"I CAN handle my emotions - how!" (part 2)

Find yourself making bad decisions when you're emotional? Try looking at Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) - one of the "newer" therapeutic approaches on the block.

The key to ACT is working on psychological flexibility - facing challenging feelings but still acting in line with your values, such as eating and exercising for health no matter how you feel.

Let's explore a 4 point overview of ACT's core philosophies...

1. Acceptance

   
   

   Instead of avoiding or suppressing negative emotions (as we are naturally inclined to do), acknowledging and allowing them to exist without judgment actually helps to reduce the struggle against emotional experiences and promotes deeper understanding.​

   
   

   Pushing emotion away often leads to a tension that can't be resolved, and we eventually end up turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms (e.g. eating, drinking, smoking). But with the right techniques, we can become more flexible about sitting with a difficult feeling and allow it to pass... and even, over time, becoming to be grateful for the growth it provides!

   
   
   
   

   

   
   

2. Cognitive Defusion

   
   

   To create distance from unhelpful thoughts we first need to recognizing them as mental events, not absolute truths! Sticky thoughts that trap us in rumination cycles are called Hooks.

   
   

   Of the thousands of silly suggestions our brains are designed to throw out each day, notice that we tend to pay attention and attach meaning to the thoughts that link to our core fears.

   
   

   For example, if we dig very deep on a thought such as "I shouldn't eat ANY high calorie food or I am a failure" - we might eventually discover a core fear of abandonment (especially if we have learned that our weight dictates our value).

   
   

   With practice and healing work, hooks no longer have the power to reel us in...

   
   

3. Name it to tame it

   
   

   Understanding the type of hook we are dealing with, and which core fear it comes from, helps to take the power out of it. For example, depressed thought patterns are more of a shared phenomenon of brains, than something that truly belongs to us!

   
   

   Learning to identify that "this sounds like the voice of depression", means that we can treat surface thoughts as a secondary issue rather than engage with them.

   
   

   When we learn to disregard extremely negative and black thoughts (and they're easily spotted, because most things in life are distinctly in the grey area), we can get back to behaving according to our core values (the "true" us).

   
   

   

   
   

4. Becoming Present

   
   

   Have you heard this line before? It's a gooden. The opposite of addiction is connection.

   
   

   Practices that connect you with the present, such as guided meditation, focusing on sensory experiences, or ideally, connecting with another person (especially in an act of service), helps to give us back our perspective and remove rumination and accompanying habits from centre stage.​

   
   

   Overall, understanding what matters most to us and working out our core philosophy really helps to provides direction and motivation in difficult moments, and this is something we could choose to work on with a coach or therapist.

   
   
   
   

   

   
   

By integrating these ACT principles into daily life, and practicing every day, individuals can cultivate a more accepting and proactive approach to managing their emotions, leading to better decision making and a more fulfilled life.

Written with compassion,

Lizzie