The beginning of the new year often comes with a mix of hope, pressure, motivation, uncertainty, and everything in between. We may set intentions or goals for the months ahead, or reflect on the previous year’s ups and downs, but one thing is guaranteed: a full range of emotions will show up along the way.

Excitement, stress, disappointment, joy, fear, pride, grief—none of these emotions mean you’re doing anything wrong. They mean you’re human.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a helpful framework for understanding emotions and learning how to work with them, rather than against them. At its core, ACT reminds us that emotions are not problems to be eliminated, but experiences to be allowed as we move toward lives that feel meaningful and aligned with our values.

Emotions Aren’t the Enemy

ACT starts with a simple and powerful idea: emotional pain is a normal part of life. Further, we were never meant to experience happiness all the time. When we try to avoid, suppress, or control uncomfortable emotions (or endlessly seek comfortable emotions), we often end up increasing our suffering. This struggle—pushing feelings away, arguing with our thoughts, or judging ourselves for having certain emotions—can pull us further from the life we want to be living.

Instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this feeling?” ACT encourages a different question: “Can I make space for this feeling in service of freeing energy up to do what matters to me?”

Here are three ways ACT helps create that space:

1. Stepping Back from Thoughts

Our minds are constantly generating thoughts about our emotions: “This anxiety is unbearable,” “I shouldn’t feel this way,” “This means something is wrong with me.” In ACT, this process is called fusion — when we’re so entangled with our thoughts that they feel like absolute truths.

Defusion helps us notice thoughts as thoughts, rather than facts or rules. When we can step back and observe what our mind is saying, thoughts lose some of their power. Instead of being driven by them, we can choose how to respond.

2. Letting Go of the Control Agenda

Many of us have learned—often unintentionally—that the goal is to feel better before we can live fully. We wait for anxiety to go away before speaking up, for sadness to lift before reconnecting, or for confidence to appear before trying something new. ACT calls this the control agenda: the belief that we must control our internal experiences in order to live well. Unfortunately, emotions don’t work that way. The more we try to force them to change, the more stuck we can become, and the less energy we have for the things that really matter.

ACT helps us notice when the struggle itself is the problem, and invites us to try a different approach: allowing emotions to be present while continuing to move forward meaningfully.

3. Present-Moment Awareness

When emotions feel overwhelming, our attention often gets pulled into the past (“Why did this happen?”) or the future (“What if this never gets better?”). ACT emphasizes present-moment awareness as a way to ground ourselves in what’s happening right now – because that’s the only moment we really live in anyway.

By gently noticing sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they arise—without judgment—we create more flexibility. We’re no longer fighting our internal experience or getting swept away by it. Instead, we’re meeting the moment with curiosity and care.
Emotions will show up. ACT helps ensure they don’t get to decide the direction of your life.

Interested in learning more about our ACT services? Visit our ACT webpage here.