Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) | Oakland, CA
I do Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is evidence-based and action oriented.
With ACT, you can learn to:
Face what scares you so you can go toward what matters to you
Get unstuck from painful feelings and difficult thoughts.
Go from hiding from life to exploring life.
I offer Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to adults and teens in Oakland and Berkeley, and virtually throughout all of the Bay Area and California.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can help with:
Anxiety
Worry
Panic attacks
Social anxiety
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Anger and irritability
Building healthier, closer relationships
Difficulty noticing or sharing your emotions
A sense of meaninglessness or confusion around your life’s direction
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is evidence-based
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has a robust base of research showing that it’s effective for many people.
ACT has been studied in over 400 randomized clinical trials and shown to be effective in helping people reduce suffering and improve quality of life.
Click here for a summary of research supporting ACT, and here for another overview with graphics.
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy about?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is about flexibility. Can I stay on the path of what matters to me even when life gets difficult?
ACT is not about controlling, managing, avoiding, or getting rid of difficult feelings. ACT is about getting good at feeling. If you can’t have a feeling, then you can’t go places where that feeling shows up. For example, if you can’t have the anxiety that comes with public speaking, then you have to give up public speaking. Do this on repeat, and your life starts to get very small. On the other hand, when you can feel anything, then pain stops controlling your life. You can go places that scare you. Why does that matter? Because the places that scare us often also really matter to us. They scare us because they matter to us. ACT is about choosing to do what matters to you even when it’s scary.
ACT is about living good, not feeling good. What’s wrong with feeling good? Nothing. But trying to feel good (or working hard to get rid of suffering) can take a lot of time, money, and energy away from living good. What do I mean by living good? Living in a way that brings you more meaning and fullness, however you define that. Living in a way that you would look back on and be satisfied. Are living good and feeling good mutually exclusive? I really don’t know. What I have seen firsthand is how much trying to feel better can get in the way of living better. A lot of us have some version of, “When I get my anxiety under control (or my depression, or my low self-esteem, etc.), then I’ll do all the things that matter to me.” “When I have more courage or confidence, then I’ll do the things that scare me.” Except ‘then’ never arrives. Meanwhile, your life passes on. ACT is about figuring out how to live well now.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is values-guided. Your values, not mine. Good therapy helps you get closer to what matters to you most.
ACT in a nutshell: “ Given a distinction between me and the stuff I’m struggling with, am I willing to have that stuff, fully and without defense, as it is and not as it says it is, and take steps toward my chosen values in this moment?” Simple, not easy, and very much worth learning. Even a 1% shift in this direction can be life changing.
What’s an ACT session like?
Here’s what an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy session is not like:
It’s not just talk therapy.
I don’t just parrot your words back to you and say “Yeah, sounds hard…”
It’s rarely boring.
It’s not about feeling happy or managing pain.
So, what is an ACT session like?
It’s experiential. That means it’s not just talking, but also doing something new. Allowing a feeling to show up, noticing how a thought hooks you in, and so on. (See the graphic above.)
You have an active role in it, rather than passively receiving some treatment.
It can be anywhere from effortless to difficult.
What have clients said about ACT?
That it helped them get their life back on track or move through an impasse.
That the focus on values and valued living is extremely helpful.
That it’s difficult at times.
That it was worth it.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can be hard, in the same way that a really good workout can be hard. Like a workout, it sometimes feels like a tradeoff of present-moment comfort for future benefits (more flexibility, broader perspective, finer clarity around life direction).
And because it’s sometimes hard, I make sure to check with clients about where they’re willing to go in sessions. If you’re unwilling to go somewhere, we won’t go there.
Why I offer Acceptance and Commitment Therapy instead of other popular therapies
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been most helpful to me personally.
ACT is really well suited for people who struggle with anxiety and worry. We know that anxiety and worry appear throughout the lifecycle - meaning, if you have a pattern of being anxious, it probably won’t ever go away. This is only a problem if you let anxiety make your choices for you. The sooner you can learn to have your fear without it controlling your choices, the sooner your life is in your hands. ACT is more helpful in this regard than any other therapy I know of.
When clients lean into the work, they get something so much more valuable than relief from suffering. They learn that they can do really, really hard things. And there’s a sense of confidence and self-respect that comes from this. Life starts to seem more doable. Clients get to carry this self-confidence with them long after therapy stops.