act THERAPY
Georgia, California, Colorado, and Florida
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Helps Change Your Relationship with Difficult Thoughts
ACT is an evidence-based approach to changing your emotions and internal experiences, rather than organizing their lives around trying to eliminate or control them.
Many forms of distress are maintained not simply by anxiety, sadness, self-doubt, or painful memories themselves, but by the strategies we develop to avoid, suppress, argue with, or work around those experiences.
ACT focuses on increasing psychological flexibility: the ability to remain in contact with what you are experiencing without becoming dominated by it, while making choices that are aligned with your values and the life you want to build.
This work is not about passive acceptance, resignation, or “just thinking positively.” It is about developing a different relationship to your internal experience so that fear, self-criticism, uncertainty, or discomfort no longer dictate your behavior in the same way. The goal is not to eliminate pain entirely, but to reduce the degree to which struggling against it keeps you stuck.
While ACT is a specific therapeutic model, my work is not organized around rigid adherence to any single framework.
I use ACT because it offers a clear and practical way of understanding how people become stuck, and how meaningful change can occur, but the therapy itself is always tailored to the person in front of me.
What distinguishes my approach is the emphasis on both insight and change.
Understanding why a pattern exists can be valuable, but insight alone does not reliably create change.
ACT provides a framework for helping clients shift their relationship to internal experiences in ways that translate into concrete behavioral and relational change.
I also integrate ACT with other modalities, including Internal Family Systems (IFS), attachment-based work, and broader humanistic understanding when useful. That means the work can address both the function of present-day patterns and the deeper systems that shaped them, while remaining grounded in practical, observable movement over time.
The focus is not on symptom management alone, but on helping you build a life that is less constrained by avoidance, fear, self-criticism, or emotional gridlock.
Common Issues:
Avoidance
Overthinking
Perfectionism
Indecision
Self-criticism
Emotional shutdown
Difficulty taking action in areas that matter to them.
This work is for adults who feel stuck in patterns that persist despite insight, effort, or prior therapy.
Many clients understand their struggles intellectually, but continue to find themselves caught in the same loops.
ACT can be especially helpful for people whose lives have become organized around avoiding discomfort, uncertainty, rejection, vulnerability, or painful internal experiences.
procrastination
people-pleasing
rigid control
emotional avoidance
chronic reassurance-seeking
difficulty tolerating anxiety while pursuing meaningful goals.
This may look like:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is well-suited to individuals who are:
navigating anxiety
depression
life transitions
identity development
relational challenges
feeling disconnected from meaning or direction
The goal is not to make difficult emotions disappear.
It is to help you develop a different relationship to them, so that they have less power over your decisions, your relationships, and the life you are trying to build.
Powell is a therapist who offers individual therapy for adults in Georgia, California, Colorado and Florida.
He offers individual therapy, but also specializes in Gender Identity, Life Transitions, and Self-Worth.