The Happiness Trap (12 page)

Q:
I tried to make room for the feeling, but it was too overwhelming. What should I do?

A:
You’re probably trying to do too much at once. Just pick
one
troublesome sensation and keep your focus on it. Aim to accept just that
one
sensation, even if it takes you several minutes. Once you’ve done that, go ahead and pick another one.

Q:
It’s hard to stay focused on one sensation.

A:
Yes, sometimes it is hard—at first. But like any skill, it gets easier with practice. Try to keep your focus on one sensation at a time. If your attention wanders to another sensation, then as soon as you realise it, bring your focus back to the first sensation.

Q:
But my thoughts keep distracting me.

A:
Yes, this is the basic nature of the thinking self. It distracts you again and again, pulling you out of your experience. So when it starts chattering, just say, ‘Thanks, Mind!’ or silently say to yourself, ‘Thinking!’, then gently return your attention to the sensation. And whenever you notice that your attention has wandered, take a second to note what distracted you (a memory, a thought, an image); then gently refocus. Each time you do this, you are learning two valuable skills: first, to notice when you’re all caught up in your thoughts (cognitive fusion); and second, to refocus your attention after it has wandered.

Q:
That was fantastic. The moment I made room for my unpleasant feelings, they disappeared. Is this what I can expect every time?

A:
No, no, no! When we practise expansion, unpleasant feelings often disperse rapidly. But (as with defusion techniques) this is merely a bonus, not the main intention. The aim with expansion is simply to make room for your feelings, to feel whatever you are feeling without a struggle. Often those feelings will move very rapidly, but sometimes they won’t. So if you’re expecting to ‘feel good’, then sooner or later you’ll get disappointed and end up struggling again.

Q:
The feelings disappeared at first, but then they came back again.

A:
Many uncomfortable feelings will surface repeatedly. If someone you love has died, then waves of sadness may keep washing over you for many weeks or months. And if you’ve been diagnosed with cancer or some other serious illness, waves of fear will surge up again and again. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.’

Q:
I made room for my feelings, but they didn’t change.

A:
Sometimes feelings change quickly and sometimes they don’t. You need to accept that they will change in their own good time, not according to your schedule.

Q:
Okay. I’ve accepted my feelings. Now what?

A:
Having accepted your emotions, choose an area of your life that is important to you and take effective action in line with your values.

Q:
Why do you keep coming back to actions and values?

A:
Actions are important because, unlike your thoughts and feelings, you can have direct control over them. Values are important because they can guide you and motivate you through situations where your feelings might lead you off course. Acting in accordance with your own deepest values is inherently satisfying and fulfilling—even though it often forces you to face your fears.

Pleasant feelings such as satisfaction, joy and love are natural byproducts of living by your values. But they aren’t the only ones. Other byproducts include uncomfortable emotions such as fear, sadness, anger, frustration and disappointment. You can’t have just the pleasant feelings without all the others. That’s why it’s important to learn how to accept all your feelings—pleasant, neutral and unpleasant.

Q:
Lots of self-help approaches suggest that when we are feeling bad we should try things like having a hot bath, listening to music, reading a good book, savouring a hot chocolate, getting a massage, walking the dog, playing a sport we love, spending time with friends, and so on. Are you suggesting we shouldn’t try such activities?

A:
This is similar to a question I answered in Chapter 2. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of great advice from all sorts of sources about helpful activities to try when you’re feeling ‘bad’. And most of these activities can be deeply satisfying—as long as you genuinely value them; that is, as long as you engage in them out of a sense that they are truly meaningful to you. But if you do these activities mainly to run away from unpleasant feelings, they aren’t likely to be all that rewarding—it’s hard to appreciate life when you’re on the run from something threatening.

Therefore, in ACT, acceptance always comes first. First you make room for your feelings and allow them to be exactly as they are.
Then
you ask, ‘What can I do right now that is truly
meaningful
or important?’ This is very different from asking, ‘
How
can I feel better?’ Then, once you’ve identified an activity you truly value, go ahead and take action.

You can remember these three steps with a simple acronym:

A=Accept your internal experience.

C=Choose a valued direction.

T=Take action.

Of course, once you fully accept your unpleasant feelings and immerse yourself in valued activities, pleasant feelings will often start to emerge. But as I’ve said countless times before, this is just a bonus, not the main goal. The main goal is to engage in meaningful activities, no matter how you feel. It is this that, in the long run, makes life fulfilling.

Q:
I did accept my feelings for a little while, but then I started struggling with them again.

A:
This is common. We often need to accept, accept, and accept again. The word ‘acceptance’ is misleading, because it seems like a one-off action. In fact, acceptance is an ongoing process. A better word might be ‘accepting’.

Q:
What do I do if strong feelings come on when I’m at work, or in some other situation where I can’t just sit down and practise expansion?

A:
With practice, expansion can happen almost instantly. It takes only a couple of seconds to take a slow, deep breath, scan your body and make some room for what you’re feeling. Once you’ve done that, focus your attention on effective action rather than getting caught up in your feelings.

Q:
Is slow, deep breathing essential?

A:
No, it’s not. But most people find it very helpful. The other two steps, observing and allowing, are the only essential aspects of expansion.

Q:
How can I accept my feelings when they have embarrassing side effects, such as making me blush!

A:
In my days as a family doctor, I hated stitching up wounds on small children. The kids were usually terrified and they screamed and bawled as their parents held them down. I felt like such a sadist! Often I felt quite anxious and unfortunately my hands would start to shake. Now, obviously this was embarrassing, but if I got upset about it, they just shook all the more.

I didn’t like my shaking hands, but I couldn’t control them. It’s just what my hands do when I get really nervous. (That’s why I never became a bomb disposal expert!) So in these situations, the only sensible option was acceptance. I would say to the parents, ‘When I start stitching in a moment, you may notice my hands shaking a little. You don’t need to worry. It always happens when I stitch up young kids. It won’t stop me from doing a good job.’ Then, as I became involved in the stitching, my hands would gradually become steady. (Not always, mind you, but mostly. And even on those few occasions when they kept shaking, it was much easier to deal with once I’d accepted it.)

Our bodies can do all sorts of awkward things when we have strong feelings. We may start to blush, twitch, shake, sweat, develop stomach cramps, lose an erection, fail to reach an orgasm or even faint or vomit. Keep in mind that these reactions are often a result of the struggle switch being ON. With the switch ON, emotions are amplified (e.g. we get anxiety about our anxiety) and therefore the physical reactions in our body are greater. With the switch OFF, our emotions are smaller and change more rapidly, thereby causing less intense physical reactions. You’re much better off if you accept these reactions than if you struggle with them. If you struggle, your feelings will intensify and your bodily reactions will worsen. However, often when we accept these reactions, they improve.

Remember, too, we’re always talking about a twofold process: acceptance and action. So accepting these bodily reactions is the first step. Then, if something effective can be done about them, by all means do so. And if there is no effective remedy, acceptance is your best option.

Q:
I’m starting to have my doubts about you. You sound like an anxious bundle of nerves.

A:
In ACT, we place great emphasis on being ‘up front’. ACT therapists don’t go around pretending to be enlightened beings or to ‘have it all together’. We freely admit we’re human, and we fall into the same traps as everyone else. In fact, we often say to our clients something like this: ‘I don’t want you to put me on some kind of pedestal, to think I’ve got my life completely in order. It’s more as if you’re climbing your mountain over there and I’m climbing my mountain over here. And it’s not as if I’ve reached the top and I’m having a rest. It’s just that from where I am on my mountain, I can see obstacles on your mountain that you can’t see. So I can point those out to you and maybe show you some alternative routes around them’.

So yes, you’re absolutely right. I do experience a fair amount of anxiety in my life. But these days I generally handle it well. For example, when I am speaking publicly I fully accept my anxiety without a struggle. (I’m no keener than the next guy to experience such feelings, but I’m completely willing to have them in order to do something I value.) Just before I start speaking, my anxiety skyrockets. Then, as I become increasingly involved in my talk, one of two things happens: either it goes down or it doesn’t. Usually, it goes down fairly quickly, but even if it doesn’t, it’s not a problem, because now I fully accept it.

When I look back on my life, I can see how acceptance has dramatically reduced my anxiety levels. As a junior doctor, I was often in a state of anxiety and as a consequence my hands were often sweaty. I then became increasingly anxious about my sweaty hands—and guess what happened? That’s right. They became worse and worse until I developed a blistering sweat rash between my fingers. Nowadays my hands still get sweaty at times—but not often, because I don’t worry about it. Looking back even further on my life, as a medical student I suffered terribly from social anxiety, and I drank extremely heavily to try to counteract it. As a consequence, I invariably got drunk and ended up doing stupid or outrageous things, and waking up with a terrible hangover. These days I still get anxious in some social situations, but because I accept the anxiety, it comes and it goes, and it doesn’t escalate in a vicious cycle. As a result, I get to enjoy social events without the unpleasant side effects of too much alcohol (which I now rarely drink).

Of course, there are times when I still handle my anxiety poorly, when I completely forget everything I’ve written in this book, and I pace up and down the house, worrying uselessly, or I wolf down an entire packet of TimTams. But as the years go by I do such things less and less frequently; I get better and better at catching myself and doing something more effective instead.

The same will undoubtedly be true for you. You’ll use these new skills at times and reap the rewards. And at other times you’ll forget all about them. Again and again and again throughout your life, you will get caught up in struggling with your feelings. That’s the bad news. The good news is, the very moment you realise this has happened, you can instantly respond far more effectively!

Q:
I don’t really like all this acceptance stuff. Surely there must be easier ways of dealing with emotions.

A:
You need to trust your own experience on this. ACT works particularly well with clients who have tried many different types of therapy or personal development programs. That’s because these people have experienced for themselves that control strategies are not effective in the long run. So you may need to go and try some of the more popular approaches—hypnosis, visualisation, affirmations, positive thinking and so on—and discover for yourself that they really are not effective in the long term. Perhaps only then will you be fully ready to take on this approach. But before you go off and do that, reflect back to Chapter 2. Consider again all the ways you’ve tried to control ‘negative’ thoughts and feelings and ask yourself, did those methods work in the long term? And did they bring you closer to the life you want?

Q:
Do these principles apply to all emotions?

A:
Yes. But most of us have no problem with neutral or pleasant emotions. We only tend to struggle with the uncomfortable ones.

Q:
I don’t feel my emotions in my body. They’re all in my head.

A:
Sometimes it seems as though you don’t feel emotions in your body, but everybody does. If you can’t readily feel them, it suggests you’re very disconnected from your body. If this is the case, practise the Body Awareness exercise (see Chapter 13). Practise it for three or four minutes, twice a day, especially when you’re feeling upset or stressed. Before long you’ll be able to locate your feelings in your body. There are usually some key areas where we feel most intensely. Common ones include the forehead, temples, jaw, neck, shoulders, throat, chest and abdomen.

Q:
But I don’t feel anything when I’m deeply upset; I just go numb.

A:
Then practise accepting your numbness. Find the part of your body that feels the most numb, and practise expansion around that. You’ll usually find that as you make room for that numbness other uncomfortable feelings will arise. Then you can practise expansion around those.

Q:
Can the thinking self assist with expansion?