Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life

by Steven C. Hayes

  Figure 9.1. The pain in your head.

  As we said at the beginning of this chapter, acknowledging that you are struggling with a head full of these issues is itself a kind of willingness. Willingness is the answer “yes” to the question “Will you take me in as I am?” Metaphorically, willingness is like taking the copy you made of the image of your head with all the pain in it, and putting it into your pocket to carry as a gesture that states, “I can and will carry this with me, not because I have to, but because I choose to.” Before you actually do that, however, let’s see if it is clearer now what willingness is not by answering the questions that follow.

  Must you want to have this head full of all your issues in order to put it into your pocket? Hopefully, it is clear that the answer is no. Willingness is not wanting.

  Must you first change what you’ve drawn in order to put it in your pocket? Hopefully, it is clear that the answer is no. Willingness is not conditional, except that you can choose to limit it by time and situation (for example, you could put the picture into your pocket for a single minute or a full week, or you could carry it with you at work or only at home).

  Is putting what you’ve drawn into your pocket something that takes a lot of effort, so that you will have to try to see whether you can do it? Hopefully, it is clear that the answer is no. Willingness is not a matter of trying.

  Must you believe something about this drawing in order to put it into your pocket? Hopefully, it is clear that the answer is no. Willingness is not a matter of belief. Beliefs are just more issues that could be drawn inside the head.

  Is pretending to put the paper into your pocket the same as putting it into your pocket? Hopefully, it is clear that the answer is no. Willingness is not self-deceptive.

  If you spent some time on it, you might end up with a head that looks something like figure 9.2.

  The head looks very busy. But must it be your enemy?

  As a physical metaphor for a real change in direction in your life, are you willing to put your head on paper into your pocket and carry it for a while? We suggest carrying it one hour or more a day, but if that is too much for you right now, specify the amount of time you will carry it and commit to doing so.

  Figure 9.2. What the pain in your head might look like.

  If the answer is “yes, if…” and the “if” is something you do not control, try again. If the answer is no, dig into what that answer is in the service of, and see whether it is really in your best interests. If your answer is a good, clean yes, then put it into your pocket.

  Go back to the bulleted list of things that willingness is, and see if you can carry this paper that way. During the time you choose to carry it, pat your pocket periodically to remind yourself of what you are carrying. In this physical metaphor, see whether it is okay to have all that stuff on the paper and still do whatever you need to do in your life as you go about day-to-day living. Let carrying the picture of your head stuffed with your issues be a way of asking yourself whether the stuff on that paper really stands between you and living a powerful, vital life, or whether you can, in fact, carry it gently, lovingly, and willingly, as it is and not as it says it is.

  Chapter 10

  Willingness: Learning How to Jump

  Life is asking you a question. The question was once mumbled, misunderstood, or nearly inaudible. It’s not surprising that you haven’t answered yes, but, unfortunately, failing to answer or answering no have nearly the same results, and they have those results whether you know that you are being asked a question or not.

  One purpose of this book is to help you hear the question. Another is to figure out whether it’s really in your best interests to continue giving life the same answer or nonanswer. If it isn’t in your interest to continue with a negative or nonanswer, then the purpose of this book is to help you get to saying yes to life.

  The question is complex in its form but simple in its essence. We call it “The Life Question.” Now read through the following multipart question several times until you can hold on to it as a single question:

  Starting from the place in which there is a distinction between you as a conscious, mindful human being on the one hand, and all of the private experiences you are conscious of and struggle with on the other hand,

  are you willing to feel, think, sense, and remember all those private experiences,

  fully and without defense,

  as you directly experience them to be, not as what your mind says they are,

  and, do whatever it takes to move you in the direction of that which you truly value,

  at this particular moment, and in this particular situation?

  YES or NO?

  It’s time to begin to jump. Using all of the skills you’ve learned so far, now’s the time. Answering yes to the life question, no matter how narrowly it’s cast, is such a jump. It is a jump into the unknown. It is a jump into a world in which getting rid of or managing your own history is no longer required in order to begin to live the life you truly want to live. It is a world of self-acceptance, openness, ambiguity of content, and clarity of purpose. It is a world of psychological flexibility, in which you let go of the struggle, give up and live, less concerned about being right than being alive.

  You do not have to say yes. Life will accept either answer. There is, however, a cost to silence or to saying no. Indeed, you’ve been experiencing those costs. Your pain is your biggest ally here. Have you suffered enough? Have you?

  We don’t want to scare you. You don’t have to begin by jumping from the Empire State Building. You can jump off a sheet of paper, or a thin paperback book. But if you are going to start, you must start. In fact, you already started at the end of the last chapter. You carried your head around with you. Did having a representation of your head on paper stop you from doing what you needed to do? Did it really determine what happened to you? If you found you were able to carry it around with you, then what stands between you and doing the same with other issues you’ve been struggling with?

  THE WILLINGNESS SCALE

  In the following exercise, you are asked to identify a thought, memory, emotion, or sensation that you tend to avoid; one that has cost you because of your avoidance (e.g., anxiety, anger, guilt, depression, confusion, and so on). You can use the issues and problems you wrote about while you were working with chapter 9, or refer to your Suffering Inventory from chapter 1, or to various other internal-content tracking exercises you’ve done up to this point. Any of these would provide good places to start, but feel free to change them if something else seems more doable or more important.

  When you have the thought, memory, emotion, or sensation in mind, write it down here (we will call this the “target”):

  _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Now imagine the two radio dials alluded to in chapters 3 and 4: one easily seen, the other is less visible and harder to see. The easily seen dial is called Discomfort and it includes problems like unpleasant sensations or emotions (e.g., anger, anxiety, guilt, or depression) or unpleasant thoughts or memories. Now, imagine that this dial has a range from 0 to 10. Although it looks like an ordinary dial that can be set to any value you wish, it turns out that the Discomfort dial moves on its own; when you try to move it, it quickly returns to whatever value it goes to, regardless of your preferences.

  Now, write down the intensity of the Discomfort dial associated with your target item:

  __________________ We think one reason why you are spending time with this workbook is that the volume on your Discomfort dial is set too high for your liking. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a high number, although as a rule, that is the case. Sometimes, a “volume setting” of even 2 or 3 is thought to be “too high.”

  Remember that you learned in chapter 3 that there are two dials? The one in the back is not so obvious. We’re going to ca
ll this dial Willingness and it too ranges from 0 to 10. If you are maximally open to experiencing your own experience as it is, directly without trying to manipulate it, avoid it, escape it, or change it, you’ve set the Willingness dial to 10. That is the setting we are after. If you are maximally closed to experiencing your own experience as it is, that’s a 0.

  Now, looking back at where you were when you first picked up this book, write down where you were setting the Willingness dial with your target item:

  __________________ Finding that your Discomfort dial reads a high value and then setting your Willingness dial to a low value is a terrible combination. Setting the Willingness dial low is like setting a ratchet. A ratchet wrench can move only one way once the ratchet has been engaged. If your Willingness dial is set low, there is no way that the anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, or unpleasant memories (the Discomfort dial) you may be experiencing in the present moment can go down consistently. For example, if you are really, really, really not willing to feel anxiety, and then, if anxiety shows up for you, that anxiety becomes something else to be anxious about. You have a self-amplifying loop.

  If you set your Willingness dial at a 10, then the ratchet disengages. This does not mean that your discomfort will go down. It will or it won’t. If you set your Willingness dial high in order to get your Discomfort dial to go down, it acts like a knob with a spring in it. Your Willingness dial will automatically spring back to a low level again. Self-deception, secret deals, and hidden agendas won’t work here. If you set your Willingness dial high, it means abandoning the value provided to you by your Discomfort dial as a measure of progress in your life, as least in this specific instance or area.

  If you can’t set your Willingness dial high in order to control your Discomfort dial, then why set it high at all? One answer your own pain tells you is that not setting it high is associated with the deadening pain of your life not lived. It doesn’t work. So one safe answer is simply, why not? If the alternative doesn’t work, why not?

  The less flippant answer is perhaps more direct, but it can easily be misunderstood. It will not be fully understood until you start to do the work in chapters 11, 12, and 13. You set your Willingness dial high in order to live an empowered, vital, valued human life.

  The final reason why you might want to set your Willingness dial high is simply because, unlike the Discomfort dial, this one is your responsibility. Does your experience tell you that you control the Discomfort dial? Presumably not; otherwise, why isn’t it set low all the time? It looks like a dial you can move, and you can put your hands on it and turn it, but it functions more like a passive meter than a dial you can set.

  But note who controls the Willingness dial. Isn’t it clear that you do? In fact, you are the only one who can. Life can yank the Discomfort dial up or down. A loved one dies: Boom. The Discomfort dial moves. You find out you have a life-threatening illness. Boom. Your spouse is unfaithful. Boom. But no matter which of these unfortunate events happen to you, the Willingness dial is something you, and only you, can turn. So which would you rather work on? The dial you don’t control or the dial you do?

  TAKING A JUMP

  It is time to jump. Look at the target item you wrote down above, and ask yourself this question: What stands between me and resetting my Willingness dial high in regard to my target item? When you’ve thought about this for a while, it may occur to you that no content can take away your freedom to set the dial anywhere you choose to set it. If this is so, then it’s time to take your first willingness leap.

  You can safely limit your leap only by time or situation. For example, you may put down a 10 to express your willingness to experience anxiety in the worksheet below, but then add time qualifiers, such as “while shopping in the 7-11 store this afternoon for five minutes.” That means you will allow yourself to feel anxiety as fully as you can experience it while shopping (without leaving the store, freezing in your tracks, separating yourself from your experience, and so forth), but you are committing to doing this only for five minutes. Do not pick a willingness leap that is beyond you right now. No one has a radar gun pointed at you. Speed is not the issue. It’s more important to learn to leap at all than to start by trying to leap tall buildings in a single bound. However, if you know that a big leap is the right thing to do, go ahead. If you’re not sure, start small. But starting small means limiting the time or context, not the setting on the Willingness dial. If you can’t get the dial set to a 10, it is not worth doing even for a second.

  I (SCH) once worked briefly with a patient of a close colleague of mine. I was consulted on the case. The patient felt such terrible loneliness that she believed that if she willingly allowed herself to feel its far-reaching effects, she would be destroyed by its intensity. Her marriage had broken up, she had no job, she lacked adequate education to find anything but the most menial employment, her friends had abandoned her, she was barely surviving on disability insurance, and she’d tried to commit suicide and failed. Her life seemed absolutely empty and meaningless. In a therapy session, my colleague and I asked if she would allow herself to feel her loneliness, and she kept saying no until we got her down to agree to be fully willing for one second. She agreed to feel lonely openly and without defense for one second. That was a start.

  After months of working with ACT she terminated therapy. Years passed. We’d completely lost track of her but she called a few weeks ago. Now, more than a decade later, she has a degree, a job, a partner, friends, and a purpose. She has a life. She walked through hell to get there, one moment at a time. And that journey started somewhere. It started with her willingness to feel lonely, to feel it deliberately without any defenses, as you might reach out to feel a fine fabric, for one single solitary second.

  EXERCISE: Willingness Scale Worksheet

  Now, fill this out:

  With regard to my target item, I am setting my Willingness dial at (see if you can get to 10! If not, pause and reconsider. It functions more like a switch than a dial, so anything less than a 10 might not work. See if you can get to 10!):

  __________________ My limitations are (only limit your willingness by time and situation, not by intensity or the presence or absence of other private experiences).

  _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ USING YOUR SKILLS AND LEARNING SOME NEW ONES

  When you make a choice like the one you just made, various issues may come up immediately. If they do, use your skills. If your mind starts screaming, just notice your thoughts as thoughts; don’t argue with them. For example, your mind may predict an awful future or it may demand reassurance that your willingness leap is not dangerous.

  Any attempt to reassure your mind with literal arguments will just feed your old habits, and you will become more entangled. Just thank your mind for the input, and provide reassurance by the very act of having silent faith in yourself. That is the confident thing to do, as the etymology of the word “confidence” implies (“con” means “with” and “fidence” is from the Latin “fides” which means “faith” or “fidelity.”) If your body starts rumbling or demanding attention in any way, just feel what you feel where you feel it. Be patient, loving, and kind with yourself.

  Now that you’ve reached a yes, no matter how small it is (remember the woman with her one-second commitment), you need to practice applying your skills to this situation and to others like it. The rest of this chapter will present several exercises that will allow you to build your willingness skills. These will be graded exposures in which you can practice your new skills, one step at a time, as you encounter painful personal content.

  As mentioned earlier when you chose your target, there is no reason to rush into anything that is immensely painful. Push yourself to work on each new step presented, but be compassionate with yourself. In the next exercise, you’ll work on the item you just said yes to above, practicing willingness, so that when you implement your
choice to be willing you will be better prepared for the potential outcomes of that choice.

  EXERCISE: Physicalizing

  When we look at objects external to ourselves, we do not take them to be self-referential. Imagine you are walking down the street and you notice an ugly pile of trash. Normally you wouldn’t take it to be a sign that you are a horrible person. However, if instead of the pile of trash, you noticed a feeling of self-loathing, you might fuse with that feeling and take it as an indicator that you are a horrible person. But, as you now know, this feeling doesn’t define you any more than the pile of trash you noticed. This exercise takes advantage of that distinction to help us learn to be more willing to sit with painful events.

  Begin by looking at the target item you wrote down in preparation for the Willingness Scale Worksheet exercise. Get in touch with how you feel when you make contact with your target event.

  Now we would like you to imagine taking this feeling and placing it four or five feet in front of you. Later we’ll let you take it back, so if it objects to being put outside, let it know that you will be taking it back. See whether you can set it out on the floor in front of you in the room in which you are reading.