We tend to wait for fear, uncertainty, or discomfort to disappear before we act. ACT offers another option: willingness to feel what we feel and move toward what matters anyway.

Sometimes one door closes and another opens. And sometimes you get stuck in the hallway wondering what on earth happens next. This Sheesh! post explores coping with uncertainty, the urge to make discomfort disappear, and how DBT distress tolerance skills can help us wait without making the hallway harder.

Life has a way of handing us feelings, relationships, and experiences that refuse to fit neatly into one category. What’s in Alanis Morissette’s Junk Drawer? explores the DBT idea that two things can be true at the same time and why learning to hold both may help us get unstuck from either-or thinking.

Your brain is built to notice problems and figure out what to do next. That is incredibly useful until it starts treating your thoughts, feelings, relationships, and sense of self like problems that need to be fixed. Where Is My Mind? explores the problem solving mind and what ACT can teach us about making a little more room for being human.

You can think carefully, make a reasonable choice, do your best, and things can still go wrong. No Matter How You Work It, Things Go Wrong looks at why we so quickly turn disappointment into self blame, and how acceptance can help us respond with a little more perspective when life refuses to follow the plan.

Your brain is very good at finding problems. Sometimes a little too good. Where Is My Mind? looks at the problem solving mind, why it keeps searching for something to fix, and what ACT can teach us about responding differently when our thoughts and feelings become the next project