You do not have to win the argument with your own thoughts.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, is an evidence-based alternative to CBT. Instead of testing whether an anxious thought is true, you learn to stop letting it decide what you do next.
Room for the thought, and your life back.
Most people arrive having already tried to argue themselves out of anxiety. You know the thought is not rational. Knowing has not helped. ACT starts somewhere else: it treats the struggle itself as the problem, not the thought. The more effort goes into suppressing, checking, avoiding, or reasoning with anxiety, the more of your week it takes up.
So instead of working to change what you think, we work on how much authority those thoughts get. You practise letting a feeling be present without it choosing your next move. Then we get specific about what you actually want your life to contain, and start building toward it while the anxiety is still around. Researchers call the goal psychological flexibility. In practice it means the fear can show up and you can go anyway.
CBT and ACT treat the same problem from opposite directions.
Both have strong evidence for anxiety and depression. They are not ranked. They ask different things of you, and that is usually what decides which one fits.
CBT changes the thought
You track the automatic thoughts driving the anxiety, examine the evidence for and against them, test them in real situations, and build more accurate ones. It is structured, active, and it suits people who find it satisfying to take a belief apart and see what holds up. Read about CBT here.
ACT changes its grip
You leave the content of the thought alone. Instead you practise noticing it as a thought rather than an instruction, making room for the discomfort that comes with it, and acting on what matters to you regardless. It suits people who have already done the analysing and are still stuck.
Which one you start with
If you have tried CBT and it felt like homework that never touched the feeling, ACT is often the better fit. If you have never had a structured approach to the loop, CBT is a sensible place to begin. You are not locked in. We talk it through on the consult call and change course if the first choice is not working.
ACT at Turn the Mind is provided by Samantha DiMeglio, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist. She trained in ACT with Steven Hayes, Ph.D., the psychologist who originated the approach, and spent four years at the Center for Motivation and Change in New York.
Three things you practise.
ACT is a skills-based therapy, so sessions involve doing rather than only discussing. These are the moves the work keeps returning to.
Willingness instead of control
Anxiety asks to be managed, and managing it is exhausting. We practise allowing a sensation or a feeling to be there, deliberately and on purpose, so that avoiding it stops setting your schedule. This is not resignation. It is dropping a fight you were never going to win.
Seeing a thought as a thought
"I will humiliate myself" arrives with the authority of a fact. We practise short, specific exercises that put a little distance between you and the sentence, so it reads as something your mind produced rather than a forecast you have to obey. Clinicians call this defusion.
Values, then action
We get concrete about what you want your life to be about, not as an aspiration but as behaviour: what you would be doing this week if the anxiety were not in charge. Then we start doing some of it now, in small committed steps, without waiting to feel ready.
If trauma is underneath the anxiety, that changes the plan. Samantha is trained in EMDR, Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE), Cognitive Processing Therapy, STAIR, and Contextual Trauma Therapy, and can tell you on the consult call whether ACT is the right first step or whether something else needs to come first. See trauma therapy.
What people ask about ACT.
What does ACT stand for?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It is usually said as the word "act" rather than spelled out, which is deliberate: the therapy is about what you do, not only how you think.
How is ACT different from CBT?
CBT works on the content of a thought. You examine whether it is accurate and build a better one. ACT leaves the content alone and works on how much control the thought has over your behaviour. Both are evidence-based for anxiety and depression, and neither is a lesser version of the other.
The practical difference is what a session asks of you. CBT asks you to evaluate. ACT asks you to allow, and then to act on what matters while the feeling is still present.
Does accepting anxiety mean I have to live with it forever?
No. Acceptance in ACT refers to how you hold the feeling in the moment, not to giving up on change. Most people find the anxiety becomes considerably less loud once they stop organising their week around avoiding it, but that is a side effect rather than the target. The target is getting your life back while the feeling is still coming and going.
Is ACT evidence-based?
Yes. ACT is its own therapy with its own research base, studied in randomised trials for anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and several other conditions, and recognised as an empirically supported treatment. Choosing it over CBT is not a step away from evidence-based care.
I have already tried CBT and it did not work. Would ACT be different?
Often, yes, and this is one of the most common reasons people come to it. If CBT gave you the analysis but the feeling never shifted, or if the thought records started to feel like one more thing to fail at, ACT approaches the same problem without requiring you to argue with yourself first. Tell us what CBT was like for you on the consult call. That history is useful, not a setback.
Who provides ACT at Turn the Mind?
Samantha DiMeglio, Psy.D., a licensed clinical psychologist. She trained in ACT with Steven Hayes, Ph.D., the psychologist who originated the approach, so the version of ACT you get here comes from the source rather than second hand.
She also trained for four years at the Center for Motivation and Change in New York and works across the major evidence-based trauma therapies as well as DBT, which means she can tell you when anxiety is the whole picture and when something underneath it needs attention first.
Where can I do ACT, and do you see people outside New Jersey?
Sessions with Samantha are available to people in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and other PSYPACT states. Our office is at 522 S. Broad Street, #7, Glen Rock, NJ 07452.
Do you take insurance?
Turn the Mind is an out-of-network practice. We submit claims electronically to most insurances to speed reimbursement using your out-of-network benefits, and we are happy to walk through the practical details during your consultation call. We are in-network with Lyra, Modern Health, and Enthea. We do not accept Medicaid or Medicare.
Glen Rock, and online across four jurisdictions.
Our office is in Glen Rock, in Bergen County, and sessions run online across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and other PSYPACT states. ACT sits alongside our CBT for anxiety and depression, trauma therapy, and comprehensive DBT program.
Reaching out is often the hardest part. We make it simple.
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation. We will talk through what you have already tried and help you work out whether ACT, CBT, or something else is the right next step, whether that is with us or somewhere else.