General News
15 March, 2026
Call the doctor: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
This week Horsham GP Dr Felix Ritson continues his talk here about mental health and how we can channel our thought pattern with simple strategies and we don't have to give up icecream altogether!
Last fortnight I wrote about mental health therapy and in doing so attempted to lay the groundwork needed to discuss a type of therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
There is evidence demonstrating that ACT can help with depression, anxiety, chronic pain, ADHD, autism, stress, addiction, PTSD, eating disorders, sleep, obsessive compulsive disorder, weight loss, diabetes, marital issues, personality disorders, parenting, procrastination, exercise, shame, burnout, and confidence, etc.
Hopefully I’ve sold the concept.
Next I will try to describe an overview of the ACT process based on what I gleaned from recently attending a two day workshop by the famous Dr Russ Harris.
While I don’t capture all of what ACT is, this should provide a rough perspective of it, and hopefully encourage some readers to give it a try.
ACT has no fixed sequence, and therefore no fixed starting point.
It is a flexible journey, whose steps depend upon its participants.
It includes developing the ability to recognise that suffering is part of the human experience, and that our thoughts and feelings can amplify suffering by consuming us and pulling us towards acting in ways that conflict with our values.
ACT also helps people step back from these thoughts and feelings before they lead us to make choices that don’t serve us.
This new found space and freedom gives us the opportunity to reflect on our values, what we really want in life, who we really want to be, and hence how we really want to show up in the world.
From here, we can make realistic commitments to taking tangible steps towards our true goals.
An example might be feeling overweight and unattractive, making us feel sad or angry with ourselves.
This might lead us to feel unmotivated, perpetuating a sense of shame and anxiety about our seeming inability to do the exercise or actions we perceive we need to.
Perhaps then, in order to escape these intolerable feelings, we eat some ice cream and scroll on our phone to distract ourselves.
An effective way to address this cycle is right at the beginning.
Take a pause when feeling overweight and accept that we are having that feeling.
It might not be a nice feeling, but it can be tolerable.
Once we get some distance by observing a feeling, often we find that it doesn’t cause as much suffering to us.
We sometimes assume that unwanted thoughts/feelings are fused tightly together with pain/suffering, but it is possible to learn how to defuse the pair.
Now that we are feeling overweight, and understandably but tolerably sad about it, we can reflect.
We aren't pulled into a spiral of self defeat; because we see the broader context of thoughts/feelings and how they relate to our suffering.
Here, we can turn our attention towards what we want to, without avoiding or pretending that we don’t still have unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
With practice, we can develop the habit of considering our core values in moments like these, reflecting on what is deeply important to us.
Is it setting a good example to others about self care and self respect? Do we believe in long-term thinking and slow, steady, sustainable change?
Sitting with our true values is where we find our motivation. A wise approach is to commit to sensible actions.
For example, if we make an unrealistic plan, like “I will never eat ice cream again”, we fail, and this demotivates us.
Committing to achievable actions, often small, specific behaviours such as “I will go for a 10 minute walk tomorrow at 8am,” can help build up our confidence in our ability to take action.
I hope you can see from this short but dense example that a self perpetuating spiral downwards has been turned around into a self fulfilling spiral upwards, one small step towards a better life.
If you would like someone to help you through ACT talk to your GP about a referral to a trained therapist or visit www.thehappinestrap.com for free online material.