About Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Grief
"The more you open up to feelings of loss, the more you can connect to feelings of love. Your ability to feel one side of this coin shrinks and grows in relation to your ability to feel the other side. Personal loss is inevitable, but you have a choice how to respond to feelings of loss."
Steve Hayes, PhD, Originator of ACT
Why ACT for Grief?
Grief is not a problem to fix — it is the natural, human response to love and loss. Yet grief can feel overwhelming, isolating, and disorienting. Women often tell me they feel “stuck” in painful thoughts, self-criticism, or waves of emotion that make everyday life feel impossible.
This is where Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) becomes a powerful companion.
ACT is an evidence-based model of therapy rooted in contextual behavioral science. Instead of fighting your grief, ACT helps you create space for it, hold it with compassion, and move gently toward what matters most in your life.
Processes of Psychological Flexibility in Grief Care
ACT weaves together six processes of psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the inner capacity to know and hold one’s values, modify what we do (inside us & around us) to pursue those values based on lived context, and to get back up and try again when we fail or fall flat (because that’s human). In grief therapy at Voyager, you can expect gentle, practical skill-building that supports you in living with both love and loss:
Acceptance – Allowing room for painful feelings instead of pushing them down or judging them.
→ In grief: giving yourself permission and space to feel sadness, anger, yearning, or numbness.Defusion – Learning to see thoughts as thoughts, not as absolute truths.
→ In grief: noticing when your mind says “It’s my fault” or “I’ll never be okay” and noticing with self-compassion that those are thoughts in this moment, pain in this moment, that can be responded to differently as a pain rather than self-condemnation. Building authentic, gentle inner skills to hold those thoughts lightly.Present Moment Awareness – Grounding in the here and now, even as grief pulls you into the past or future.
→ In grief: simple practices to anchor in breath, body, or sensory awareness when emotions overwhelm.Self-as-Context – Recognizing you are more than your grief, more than your thoughts, more than your pain.
→ In grief: remembering that you can carry love and sorrow without being defined only by loss and trying on different ways to be the sky of your life, not the thunderclouds of your pain, without changing anything about that pain.Values – Clarifying what matters most to you, even in the wake of loss.
→ In grief: assessing what is most beloved and valued, what grief has revealed in pain is most beloved, and identifying your stance as a person in terms of love, relationships, creativity, or meaning to inform your actions.Committed Action – Taking small, compassionate steps aligned with your values.
→ In grief: choosing relevant and accessible, workable actions (like reaching out for support, caring for your body, or honoring your loved one) that honor the love in your grief pain and reflect your values.
"You don’t eliminate loss. That’s not how it works. You open up to it because it’s how we know that love matters."
Steve Hayes, PhD, Originator of ACT
ACT for Women’s Grief at Voyager Counseling
I specialize in radically compassionate grief care for women navigating life-altering loss. Many of the women I see are:
Caring and thoughtful, but struggle with self-criticism and self-blame
Tenacious and accomplished, but feel flattened by or afraid of grief’s weight
Authentic and open-minded, but feeling unsafe or disconnected in loss and not sure what to do
Professionals, therapists, and mothers who are holding their own grief quietly while caring for others
ACT meets you where you are: messy, imperfect, human. It does not require you to minimize your grief or “move on.” Instead, it helps you move with your grief — in a way that includes love, loss, and your ongoing life.
ACT and Depathologized Grief Care
At Voyager Counseling, I hold grief as a human experience, not a disorder. ACT fits this philosophy beautifully. It is not about erasing pain, but about building psychological flexibility — the ability to carry grief and still live meaningfully.
That’s why I:
Offer free women’s peer support groups where no diagnosis is required
Provide group therapy without insurance involvement, so grievers are not pathologized by mandated diagnosis
Accept insurance for individual therapy, because accessibility matters (I sincerely believe and practice, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good)
ACT’s Existential and Humanistic Heart
ACT is more than a behavioral model — it is a deeply existential and humanistic way of being. Grief brings us face to face with mortality, love, and the questions that make us human:
Who am I, now that this person is gone?
How do I live in a finite, uncertain world?
What still matters to me when everything has changed?
In therapy, I companion you through these questions — not with quick answers, but with presence, compassion, and practices that let you explore them safely.
What ACT Looks Like in Session
An ACT-based grief therapy session with me might include:
Grounding with mindfulness, orienting, or self-compassion practices that you learn & carry forward
Exploring painful thoughts and feelings with gentleness (not judgment) at your pace
Clarifying your values — love, family, creativity, justice, kindness, connection—and connecting them to action
Learning practical skills to work with difficult emotions and self-criticism in session & after session
Choosing small, doable steps toward living aligned with what matters most then practicing between sessions
Over time, these practices help women feel less consumed by their pain and more connected to themselves, their love, and their lives. One breath at a time.
"Acceptance is not about liking or wanting what has happened, but about making space for the pain that comes with loss, so that life can move forward. In the willingness to experience grief, there is room to honor the love and meaning that loss represents."
Robyn Walser, PhD & Darrah Westrup, PhD
In Short
ACT is both rigorous and tender. It is science-backed and deeply human. It allows us to sit with the truth that grief hurts because love matters — and it helps us keep moving toward love and meaning in the middle of the pain.
For me, ACT is not just a therapy model; it is as much a personal practice as a professional approach. It is one of the most powerful ways I know to honor grief as sacred and human while making practical, relevant, love-forward choices.
Learn More
I spoke with my colleagues Ann Nost, LCSW, and Karli Shank, LCSW, about ACT for women’s grief on their podcast “Oh Baby?” - listen here.
Take Your Next Step
If ACT-based grief therapy resonates with you, I invite you to:
Connect directly for one-on-one support
You are not a broken woman getting fixed, or a bad woman getting good. You are a grieving woman getting care. Please include you in your own compassion, however that looks today, and take it all one breath at a time.
