Acceptance and commitment therapy · Hopkins, Minnesota
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in Minneapolis, Minnesota
ACT therapy in Minneapolis, used inside outpatient addiction and mental health treatment, so you can make room for the craving without obeying it.
Northwoods Haven Recovery uses acceptance and commitment therapy in group therapy and individual counseling at both levels of outpatient care, for adults across Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. ACT starts from a different question than most therapies. Not “how do I get rid of this feeling” but “what do I want my life to be about, and what am I willing to feel to get there.”
In-network with Minnesota Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, HealthPartners, UnitedHealthcare, and Medica
Acceptance and commitment therapy
You cannot always choose the feeling. You can choose the next move.
Why ACT lands
Letting go of the fight for control.
For people exhausted by years of trying to control cravings, anxiety, or shame with a substance, that shift is often the thing that finally lands.
6
Core ACT processes that together build psychological flexibility
Both
Used in IOP and the Relapse Prevention Program
18+
Adults, including young adults
0
Nights away from home. Every level of care here is outpatient
What ACT is
Stop fighting the feeling. Start moving toward what matters
Acceptance and commitment therapy, said as the word “act,” is a behavioral therapy developed by psychologist Steven Hayes and colleagues beginning in the 1980s. It rests on a claim that sounds strange at first: much suffering comes not from painful thoughts and feelings themselves but from the struggle to avoid them. The more you fight a craving, a memory, or a wave of anxiety, the more of your life the fight consumes. ACT calls the alternative psychological flexibility: staying present, opening up to what you feel, and doing what matters to you anyway.
ACT builds that flexibility through six connected processes. Acceptance means allowing an uncomfortable feeling to be there without acting to remove it. Cognitive defusion means seeing a thought as a thought, a string of words your mind produced, rather than a command or a fact. Present-moment awareness is mindfulness in plain terms. Self-as-context is the recognition that you are the one noticing the thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Values are what you want your life to stand for. Committed action is the behavior that moves you toward them.
For substance use, the fit is direct. A drink or a drug is the most reliable short-term way most people have ever found to make an unwanted feeling stop. ACT does not argue with that. It asks what the strategy has cost, whether it has ever worked for long, and what you would do with your time if you were not spending it managing feelings. At Northwoods Haven Recovery, the same conversation serves the depression, anxiety, and trauma underneath the using, because the avoidance pattern is the same whatever is being avoided.
How it fits here
ACT runs inside group therapy and individual counseling at both levels of care, alongside CBT, DBT skills, and motivational interviewing. You do not choose one therapy from a menu. Your counselor teaches you all of them, and the plan uses what works for you.
Our space
Inside our outpatient treatment center in Hopkins, Minnesota
A safe haven should feel like one. Our suite on Green Oak Drive looks out over water and trees, and the rooms where groups meet were built to feel calm, comfortable, and homey. Not clinical, not institutional. You are more than your diagnosis here, and the space is meant to say so before anyone does.
The lounge
Where people land and catch their breath before group.
The group room
Three hours a day, in a circle, with people who understand.
The view
Water and treeline out every window: the northwoods, in the metro.
Another Group Room
Three hours a day, in a circle, with people who understand.
Quiet corners
Somewhere to sit with a thing before you say it out loud.
Room to breathe
Daylight and treeline out every window. No clinical fluorescence.
What a session looks like
Core ACT practices you will use here
ACT is taught through exercises and metaphors more than worksheets, because a picture you remember at the liquor store beats a rule you forgot.
Individual
Values clarification
Working out with your counselor what you actually care about: being a parent people can count on, doing work you respect, being honest. Not goals, but directions. Every later choice gets measured against them.
Practice
Defusion exercises
Saying “I am having the thought that I need a drink” instead of “I need a drink.” Repeating a sticky thought until it is just a sound. Small tricks that put daylight between you and what your mind says.
Skill
Willingness and urge surfing
Sitting with a craving in group, noticing where it lives in the body, how it rises and falls, and discovering that it passes without being fed. Practiced when the stakes are low so it is available when they are high.
Homework
Committed action plans
One concrete step toward a value each week, taken whether or not the anxiety, the shame, or the urge shows up. The point is not to feel ready first. The point is to move and let the feeling come along.
What it helps with
What ACT is good for, and what the research says
ACT has a solid evidence base for anxiety disorders, depression, and chronic pain, and a growing one for substance use disorders, where studies broadly find it as effective as established treatments such as CBT at reducing use, with some evidence that its gains hold well over time. It appears especially useful when using is driven by avoidance: drinking to not feel social anxiety, using opioids to not feel grief or pain, smoking cannabis to not feel the evening alone. When the substance is a strategy for escaping experience, a therapy about relating differently to experience makes sense.
ACT also tends to reach people other approaches have lost. Someone who has been through treatment before, knows every coping skill, and has decided that thinking about thinking is not going to save them often responds to ACT’s more open stance. There is no thought to correct, no feeling to fix. There is a life to build and a willingness to carry discomfort while building it. For people carrying shame about their using, that matters.
ACT has limits. It is more abstract than CBT or DBT skills at first, and its metaphors can feel vague to someone who wants a clear procedure. In the earliest weeks, when cravings are strongest and thinking is foggy, the structure of CBT and the crisis skills of DBT often need to come first. And acceptance is never approval or passivity: ACT does not mean tolerating a dangerous situation or accepting continued use. Your counselor decides how much of your plan draws on it and when.
Not sure this is for you?
You do not have to be. ACT and CBT are taught side by side here. If challenging your thoughts works for you, CBT will be the louder voice in your plan. If challenging them has always turned into a fight you lose, ACT offers another way to hold them. Most people use pieces of both.
Who it is for
ACT is probably a good fit for you if you
- Use to escape a feeling more than to chase one, and have noticed that the feeling always comes back with interest
- Have tried to think your way out of cravings or anxiety and found that the more you fight, the louder it gets
- Are living with anxiety, depression, trauma, or chronic pain alongside the substance use and want a way to carry it without a substance
- Have lost track of what you want your life to be about, because managing the using and the feelings took all the room
- Have been through treatment before and want something that does not feel like another set of rules to break
Not sure yet
A comprehensive assessment answers it.
A chemical use assessment determines your diagnosis, how severe the substance use is, and which level of care fits, here or somewhere better suited to you. Your counselor builds the plan from there and decides how much of it draws on ACT. If you already have a recent assessment, send it over and we will review it instead.
For families
About half our calls are from someone else.
You can ask a question without committing anyone to anything, and family involvement is part of the work when the client wants it.
How we use it
Where ACT shows up at each step of treatment
The therapy does not change the level of care or the counselors you work with. It changes the question you are asking about your own life.
Step one
Chemical use assessment
An hour with a licensed alcohol and drug counselor. The assessment establishes the diagnosis and the level of care. It is also the first honest look at what the using has been for, which is where ACT begins.
Where everyone starts
Most people start here
Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)
Three-hour groups where defusion and willingness are practiced together, and individual counseling where your values get named and turned into weekly committed actions. About two to four months.
Explore IOP →
Then
Relapse Prevention Program
Ten to twelve weeks with the same counselors. Your written relapse prevention plan carries your values forward: what you are staying sober for, and how you will make room for the urges that still come.
Explore relapse prevention →
Therapies
Evidence-based addiction therapies, taught as options, not prescriptions.
We’ll walk you through every approach we use and why, then build your plan around the ones that fit your beliefs and your life. No single pathway, no ideology, no judgment.
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Find the thought patterns that drive use, and learn to interrupt them.
Dialectical behavior therapy
Skills for distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and hard relationships.
Acceptance & commitment therapy
Move toward what you actually value, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Motivational interviewing
Your reasons for changing, in your words. Nobody lectures you here.
Individual counseling
Your own licensed counselor, where the plan gets built and adjusted.
Group therapy
Three hours a day with people who know the terrain you’re crossing.
Addiction counseling
One-on-one counseling with your own chemical dependency counselor.
Trauma-informed care
Care that accounts for what happened to you, not what’s wrong with you.
Relapse prevention and aftercare planning run through every level of care rather than sitting off to the side, and whole-person care means mental health psychoeducation happens alongside all of it.
Therapies
Evidence-based therapies we use, taught as options
Seven approaches, one plan built with you. Your counselor teaches you what each one does and you decide what belongs in your recovery lifestyle.
Catch the thought that comes before the drink or the drug, test it, and practice a different move before Friday.
Skills for intense emotion, urges, and relationships: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness.
Make room for the craving or the feeling without acting on it, and build a life around what you value.
Find your own reasons to change, at your own pace. Includes motivational enhancement therapy, the structured short form.
The same people each session, so accountability is real. Where most of the traction in outpatient treatment comes from.
Every group and session run on predictability, choice, and safety, because most people carry something older than the substance.
Mental health, relationships, work, and purpose treated as one picture, with a recovery lifestyle you define.
You do not choose a therapy from a menu. Your counselor teaches you all of them as options and the plan uses what works for you.
Assessments and services
Assessments and services that get you into the right care
Everything begins with an assessment. These are the services around our two levels of outpatient care.
The hour that turns a worry into a diagnosis and a level of care. Where everyone starts.
A clinical evaluation for Minnesota DWI court, probation, and licensing requirements, with written documentation.
Individual counseling with your own licensed alcohol and drug counselor, inside every level of care here.
Paying for treatment
Insurance-covered addiction treatment that's accessible to anyone who wants it.
Medicaid was the first network we joined, on purpose. We’re also in-network with major commercial plans. We’ll verify your benefits and tell you plainly what your plan covers before you commit to anything.
Minnesota Medicaid
Blue Cross Blue Shield
HealthPartners
UnitedHealthcare
Medica
Hennepin Health
Private pay accepted
Not listed? Call and we'll check.
Common questions
Questions people ask about acceptance and commitment therapy
If yours is not here, ask us directly. We would rather tell you honestly that we are not the right fit than have you find out later.
LegitScript Certified
Verified addiction treatment provider
Is ACT the same as CBT?
No, though ACT grew out of the same behavioral tradition. CBT works to identify unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more accurate ones. ACT does not try to change a thought’s content; it changes your relationship to it, so a thought can be present without running your behavior. Both are taught at Northwoods Haven Recovery.
Does acceptance mean accepting that I use?
No. Acceptance in ACT is about internal experience: cravings, anxiety, grief, shame. You practice letting those be present without acting to escape them. Behavior is where commitment comes in. You accept the urge and commit to not drinking anyway, because drinking moves you away from what you value.
Is ACT a form of mindfulness?
Mindfulness is one part of it. ACT uses present-moment awareness and noticing thoughts without judgment, but it puts those skills in service of something: identifying your values and acting on them. You practice noticing so that a craving cannot make your choices for you.
Do I have to talk in group?
You are never forced to share your story, and nobody is put on the spot on day one. ACT groups are built around exercises and discussion of how they landed, so participation can start with a sentence about an experience rather than a life history.
How many ACT sessions will I need?
ACT is not delivered as a fixed course here. It runs through group and individual sessions across about two to four months in the Intensive Outpatient Program and ten to twelve weeks in the Relapse Prevention Program. Values work tends to come early and committed action builds over the whole stay.
Does ACT work for anxiety and depression as well as addiction?
Yes. ACT’s evidence base is strongest for anxiety and depression, the conditions most often driving substance use in the first place. Northwoods Haven Recovery treats co-occurring conditions such as anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD, bipolar disorder, and ADHD alongside chemical dependency programming, and the same ACT skills serve both.
Can I do ACT if I take medication?
Yes. Medications a medical provider prescribes for anxiety, depression, ADHD, or cravings are part of your picture, and ACT works alongside them. We do not prescribe or manage medication. Tell us during the assessment so your plan accounts for it.
Does insurance cover ACT?
ACT is part of the outpatient treatment itself rather than a separately billed service, so it is covered when the program is. We are in-network with Minnesota Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, HealthPartners, UnitedHealthcare, and Medica. Give us your plan information on the first call and we will verify your benefits.
Your team
Meet the counselors who answer the phone and guide your treatment.
Getting started
How to get started: four steps, no waiting eleven days.
Reaching out doesn’t commit you to anything. It means you asked a question, and we answered it.
01
Call
We listen to what’s going on and where you are in the process. No script, no pressure.
02
Chemical use assessment
A comprehensive assessment to determine diagnosis and the level of care that fits.
03
Referral to the right care
Ideally with us. If another program fits you better, we’ll connect you to it.
04
Intake
Programming starts immediately after intake. Already have an assessment? Send it over and we’ll review it.
Take the first step
When you're ready, we're here.
Reaching out doesn’t mean you’ve committed to anything. It means you’re asking a question, and we’ll answer it honestly, even if the answer points somewhere else.
100% confidential
Insurance verified fast
No commitment to ask
Outpatient only
Referring professionals
Send a comprehensive assessment, plus treatment plan reviews, discharge summary, med list, and insurance information if applicable. A list, not a portal.
Visit us in Hopkins
Northwoods Haven Recovery
5900 Green Oak Drive, Ste 306
Hopkins, MN 55343