’re not resigning yourself to anything; you’re taking your hands off the rope so you can go do the thing.
- Stop fighting your own thoughtsInstead of wrestling hard thoughts into submission, you learn to let them come and go, which is usually what loosens their hold.
- Your values pick the directionThe work points at the life you actually want and helps you move toward it, rather than waiting to feel better first.
- Skills you get to keepWhat you practice in session is built to travel: small, repeatable ways to unhook from a thought when it grabs you.
What the work looks like
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) is the approach behind a lot of my work with adults, and it's easier to feel than to define. If you've been fighting your own thoughts for a while and losing, here's what it is, who it helps, and what the work actually looks like week to week.
What ACT is, in plain language
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is less about arguing with hard thoughts and more about building a life around what matters, with the hard feelings allowed to ride along. You stop pouring energy into forcing the anxiety, the self-doubt, the grief to go quiet, and you start pointing yourself at what you actually care about while those feelings come with you. It turns out you can be scared and still make the call.
Who it tends to help
ACT earns its keep when a feeling has been running your decisions: anxiety that's been steering, rumination that loops, the particular exhaustion of fighting your own mind. If that's the shape of it, anxiety therapy is the same work under a different name. It also helps when nothing is technically wrong and everything feels stuck: you're doing all the things, and none of them feel like yours.
What sessions look like
Less workbook than you'd expect. We get specific about what matters to you (not in the abstract, but the actual person you want to be in the actual week you're in), and then we practice willingness: letting a hard feeling show up without letting it drive. Between sessions there are small experiments, not homework for its own sake. Something you've been avoiding, tried on purpose, at a size you can manage. A Tuesday afternoon, not a stunt.
How ACT and EMDR fit together
Sometimes ACT is the whole treatment. Sometimes there's a stuck memory underneath that keeps tripping the alarm, and no amount of values work will settle it until that's been processed, which is when EMDR leads and ACT carries the rest. The order isn't assigned on day one. We decide it together, and we revise it as we learn what's actually going on.
You don’t have to sort this out on your own.
Book a free callor call (801) 513-3505 · Mon–Fri, 9 AM–6 PM MTThe research
What the evidence says
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been tested across dozens of randomized trials; a 2015 meta-analysis found it works about as well as established treatments for a broad range of mental-health concerns.
- A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problemsA-Tjak, J. G. L., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A. J., & Emmelkamp, P. M. G. · Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics · 2015
Your therapist
LCSW · Licensed in Utah · No. 13989909-3501
MSW · University of Utah
Verified on Psychology TodayQuestions clients ask
The things people ask first
What is ACT in plain language?
Instead of wrestling your hard thoughts into submission, you make room for them, get clear on what actually matters to you, and start moving toward it with those feelings along for the ride. The short version: stop fighting the feeling, and let your values set the direction.
How is ACT different from CBT?
CBT often works by challenging and reshaping the thoughts themselves. ACT worries less about whether a thought is true and more about whether fighting it is costing you the life you want, so we practice letting thoughts come and go while you act on what matters. I reach for ACT when the wrestling itself has become the problem.
Is ACT right for anxiety?
Often, yes. Anxiety tends to shrink your life by making your decisions for you, and ACT is built to hand those decisions back: you learn to feel the fear without letting it drive. It's the approach a lot of my anxiety work leans on.
What does an ACT session look like?
It is still a conversation, not a worksheet hour. We notice where you are getting tangled with a thought, practice a concrete way to loosen its grip, and connect the next step to something you care about. You leave with a small experiment to try in ordinary life, and we adjust from what actually happened rather than grading how well you did it.
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