How to ACT in a World in Crisis

How to Use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Thrive in a World in Crisis

I start most sessions with the all-too-familiar and dreaded:

“How are you feeling?” 

If you flinched at that question, you aren't alone. Over the last twelve months, the responses I hear have shifted...

While I have always received a range of responses over the years, the responses over the past twelve months have been stark. 

Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, fatigue, and anger are reflected in most sessions.

Unfortunately, the world is challenging for many people in various ways, and it would be dismissive at best and delusional at worst to pretend otherwise. 

So where does that leave us? 

We can’t change the world, but we can change how we interact with it by identifying the thoughts and feelings that keep us stuck in a cycle of suffering. However, there is hope. Small steps towards understanding and accepting these feelings can lead to significant change over time. Progress might be gradual, but each step forward is a movement toward a more meaningful, value-driven life. 

If you’re someone who struggles to do more than tread water, feels overwhelmed, or is looking for a new way to mindfully engage with life, this post is for you. This post is part of a six-part series designed to enhance psychological flexibility, alleviate suffering, and foster a more value-driven lifestyle.

What is ACT?

ACT (pronounced “act” not A-C-T), or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is about learning to drop the rope in the tug-of-war with your emotions. Created by Steven C. Hayes, it’s a method designed to help you stop avoiding pain and start committing to the life you actually want to live.

There are six core parts to ACT. In this series, we will cover each one, starting at the top:

✅ 1. Acceptance and Willingness (We are here today!) 

⬜ 2. Cognitive Defusion 

⬜ 3. Present-Moment Awareness 

⬜ 4. Self as Context 

⬜ 5. Values

 ⬜ 6. Committed Action

Acceptance and willingness.

To start, a key part of ACT is increasing psychological flexibility. What is psychological flexibility?  Simply put, it is our ability to stay true to our values even when emotions and life feel overwhelming. 

The first step towards increasing psychological flexibility is to be willing to accept that there is no living without hardship. This means both the joy of achievement and the bitterness of failure are inescapable realities of being a person. Let’s be clear, just because we accept and open ourselves up to negative experiences doesn’t mean we learn to enjoy them. 

The goal is to spend less energy on avoiding negative emotions and sensations and more time engaging in fulfilling behaviors.

How does Acceptance and Willingness look?

Think of a time when you’ve made a mistake at work. Maybe you anxiously waited to be called into the boss's office, your body and mind paralyzed with anxiety. Instead of moving on from the mistake, you’re fixated, unable to shake the shame of being less than perfect.  Mistakes in general are distressing, but work-related mistakes often cause a special kind of torture. When mistakes like this happen, many people either ruminate and remain stuck or find themselves overcorrecting in such a way that feeds into the negative cycle of perfectionism. 

The first part of ACT, acceptance and willingness, provides a pathway forward that is not rooted in shame, anger, or fear. Instead, ACT asks us to acknowledge our feelings without trying to minimize or eliminate them, as the more we try to avoid emotions, the bigger they become.

You might feel hopelessness and helplessness when turning on the news. You may be struggling with “where do I go now?” especially when considering your future. Many people have chosen to cope with their helplessness by avoiding the news, but given that we live in a 24-hour news cycle between cable, social media, written articles, and just interacting with our peers, it is impossible to completely escape the news. Instead, we might say to ourselves, “I feel helpless to change the world. This emotion is completely valid and understandable given the situation. I can acknowledge that this feeling exists while deciding what small actions are possible right now.” The goal is not to stop feeling negative emotions; that’s impossible, but we can decide to stop engaging in behaviors that lead us to be stuck in place.

ACT teaches that individuals who are struggling, like us, to accept discomfort so we can act in line with our values. When we avoid negative feelings, we often remain stuck in unproductive patterns—such as distraction, numbing, or self-sabotage—that reinforce suffering. True acceptance allows us to be willing to experience discomfort, freeing us to pursue change and create value-driven behaviors.

Acceptance and Willingness Exercise

Below is a popular exercise used in ACT to make the abstract topic of acceptance and willingness more concrete. This exercise shouldn’t take longer than five minutes, but hopefully it provides some insights into the cost of avoidance!

The Exercise: Ball in a Pool (Adapted from Matthew Jepsen)

Imagine your difficult feelings are a beach ball in a swimming pool. You don't want them, so you try to push the ball underwater.

• The Struggle: The ball keeps popping back up. You have to keep pushing it down, constantly. It is exhausting.

• The Alternative: If you let the ball go, it floats on the surface. You might not like looking at it, but... your hands are now free to swim.

Ask yourself: What is your ball? And how tired are your arms from holding it down?

What Next?

If you found yourself intrigued about the concept of ACT and want to explore the next steps of embracing a meaningful action-driven life and reducing feelings of being stuck, stay tuned for future posts about the other aspects of ACT. If you don’t want to wait, please feel free to schedule a free 15-minute consultation or book an appointment on our website.

---

Author Bio

Meet Kilexyus Kilexyus is a pre-licensed clinical social worker specializing in trauma, attachment, and helping you navigate a chaotic world. When not in session, she practices her own "acceptance and willingness" work—mostly by accepting defeat on the Pickleball court and finding joy in baking (even when the cookies burn).