Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
ACT Therapy in Houston
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Houston for anxiety, depression, trauma, and substance use. ACT builds psychological flexibility so your values, not your symptoms, set the direction; at Heights it is woven through individual and group work at every level of care.
01Values-Based Treatment
02Psychological Flexibility
03Works Across Diagnoses
04Private Pay · Superbills
What It Is
What ACT actually does
Most of us respond to painful thoughts and feelings by fighting them: suppressing, arguing, avoiding, numbing. ACT begins from an observation backed by a large body of research: the fight itself often costs more than the feeling, and what you spend your life avoiding quietly ends up organizing it.
ACT, developed by Dr. Steven Hayes and colleagues, trains psychological flexibility. You learn to unhook from thoughts rather than obey or argue with them, a skill ACT calls defusion. You practice making room for uncomfortable feelings instead of arranging your life to avoid them. You get clear, sometimes for the first time, about what you actually value. Then you commit to small, concrete actions in that direction, whether or not the anxiety happens to be quiet that day.
The name is the method: accept what is genuinely outside your control, and commit to what is not.
The Evidence
What the research supports
ACT is supported by hundreds of randomized controlled trials across anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and substance use, and it is recognized as an evidence-based treatment within mainstream clinical psychology, including by the American Psychological Association clinical division. Psychological flexibility, the capacity ACT trains, is one of the better-studied predictors of functioning in the modern clinical literature.
What the evidence does not do is put a fixed number on your course of treatment. ACT can be brief and focused or woven through a longer program. We will not quote a session count before an assessment.
Who It Helps
Who ACT tends to help
Anxiety that runs the schedule
When avoiding the feared thing has quietly become the organizing principle of your week.
Depression and stuckness
ACT targets the withdrawal spiral directly: less action, less life, more time alone with the mind.
Cravings and urges
Learning to have an urge without becoming it is a core recovery skill, and ACT trains it directly.
Chronic pain and illness
Some of the strongest ACT evidence: building a full life alongside what cannot simply be removed.
Overthinkers and ruminators
If you have argued with your own mind for years and lost, defusion offers a different move entirely.
A life on hold
Waiting to feel ready, confident, or calm before living. ACT reverses the order.
The Framework
The skills ACT actually builds
01
Present-Moment Awareness
Coming back from the past and the feared future to the only place choices exist.
02
Acceptance and Defusion
Unhooking from thoughts and urges so they inform you without commanding you.
03
Values Clarification
Naming what you want your life to be about, specifically and honestly.
04
Committed Action
Small, repeated moves toward those values, even while symptoms are present.
What To Expect
What a session actually looks like
ACT sessions are practical and often surprisingly lively. Expect exercises, metaphors, and real practice, not just conversation about the week.
You might practice watching thoughts arrive and pass without grabbing them, or take a feeling you have been avoiding and find out where it actually lives in the body. Values work is concrete rather than sentimental: what matters to you, what you would do this week if it mattered more than the discomfort, and what got in the way last time you tried.
Between sessions there are experiments to run in real life, because flexibility is built in exactly the situations that used to shrink you. Your clinician tracks what the practice produces and adjusts the plan with you.
Take the Next Step
Ready to move toward what matters?
A confidential conversation about ACT at Heights and the level of care that fits where you are.
Where It Fits
How this fits into your care
ACT runs through our levels of care. In Individualized Intensive Programming, it can be a daily thread rather than a weekly hour. In PHP and IOP, ACT concepts and skills appear in both individual sessions and group programming.
ACT pairs especially well with DBT, which supplies crisis-tested skills while ACT supplies values and direction, and with ERP, where willingness is what makes exposure work possible. This page sits alongside our mental health treatment program and our substance use treatment.
Who Delivers It
The clinicians behind this work
ACT at Heights Behavioral Health is delivered by licensed clinicians, all at the master level or above, who integrate it with the rest of your plan, including trauma work and, when useful, evaluation and medication support from the Medical Director and psychiatrist on staff.
Clinical care is led by Joni Ogle, LCSW, CSAT, who has spent 37 years treating trauma and co-occurring conditions.
Common Questions
ACT, answered
Do you take insurance for ACT?
Heights Behavioral Health is a private-pay, out-of-network practice. We provide superbills so you can pursue out-of-network reimbursement if your plan offers it, and we can verify your benefits before you commit. See our admissions page.
Does acceptance mean giving up?
No. Acceptance in ACT is precise: stop spending your life fighting internal experiences you do not control, so that energy is available for the actions you do control. It is closer to courage than resignation, and it is measured in what you do next, not in how you feel about it.
How is ACT different from CBT?
Traditional CBT works to change the content of thoughts. ACT changes your relationship to them: a thought can be present, loud, and unobeyed. In practice the approaches overlap and borrow from each other, and your clinician will use what your situation actually calls for.
Is ACT evidence-based?
Yes. Hundreds of randomized controlled trials support ACT across anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and substance use, and psychological flexibility is one of the better-studied constructs in modern clinical psychology.
How long does ACT take?
ACT can be brief and targeted or run as a thread through a longer program. The honest answer depends on what you are carrying and what you want your life to look like, which is what assessment is for. We will not quote a session count before one.
Can ACT help with addiction?
Yes. Urges and cravings are exactly the kind of internal event ACT trains you to experience without obeying, and values work rebuilds the life that makes recovery worth protecting. Here it runs alongside structured addiction treatment, not instead of it.
Can ACT help with anxiety or depression?
ACT has research support across anxiety, depression, trauma, and co-occurring substance use. Rather than fighting to eliminate symptoms before life can resume, it builds psychological flexibility so symptoms lose their grip on your choices. Explore the conditions we treat to see how it fits your situation.
Contact Admissions
A life aimed at what matters
One confidential call, an honest assessment, and a clear answer about whether ACT belongs in your plan.
Crisis Notice: Heights Behavioral Health is not an emergency service. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in a mental health crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7.
