The Choice Point: A Little ACT for When the Squirrel's in the House
- 5 days ago
- 7 min read
By Dr. John O'Malley, PhD, LPC, Published May 14, 2026 · 8 min read
Alright. When the damn squirrel gets in the house , which hopefully by now, if you've read my other blogs or my website, you know is what I call the negative cycle — it's really easy to blame your partner.
Or just blame yourself. But here's the thing.
It's not necessarily that you need more communication skills. (Most couples I work with don't, actually. They communicate fine outside the cycle. Inside the cycle, all bets are off.) What you actually need is to go meta (for Facebook :) — to step back and really see your interaction. The pattern. What EFT calls the cycle.
The catch is that you can't always do that work in real time, with your partner, in the middle of a fight. Trust me, I have a PhD and help folks with this and it is hard. The squirrel is running around, the squireel has the dog barking, somebody's standing on the couch — it's chaos. You're not having a thoughtful moment about your relational pattern at minute three of a Tuesday-night meltdown.
So today I want to introduce something you can do on your own, before, during, or after the cycle hits.
It's called the Choice Point, and I got it from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — ACT for short. It's simple enough that an eighth grader could use it, which is exactly why it works.
What the Choice Point actually is
THanks you so Russ Harris for helping me understand th Choice Point. Here's the whole tool. Draw a V on a napkin. Two lines coming up out of a single point at the bottom.
Bottom of the V: this is where the hard thoughts and hard feelings show up. "He doesn't care." "She's being ridiculous." "I'm such an idiot." "I'm going to lose him." You know the ones.
Left side of the V — going up and away: away moves. The things you do that take you further from the partner you want to be, the relationship you want to build, the life you're trying to live. For a pursuer, that's pursuing harder, getting sharper, listing every grievance from the last six months. For a withdrawer, that's shutting down, leaving the room, doom-scrolling, getting small. Your away moves are personal — they're whatever your nervous system reaches for when it's flooded.
Right side of the V — going up and toward: toward moves. The things you do that take you a little closer to who you want to be. Even when it's clumsy. Even when it's imperfect.
The whole tool — and I mean the whole thing — is one question to ask when you notice yourself at the bottom of that V, hard thoughts and feelings active, about to act:
"Toward move, or away move?"
That's it. That's the entire intervention. Three breaths. One question. Then you choose.
The thing ACT does differently
A lot of folks have been through some version of CBT — cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT, simplified, says: the thought is the problem, let's challenge it. And CBT works for a lot of things.
ACT does something different. ACT says: you don't have to fight your hard thoughts.
You don't have to fight your hard thoughts.
You don't have to argue with them, dispute them, replace them with better ones. You just have to notice them, hold them with a little gentleness, and not let them drive the car.
ACT calls it being hooked when a thought or feeling has taken the wheel. Hooked = away moves on autopilot. Unhooked doesn't mean you feel better. The hard thought is still there. The feeling is still there. You can still see them. But you're not arguing with them and you're not obeying them. You're just at the choice point, the fork in the road, and you're free to take the next right step.
The simplest unhooking move in the whole ACT toolkit is this: instead of "he doesn't care about me," try "I'm having the thought that he doesn't care about me."
That tiny linguistic shift creates a sliver of space between you and the thought. You're not arguing with it. You're just locating it as a thought, not a fact.
Try it once. It's weirder than it sounds.
Why this matters when the squirrel's in the house
Look, the cycle work, the EFT work, the actually fixing the pattern between the two of you, that's couples work. You and your partner, together, ideally with someone in the room helping you see what you can't see when you're both inside the storm. But you can't only do couples work.
Most of your relationship doesn't happen in my office. Most of it happens in your kitchen, your car, your group text, the three minutes between getting home and somebody asking about dinner.
The Choice Point is one of the things you can do alone, in real time, when the squirrel's already in the house and you're about to do something you're going to regret.
If you're the pursuer in your dynamic, your away move is probably some version of pursuing harder when your partner pulls away. Loud, sharp, specific, more words. Your toward move is something like: soften the start. Name the fear under the anger. Ask for one thing instead of five. The hard thought might be "he doesn't care" — and the question, at the choice point, is: is what I'm about to say a toward move, or an away move?
If you're the withdrawer, your away move is probably going quiet, leaving the room, disappearing behind a screen. Your toward move is one sentence: "I'm flooded, I need twenty minutes, and I'll come back." And then actually coming back. The hard thought might be "I'm going to make it worse, whatever I say is wrong" — and the question is: is silence right now a toward move, or an away move?
Sometimes silence is a toward move. Sometimes it's an away move. The point isn't a universal answer. The point is asking the question.
A note on what "toward" actually means
This part gets people stuck so let me say it plainly.
Toward moves aren't about being a good partner in some abstract, performative way. They're about moving toward the person you want to be when you grow up — or this afternoon, whichever comes first.
ACT calls these your values — not goals, not achievements, but qualities of being. Patient. Honest. Affectionate. Steady. Curious. Generous. The way you want to show up.
If you don't know your values, you can't know what counts as a toward move. So before you do any of this, I'd send you to valuescardsort.com. It's free. It takes twenty minutes. Folks at the NHS and Harvard Medical School use it with their patients, so it's not some woo-woo internet quiz. Identify five or six qualities that name who you want to be. Those become your north star.
The choice point question, in its fullest form, becomes: "Is what I'm about to do moving me toward those qualities, or away from them?"
What this isn't
Couple things I want to be clear about.
This isn't a way to suppress your feelings or pretend you're fine when you're not. Your feelings are valid. They're information. The question is only whether the next move — the actual behavior — is going to take you toward the life you want or away from it.
This isn't a substitute for the actual cycle work. If you and your partner are stuck in the same loop, doing the Choice Point alone is useful but it isn't enough. The cycle changes when both of you can see it and interrupt it together. That's couples therapy work.
And this isn't the right tool if there's violence, intimidation, or fear in your relationship. If that's where you are, please reach out to a therapist, your doctor, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Same goes if contempt has set in — eye-rolling, name-calling, mockery. That's a different kind of damage and it needs a different kind of work, not a blog post.
So what do you do with this
If you read this and recognized yourself — the cycle, the role, the fight that keeps repeating — that recognition is the first thing.
Here's what I'd actually do this week if I were you:
One. Print out the Choice Point handout (it's in my resources section — V-diagram, the move lists, fill-in prompts you can do alone or with your partner). Put it somewhere you'll see it. The fridge works.
Two. Pick one away move you make and name it. Just one. Don't try to fix it. Just notice it the next two or three times it happens.
Three. When you notice it, do the question. Toward move, or away move? Three breaths. Then choose.
You're going to choose the away move sometimes. That's fine. The work isn't perfection. The work is just slowly, over weeks and months, having a bit more space between the hard feeling and the next move. That's it. That's most of how change actually happens.
And if you want help with the bigger piece
The Choice Point is one tool. It's useful. It's not the whole job.
The whole job — actually changing the cycle, getting unstuck from the pattern you've been in for years — is couples work, and it's most of what I do here at O'Malley Counseling in Golden. I'm an EFT-trained couples therapist and I work with couples across the Denver metro area who are tired of having the same fight and ready to try something different.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation. No intake forms, no commitment, just a conversation about what's going on between the two of you and whether we'd be a good fit to work together.
If you're ready, you can book one at omalleycounseling.com.
If you're not ready yet — that's fine too. Save this post. Try the question this week. The squirrel's going to get in the house again. That's just life. The point is that next time, you've got something to do with it.
Dr. John O'Malley, PhD, LPC, NCC, is an EFT-trained couples therapist at O'Malley Counseling in Golden, Colorado, serving couples across the Denver metro area. More articles and resources at omalleycounseling.com.