Having first encountered Dr Russ Harris’ work on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) some 15+ years ago, I was quickly converted to this exciting way of working. (If you’ve never heard of this approach before, I highly recommend reading The Happiness Trap for life changing exercises to squash negative habits and limiting beliefs, and build strategies to move towards a more fulfilling life.) Of course I wanted to experiment on myself first to make sure it worked. I used to have an inconvenient needle phobia – I was known to faint at the mention of needing an immunisation - and after practising these methods, I can now confidently* have an injection or blood test without becoming a hyperventilating crumbling mess!
I’ve just finished another of Russ’ courses, full of brilliant insights and practical tools/tips to help clients unhook from unhelpful beliefs and move through perceived barriers towards their goals.
One of the main takeaways for me is we all have difficult thoughts and feelings – a lot of the time! Our mind is like an overly helpful friend, trying to help and protect us by scanning for danger and predicting potential threats. It’s trying so hard though that it’s getting in our way. Note that it’s not the difficult thought or feeling that’s the problem in itself, it’s how we respond to them. Often we experience fear, worry, anxiety, stress, discomfort and a very chatty internal critic who says all sorts of intensely mean things you’d never dare actually say to anyone (or at least I hope you wouldn’t!). This then leads to us behaving in ways that move us away from the life we want to lead.
Unfortunately we weren’t born with a delete button in our brain, so we can’t actually get rid of these difficult thoughts or feelings. Nor can we stop them – the more we focus on not saying or doing things, the more we end up doing them, and then getting more frustrated and angry we get at ourselves for doing so! What we focus on expands!
Instead, we can experiment with a series of practical strategies that increase our psychological flexibility, or in other words, help us to:
Open up
Be present
Do what matters
These practices can assist us gently to:
notice we’re actually having unhelpful thoughts and feelings in the first place (often they run on autopilot and quickly amplify into unhelpful behaviours without you realising)
create space to recognise the impacts these thoughts and feelings are having on us
make decisions about how to act next – either away or towards the person you want to be
establish some long term strategies to help you live your best life
I’ve been using this approach with some clients, and it’s been encouraging to see them start to unhook from their unhelpful beliefs and move through their perceived barriers towards their leadership development and career transition goals.
I’ve also started a new personal experiment to address my chocolate addiction using an “urge surfing” method… more on that in a future post (wish me luck!) ;-)
*Well, maybe “confident” is still wishful thinking… but I can definitely deal with needle jabs when I need to now (aided greatly by a patient and friendly nurse at a local pathology lab, who’s great at distracting me and doesn’t mind me lying down so I don’t pass out in her office… )
Image: NASA