Mindfulness-Based Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Colorado.
A therapy for the feelings you cannot think your way out of. ACT helps you make room for them and keep moving toward what you actually care about.
What acceptance and commitment therapy is.
Acceptance and commitment therapy is a tried and proven approach to the difficult emotions people carry day to day. It helps with anxiety and distress and other mental health conditions, and it helps people pursuing sobriety understand the emotional weight of abstinence. The aim is not to feel less. It is to identify, accept, and act on complicated feelings with a real sense of agency over what happens next.
ACT leans on mindfulness, which here means something practical: putting yourself back in the moment in front of you rather than in the argument with your own head. Anxiety, depression, addiction, and trauma all produce emotional states that feel out of control, and in those states people do things they would not otherwise choose. Cleveland Clinic describes ACT as a therapy that helps you move beyond negative thoughts and feelings in a meaningful way. A 2024 systematic review in Annals of Neurosciences calls it a transdiagnostic, flexible, and successful therapeutic strategy, which is a formal way of saying it travels well across very different problems.
That flexibility is what makes it useful here. ACT is one of several evidence-based therapies we draw on at The Redpoint Center, and the range of ways it can be practiced means each client can find the version of it that works for them and build resilience from there.
- Mindfulness at the center, not an add-on
- Acceptance rather than suppression
- Direction set by your own values
- Used inside our outpatient programs
The six skills ACT builds.
ACT is usually described as six core processes. In session they overlap and fold into one another, but this is what you are actually practicing.
Acceptance
Letting a thought or feeling be there, good or bad, instead of spending the day fighting it. Feeling anxious, low, or afraid is normal, and treating it as normal is where the rest of the work starts.
Cognitive defusion
Stepping back far enough to see a thought as a passing event rather than an instruction you are obliged to follow.
Being present
Coming back to the moment actually in front of you, using breathing and tactile grounding, rather than the one you are bracing for.
Self as context
Seeing yourself as a whole person rather than as the thoughts and feelings currently moving through you.
Values
Naming what genuinely matters to you, measured against your own standard rather than the one other people set.
Committed action
Making the changes that line up with those values, and finding your way back to them after a week that knocks you off.
In Session
The three pillars of ACT.
Effective ACT moves through three distinct stages as you work with an emotional state. Your therapist sets the pace with you, but the arc looks like this.
- 1
Acceptance
The most crucial stage, and the hardest one. You accept that you are allowed to feel and experience difficult things. Once anxiety, depression, fear, and distress are treated as normal rather than as failures, you can see how much they have been shaping your read on reality, your impulses, and the behavior you regret. Accepting an emotion for what it is is what gives you back a say in your response to it.
- 2
Direction
Practiced in sessionUsing mindfulness practices such as breathing and tactile sensation, you put yourself in the present and choose a healthy, intentional way to work through what you are feeling. Choosing the strategy yourself is the part that counts. It puts control back in your hands and builds accountability alongside it.
- 3
Action
You decide which course of action is right for you and stay with it, even when other emotional trials show up. Committing to a specific action is what lets you keep refocusing on your own decisions and intentions instead of on whatever is loudest that day.
Why pushing a feeling down makes it louder.
Trying to repress anxiety, sadness, or grief usually creates a more complicated situation than the one you started with, and self-destructive behavior tends to grow out of ignoring an intense emotion rather than out of the emotion itself. ACT goes the other direction. Instead of pushing a feeling down, it guides you toward understanding and acknowledging what that feeling is actually doing to you.
Accepting a hard emotion is what makes it possible to navigate one, and you do that alongside trained clinicians through safe and guided channels. Rather than making a rash decision in the middle of the turmoil, you build a greater sense of agency over how much, and in what way, those emotions get to shape your life. The focus lands on what you can control, and on taking decisive, positive action there.
That kind of change does not process in a day, and we do not pretend otherwise. We take our time getting to know each client and build the work on trust and transparency, so that talking through difficult emotions and past experiences makes it possible to see how those experiences shaped you and to notice self-destructive patterns that had gone unrecognized. The National Institute of Mental Health notes that this work happens one-on-one with a licensed mental health professional or with other patients in a group setting, and our programs run both.
ACT keeps returning to your own core values, the parts of your identity and your goals for the future that make your recovery yours. It runs through our treatment for alcohol, stimulant, meth, and marijuana use, and for co-occurring mental health conditions treated as part of the same plan rather than a separate one.
In Their Words
Made me so comfortable and truly took the time to learn my background, understand my goals, and created a plan for success.
When ACT fits, and when something else fits first.
ACT suits a lot of people, and it does not suit every person in every moment. Here is how we think about the fit.
The thought will not argue away
When you already know a worry is not rational and it runs anyway, changing your relationship to it gets further than trying to win the argument.
You want a direction, not only relief
ACT starts from what you care about. Being present for family, getting somewhere at work, being someone the people around you can count on: those are the material, not a nice side effect.
You are willing to use it outside the room
Learning to navigate hard feelings inside our walls is half of it. The other half is putting the same practices to work in an ordinary week, which is where the change holds or does not.
You are in crisis right now
Safety comes before any course of therapy. Call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, then let us help you find the right level of care.
Levels of Care
Where ACT fits in your care.
ACT is a therapy we use inside our programs, not a program you enroll in on its own. These are the levels of care it runs in, most structured first.
Questions about ACT.
What is acceptance and commitment therapy?
What does ACT treat?
How is ACT different from CBT and DBT?
How long does ACT take?
Does ACT work for addiction?
Is ACT used with teenagers as well as adults?
ACT is the tool. What you are carrying is the point.
The work looks different depending on what brought you here. These are the conditions we treat, and how care gets built around each one.
Depression
Persistent sadness, loss of interest, or difficulty finding motivation that affects your daily life.
Learn MoreAnxiety
Overwhelming worry, panic, or fear that feels impossible to manage on your own.
Learn MoreDual Diagnosis
Co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders treated together, not in isolation.
Learn MorePTSD & Trauma
Processing past experiences that continue to affect how you think, feel, and navigate the world.
Learn MoreAlcohol Addiction
When drinking has moved beyond your control and is affecting your health, relationships, or work.
Learn MoreOpioid & Fentanyl
Evidence-based treatment for opioid dependence, including medication-assisted approaches.
Learn More