Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Atlanta & Sandy Springs

Acceptance & Commitment Framework

What If the Problem Isn't Your Thoughts — But Your Relationship to Them?

Most of us spend enormous energy trying to manage, suppress, or argue with our inner experience. We try to think our way out of anxiety. We push away grief. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t feel what we feel — and then feel worse for feeling it anyway.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a different path. Not the elimination of difficult thoughts and emotions, but a fundamentally different relationship with them — one that frees you to move toward what matters most, even when the hard stuff is still present.

Sandy Springs Psychotherapy Associates

Mindfulness-Based Framework

What Is ACT?

ACT is a mindfulness-based behavioral therapy developed by Dr. Steven Hayes, grounded in decades of research on human language, cognition, and psychological flexibility. It is one of the most extensively studied therapeutic approaches of the past three decades.

At its core, ACT works through two interconnected processes:

Acceptance

learning to make room for difficult thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations without fighting them, avoiding them, or being controlled by them. Not resignation. Not approval. Simply allowing what is already there to be there, without the added layer of struggle.

Commitment

identifying what genuinely matters to you — your values, your sense of who you want to be — and committing to action in that direction, even in the presence of discomfort.

The result is what ACT calls psychological flexibility: the ability to be present, open, and engaged with your life, rather than locked in battle with your own inner experience.

Elite Trauma Training

Training Directly Under the Founder

I completed my advanced ACT training directly under Dr. Steven Hayes, the psychologist who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and whose research laid the foundation for the entire model. This level of training means I work with ACT not as a set of techniques but as a deeply understood framework for human change.

Broad Research Support

What ACT Helps With

ACT has strong research support across a wide range of concerns, including:

Anxiety and worry
Depression
Chronic stress and burnout
Grief and loss
Trauma and PTSD
Life transitions and identity questions
Chronic pain and illness
Perfectionism and self-criticism
Relationship difficulties

ACT is particularly well-suited for people who feel stuck — who have tried to think or push their way through something and found that the effort itself has become exhausting.

Methodology

What ACT Looks Like in Practice

that help you observe your thoughts and feelings as passing events rather than absolute truths or commands to obey.

that create distance between you and your inner critic — so that “I am a failure” becomes something you notice having, rather than something you are.

— one of the most meaningful parts of the work. Not what you think you should value, but what genuinely matters to you when you’re at your best. This becomes the compass for everything else.

— small, concrete steps toward living in alignment with those values, even when anxiety or self-doubt is present.

Practice Settings

In-Person and Virtual Sessions

I offer ACT in individual therapy, available both in-person at my Sandy Springs office and via a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform for clients throughout Georgia — whichever works best for you.