A Different Take on Suffering

Thoughts can feel very real, can’t they? They can create emotions, and reinforce beliefs, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant. Whether they are useful or not useful. And your relationship to your thoughts can have a huge impact on your life. The impacts could exist within the realms of anxiety and depression, or even preventing you from pursuing goals that feel grounded to you and make you feel alive. At its core, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) accepts that suffering is a part of life. However, ACT makes a distinction between suffering and unnecessary suffering. Suffering is something that just happens in life, and is unavoidable. Unnecessary suffering happens when we treat our thoughts as if they are reality, and we get entangled with them. When thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations are not treated as if they are reality from direct experience, then there is an opportunity to pursue a value-aligned life.

When Thoughts Give You Lemons, Pause

Here’s an example of how convincing thoughts can be. Imagine a bright yellow lemon. Really see the lemon rind. The little indents. The two cones on the end. And now imagine grabbing a knife to cut through the lemon. Imagine the scent of lemon zest filling your nostrils as you cut into the lemon. Imagine yourself cutting a nice, juicy wedge for yourself, and setting the rest of the lemon to the side. Now imagine the juice spilling down your fingers as you take a hearty bite out of the lemon wedge.

Are you salivating at all? What do you notice happening for you in your mouth as you bite into the wedge? Isn’t that something? You had a thought about a lemon, and your body interpreted the event as if you really picked up a lemon and bit it. If your body can have experiences like this with lemons, I want to invite you to consider how anxious or depressive thoughts may be impacting you. How your body reacts as a result of those thoughts. And what you do as a result. If you are having thoughts that help you to move along towards goals that feel centered and aligned for you, your thoughts could be considered useful. But what about when they are not useful towards you chasing goals that make you feel alive? Whether it is going back to school, going after a job you would like, or even trying a hobby that would feel life giving for you, if your thoughts are getting in the way, here are some tools from ACT to help you get through.

Detangling from Your Mind

ACT uses a tool called “cognitive defusion,” which basically means detangling from your thoughts. There are a few easy ways to do this, that at first may sound silly, but if you decide to try, it could be a fun way to lessen the intensity of unpleasant feelings from your unhelpful thoughts.

1. “Thanks Brain!”: This exercise is something that you can do when you notice unhelpful/unpleasant thoughts. For example, let’s say you want to join a tennis club, but you hesitate to register because you start to have the thought “I’d never be any good at tennis, so why bother?” You start to feel anxious and stare at your computer screen. Then what you get to do is say “Thanks, brain! You just gave me an unhelpful thought that I would never be any good at tennis and that I shouldn’t bother” And from there you can notice if that lessened the intensity of anxiety or fear. Then you can have fun!
2. Cartoon Voice: In this case, let’s say that you want to take a step towards your dream career, which for you, is to research different training programs. You get ready to look online for different programs, and all of a sudden you have the thought “I’m stupid, I can’t get into any of these programs.” You feel intense fear and scroll on your phone instead. You get to say that same thought out loud in your favorite cartoon voice. Imagine saying it like Scooby Doo, or Spongebob, or Mickey Mouse, and explore how your relationship to that thought changes.
3. Sell Your Thoughts: When an unhelpful thought takes up space rent free in your mind, why not sell it? In this exercise, you get to identify your unhelpful thought and then sell it. The less expensive it is, the less valuable the thought. For example, imagine you want to make new friends to establish a support system for yourself. You get ready to go to an event where you can meet people, and you have the thought “nobody would like me, so I’m just going to stay home.” You feel depressed, and decide to lay across your couch and watch a TV show. In this case, you get to sell your unhelpful thought for however much you want. You imagine yourself selling it for $1, as a message to yourself that your unhelpful thought has no value to your direct experience. And then you get to take a chance on doing something new that add to living a more meaningful life.

And the Oscar Goes To…

This may be a new way of thinking about your relationship to your thoughts. It all starts with awareness. So if you would like, you can just practice awareness of identifying your unhelpful thoughts. And if you get to the point where you notice unhelpful thoughts getting in the way, I’d like to invite you to give these tools a try! Then you can imagine receiving an award for your ACTing.