Acceptance and commitment therapy takes a different route to the same destination. Instead of disputing difficult thoughts, it works on how tightly you are holding them, and on what you do next regardless.
Thoughts as weather
You are the sky; thoughts are weather passing through. Some are heavy, some are loud, none of them are the sky itself.
Defusion is not arguing a cloud away. It is noticing that it is a cloud, and that it is moving. Adding "I'm having the thought that…" in front of a sentence is often enough to create that distance.
The choice point
In any difficult moment there is a fork. Away moves take you further from the person you want to be — avoiding, numbing, snapping, disappearing. Towards moves take you closer.
A towards move does not require the hard feeling to be gone first. That is the entire point of it.
Direction, not destination
A goal is a destination: finishable, tickable, losable. A value is a direction: available every day, never completed.
Goals can fail. A value can be lived in the next five minutes, in the smallest possible way — which is why values hold up on the days when nothing gets achieved.
Making room is not liking the feeling. It is stopping the fight about having it.