Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Edmonton

Learning to live with courage, clarity, and presence

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you develop a grounded, compassionate relationship with your inner world—so you can move toward what matters, even in the presence of fear, uncertainty, or discomfort.

Rather than trying to eliminate difficult thoughts or emotions, ACT teaches you how to make space for them, unhook from their grip, and act in alignment with your deepest values. It is not about forced positivity or fixing yourself. It is about living authentically, with your whole self at the table.

ACT invites you to stop waiting to “feel better” before living your life—and instead build the strength to take meaningful steps with your thoughts and feelings, not against them.

What Makes ACT Unique?

ACT is built on psychological flexibility: the ability to stay present, honour your experience, and choose actions guided by your values.

This approach supports you in:

• softening resistance to pain

• unhooking from unhelpful thoughts

• reconnecting with the present moment

• accessing your witnessing, grounded self

• clarifying what truly matters to you

• taking meaningful action, even when it’s hard

ACT helps you cultivate a life that feels intentional, values-driven, and expansive—even when internal storms arise.

Core Elements of ACT

Acceptance: Making Space for Your Inner Experience

Acceptance in ACT is an active willingness to be with your emotions—grief, shame, fear, anxiety—without pushing them away or fighting yourself. This is not resignation, but courageous presence.

This might look like:

• naming a feeling

• breathing through discomfort

• softening around emotion rather than bracing against it

Acceptance opens the door to movement and choice.

Cognitive Defusion: Unhooking from Thoughts

Our minds generate endless stories. ACT teaches you to see thoughts as words and images, not truths you must obey.

Examples of defusion techniques:

• saying a thought in a silly voice

• placing it on a “leaf on a stream”

• noticing, “I’m having the thought that…”

Defusion gives you space to choose your response with clarity rather than habit.

Present-Moment Awareness

ACT brings you into contact with what is actually happening now—your breath, senses, environment—so you can act from presence rather than from rumination or fear.

Grounding questions include:

• What sensations are here?

• What can I see, hear, or touch?

• Can I feel the floor beneath me?

The Observing Self: The Inner Witness

ACT helps you connect with the part of you that notices experience without being consumed by it.
Thoughts and emotions come and go like weather. You are the sky.

This witnessing self creates space for compassion, perspective, and choice.

Values: Your Inner Compass

Values are at the heart of ACT. They are the qualities that make your life meaningful—creativity, authenticity, courage, connection, compassion.

Values ask:

• What do I want to stand for?

• What truly matters to me?

• Who am I becoming?

They guide your steps, even when discomfort is present.

Committed Action: Moving Toward What Matters

ACT turns insight into embodied choice. Committed action means taking small, doable steps in the direction of your values—with your fear, not after it disappears.

Examples:

• sending a message when loneliness tells you to withdraw

• speaking your truth even if your voice shakes

• taking a walk when depression says “why bother”

Courage, in ACT, is moving forward with fear beside you.

ACT & Trauma: A Gentle, Grounded Approach

ACT is deeply trauma-informed. It avoids forcing confrontation and instead helps you:

• regulate through acceptance and grounding

• separate identity from trauma stories

• hold overwhelming emotions with gentleness

• soften shame and self-judgment

• reconnect with personal meaning and direction

ACT pairs beautifully with somatic therapy, polyvagal work, and depth-oriented approaches.

A Poetic Example: ACT in Motion

If your mind whispers, “I’m not good enough”, ACT doesn’t ask you to replace it with “I’m amazing.”
Instead, ACT invites you to notice: “I’m having the thought that I’m not good enough.”
You place a hand on your heart, breathe, and remember your value of compassion or service.
And despite the fear, you take the next step aligned with who you want to be.

This is the quiet courage of ACT.

My ACT Approach in Edmonton

My work with ACT is:

• somatic and nervous-system aware

• relational, compassionate, and collaborative

• rooted in values, meaning-making, and presence

• infused with depth, creativity, and symbol

• flexible, experiential, and tailored to your pace

ACT is not about perfection or pressure—it’s about becoming more fully yourself, moment by moment.

Is ACT Right for You?

ACT may be a supportive fit if you:

• struggle with anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, or depression

• feel stuck waiting for clarity or confidence

• want to stop fighting your inner experience

• crave a values-based way of living

• appreciate mindfulness and present-moment awareness

• need a gentle yet empowering approach to change

Move Toward What Matters

ACT helps you stop battling yourself—and start walking forward with courage and clarity, even in the presence of fear or uncertainty.

If you're curious about beginning ACT therapy in Edmonton, you’re welcome to reach out. Together we can explore what you want to move toward, and what you’re willing to feel on the way there.