Why Mindfulness and ACT Work Together for Lasting Recovery
Mindfulness and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) form a powerful partnership that helps people break free from destructive patterns and build meaningful, sober lives. This evidence-based approach combines present-moment awareness with value-driven action to create lasting psychological change.
Key ways mindfulness improves ACT:
- Present-moment focus – Mindfulness grounds you in the here and now, reducing rumination about past mistakes or future worries.
- Acceptance skills – Learning to observe difficult thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed by them.
- Cognitive defusion – Creating distance from unhelpful thoughts so they lose their power over your behaviour.
- Values clarity – Mindful awareness helps you connect with what truly matters in your life.
- Psychological flexibility – The ability to adapt and respond effectively rather than react automatically.
ACT uses mindfulness as a core component woven throughout its principles. This integration creates what researchers call “psychological flexibility”—your ability to stay present with difficult experiences while taking action guided by your deepest values.
For those struggling with addiction, anxiety, or depression, this combination offers hope. Instead of trying to eliminate painful emotions, you learn to change your relationship with them. You find that you can feel anxious and still take steps towards recovery, or experience cravings while choosing behaviours that align with your values.
Hundreds of randomised controlled trials demonstrate ACT’s effectiveness across many mental health conditions, supporting its use for lasting change.
Key terms for mindfulness and act:
Understanding Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): The Six Core Principles
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a transformative approach that helps us live a rich and meaningful life. It encourages us to accept what is out of our control and commit to actions that improve our lives. Developed within cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), ACT is an evidence-based model grounded in a modern understanding of human language and cognition.
The core message of ACT is that psychological suffering often stems from “experiential avoidance”—our attempts to get rid of unwanted thoughts, feelings, and memories. Instead of fighting these internal experiences, ACT helps us develop psychological skills to deal with them more effectively. This approach is visualised through the “Hexaflex” model, which outlines six core processes that build psychological flexibility.
The Hexaflex illustrates how these six core processes work together to foster psychological flexibility. For more detailed information, explore our resource on the More info about the ACT Hexaflex.
Acceptance: Making Room for Difficult Feelings
In ACT, acceptance means making room for difficult feelings, rather than liking them or resigning to them. It involves a willingness to allow painful thoughts, emotions, and sensations to be present without struggling against them. By dropping the exhausting battle to avoid discomfort, we free up energy to make choices that align with our values.
Cognitive Defusion: Unhooking from Unhelpful Thoughts
Cognitive defusion involves changing how we relate to our thoughts. We learn to observe them as transient mental events—like clouds passing in the sky—rather than literal truths that must be obeyed. This skill helps us “unhook” from unhelpful thought patterns, reducing their power over our behaviour and allowing us to choose our responses.
Being Present: Connecting with the Here and Now
Being present means engaging fully with our here-and-now experience with openness and curiosity. Cultivated through mindfulness, it involves connecting with our breath, bodily sensations, or surroundings. This practice helps us detach from past regrets or future worries, allowing us to respond more effectively to life’s challenges. For more insights, read about More on being present in recovery.
Self-as-Context: The Observing Self
The “Self-as-Context,” or “Observing Self,” is the part of us that is pure awareness—the constant, stable “you” that observes your thoughts and feelings without being defined by them. This concept helps us recognise that we are not our thoughts; we are the space in which they occur, which fosters a sense of inner peace and perspective.
Values: Knowing What Matters to You
Values in ACT are our deepest desires for how we want to live and what we want to stand for. They are not goals to be achieved, but ongoing directions that guide our choices and actions. Clarifying personal values provides a compass for our lives, motivating us to take action even when faced with discomfort. Find out how aligning with your values can Increase Your Happiness through values.
Committed Action: Doing What It Takes
Committed action involves taking concrete, value-guided steps to build a meaningful life. It means setting goals and developing patterns of behaviour that move us in our chosen direction, even when it’s difficult. This principle is about taking effective action to create a rich life, rather than being controlled by avoidance.
The Powerful Synergy of Mindfulness and ACT
The relationship between mindfulness and ACT is foundational. Mindfulness is not just a complementary technique; it is woven into the core of ACT, creating powerful results for emotional wellbeing and recovery. Together, they build “psychological flexibility”—our ability to adapt to life’s challenges while staying true to our values.
This synergy is especially powerful in recovery. Instead of fighting difficult emotions, we learn to create space around them. We find we can feel anxious and still move toward our goals, or notice cravings without acting on them.
How Mindfulness is Woven into ACT
In ACT, mindfulness is integrated throughout all six core processes of the Hexaflex model. This happens through both formal practices, like meditation, and informal awareness in everyday moments, like noticing your thoughts while washing dishes.
Mindfulness serves as a grounding technique, bringing us back to the present moment and helping us make conscious choices instead of running on autopilot. It also helps develop the “self-as-context,” allowing us to observe our thoughts and feelings without being defined by them.
How Mindfulness and ACT Foster Psychological Flexibility
Psychological flexibility is the goal of combining mindfulness and ACT. It is our capacity to stay present with difficult experiences while taking value-guided action. Mindfulness creates the essential space between a trigger and our response, giving us the power to choose how to act.
For someone in recovery, this means noticing an urge without automatically acting on it. By combining mindful awareness with a focus on values, we can stay connected to what matters even when life is hard, allowing us to respond thoughtfully rather than react rigidly.
Common Mindfulness and ACT Exercises for Daily Practice
The beauty of mindfulness and ACT is that simple, consistent practices can create profound shifts. You don’t need hours of meditation to begin.
- Mindful breathing: Focus your attention on the sensation of your breath. When your mind wanders, gently guide it back without judgement.
- The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique: When overwhelmed, notice five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This anchors you in the present.
- Leaves on a Stream exercise: Imagine placing each thought on a leaf and watching it float away. This helps you observe thoughts without getting entangled in them.
- Body scan meditation: Systematically bring attention to different parts of your body, noticing any sensations without trying to change them.
These exercises work best when approached with curiosity. The goal is not to eliminate difficult feelings, but to develop a new relationship with them based on awareness and choice. For additional support, you might find this Guided mindfulness exercise from the Centre for Clinical Interventions helpful.
The Benefits and Applications of an ACT Approach
The benefits of mindfulness and ACT extend beyond symptom reduction, fundamentally changing how we relate to life’s challenges. Research consistently demonstrates its effectiveness, with one study finding 75% of participants experienced remission from depression and improved quality of life, with benefits remaining stable at a six-month follow-up.
ACT teaches us to change our relationship with distress, allowing us to live meaningfully even when facing difficulties. This shift can be transformative for anyone struggling with addiction or mental health challenges.
Psychological Conditions ACT Can Help With
ACT is a “transdiagnostic” approach, meaning it addresses underlying patterns that work across many conditions.
- Anxiety disorders: ACT helps you build a life you want despite your fears, taking meaningful action even when anxiety is present.
- Major depression: It offers hope by focusing on value-based action, helping you take small steps that add meaning to life, even when you don’t feel motivated.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): ACT helps survivors develop emotional regulation skills while reducing avoidance of trauma-related memories. Our Trauma-Informed Therapy integrates these principles.
- Substance use disorders: ACT is powerful for addiction, as it helps individuals tolerate emotional pain without numbing it, while building a life rich with meaning. Learn more about our approach in Mindfulness for Alcohol Recovery.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): It helps individuals observe intrusive thoughts with less attachment, reducing their power.
- Chronic pain: ACT shifts focus from fighting pain to living fully despite it, making discomfort more manageable.
Beyond Symptoms: Enhancing Overall Wellbeing
What truly sets mindfulness and ACT apart is how it enriches life beyond specific problems. It provides a foundation for ongoing personal growth, resilience, and self-compassion. As you become more present and authentic, your relationships often improve.
This approach also fosters emotional sobriety, where you can experience a full range of emotions without being controlled by them. You can learn more about this in our resource on Emotional Sobriety 101.
At The Freedom Room, we complement ACT with other approaches like Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or “tapping.” EFT is a gentle yet powerful way to process long-held emotions. By tapping on specific acupressure points while focusing on a distressing thought, you send calming signals to your brain’s alarm system. This helps disrupt the stress response, allowing you to process emotions safely and move toward a state of greater calm and inner peace.
This combination of approaches supports not just recovery from addiction, but the development of a rich, meaningful life where you can steer challenges with greater ease and authenticity.
How ACT Differs from Traditional CBT
While ACT is part of the cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) family, it represents a “third wave” of behavioural therapies that take a different approach to psychological healing. Instead of focusing on fixing or eliminating difficult thoughts and feelings, ACT focuses on changing our relationship with them.
Focus on Thoughts and Feelings
Traditional CBT operates on the premise that by identifying and challenging irrational thoughts, we can reduce emotional distress. It involves spotting cognitive distortions and replacing them with more balanced thoughts.
In contrast, mindfulness and ACT teach us to change our relationship with our thoughts. We learn to see them as passing mental events rather than absolute truths. Through “cognitive defusion” techniques, we step back from our thoughts and reduce their power over us, without needing to challenge or change their content. This is especially useful in recovery, as it allows one to notice a craving without it controlling their behaviour.
Therapeutic Goals and Outcomes
The primary goal of traditional CBT is often symptom reduction—to feel better by thinking differently. Success is measured by decreased anxiety, depression, or cravings.
ACT’s primary goal is increasing psychological flexibility—the ability to adapt to challenges while staying connected to your values. The focus is on living better, not just feeling better. This means pursuing a meaningful life even when difficult emotions are present.
While symptom reduction often occurs as a byproduct of living a more valued life, it is not the main target of the therapy. For more on how different therapies can work together, see our resource on More on CBT for Addiction.
Challenges and Getting Started with ACT
Starting on a journey with mindfulness and ACT can be transformative, but it requires commitment and patience. Understanding the potential challenges can help you prepare for this rewarding path.
Potential Challenges of Using ACT
The journey with ACT is not always straightforward. Common challenges include:
- Facing difficult emotions: ACT asks us to make room for uncomfortable feelings instead of avoiding them, which can feel overwhelming at first.
- Consistent practice: ACT is experiential and requires regular practice of its exercises to be effective, which can be demanding.
- It can feel counterintuitive: The idea of accepting unwanted feelings rather than fighting them goes against our instincts and takes time to trust.
- Finding a qualified practitioner: The effectiveness of ACT depends on working with a skilled therapist who understands its nuances. For more information, you can explore resources from Contextual Psychology.
How to Find an ACT Therapist or Learn More
Taking the first step doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are several ways to begin:
- Work with a qualified therapist: This offers the most personalised and effective approach. Professional directories, like the one from the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, are excellent starting points.
- Use self-help resources: Books like “The Happiness Trap” by Russ Harris provide accessible introductions and practical exercises.
- Explore online resources: Many organisations offer online courses and guided exercises that can introduce you to ACT concepts.
At The Freedom Room in Strathpine, Queensland, we offer compassionate, evidence-based treatment that integrates mindfulness and ACT principles. Our team understands the recovery journey from lived experience. We also use complementary approaches like Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or “tapping,” to help gently process difficult emotions, making it easier to engage with ACT’s principles of acceptance and values-based action.
Take the First Step Toward a Fulfilling, Alcohol-Free Life
The path to lasting recovery through mindfulness and ACT is about more than overcoming addiction—it’s about building a life of genuine meaning and purpose. By embracing psychological flexibility and aligning your actions with your deepest values, you learn to steer life’s challenges with grace and intention.
Recovery isn’t about eliminating difficult emotions, but about developing a new relationship with them. Mindfulness allows you to observe your thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed, while ACT helps you choose behaviours that honour your values, even in the face of cravings or anxiety. This fosters emotional sobriety, where life’s ups and downs no longer dictate your choices.
At The Freedom Room, we understand this journey intimately because many of our team members have walked this path themselves. We know the courage it takes to face difficult emotions and commit to a values-driven life.
Your recovery journey is uniquely yours, and it deserves compassionate, personalised support. When you’re ready to find your strength and build the alcohol-free life you truly desire, we’re here to walk alongside you. Take that first step today.