__________________ Then, repeat the same steps as above. Repeat this process as many times as you can with all the different behavioral predispositions that appear. Write each of them below. As you contact each, the key is to see if you can be more willing to feel this pull toward action without either compliance or avoidance. Try to stay with each one until that happens. The goal is to be more willing to have it as it is, not as what it says it is. Write down each one that appears:
__________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ After you have exhausted them all, then you are ready to move on to thoughts.
Thoughts. Thoughts are very tricky, so take a moment to gently get in contact with the person behind your eyes, the observer you. You can’t look at this part of yourself, because it is just looking from the I-here-now, so just touch the “big mind” part of yourself, and then look at this next domain from that perspective.
Get in touch with the target you’ve been struggling with and then watch which thoughts show up from this place. See if you can catch just one, much as you might catch a fish. See if you can reel it in and write its name down below. You’ve practiced this skill quite a bit by now, so you should have some sense of how to do this.
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Now see if you can just think that thought without trying to minimize, diminish, or argue with it. It’s important that you don’t try to dismiss it, because it will demand your attention and agreement if you do. See if you can really listen to it and give it your maximum attention, much as you might listen to a babbling baby: carefully but with neither disagreement nor agreement. You are not believing the thought and you are not disbelieving it. You are seeing it as a thought. (Remember “milk, milk, milk”?)
Notice that it is indeed true that your mind thinks this when coming in contact with your target. Is it okay if that thought is simply a thought?
See if you can think that thought as a choice. This doesn’t mean you believe it. It doesn’t mean you disbelieve it. It means allowing your mind to think that thought as a thought on purpose. Ask yourself if there is anything in there that is fundamentally bad, hostile, or harmful that you cannot have, if this thought is just a thought.
When you sense you are more willing to think the thought as a thought, set it aside and get in touch with your target. Take a moment to do that…do not rush through this. Once you are experiencing your target, go “thought fishing” again. When you catch the next thought associated with your target, write it down here:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ And thank your mind for that thought: “cool, nice thought…that’s a good one.” Notice whether you’ve seen that thought before. Do not do any of this dismissively or in a way that patronizes your mind. You are allowing it to do what it knows how to do without adding or subtracting from it. It will provide you with a sequence of words that you are going to hear and you are going to respectfully decline to struggle with these thoughts, either way. You are just going to hear them, with understanding.
If other physiological sensations, emotions, or thoughts try to creep in, let them know you will get to them later.
Sit with that thought until you sense that you can just think the thought without trying to minimize, diminish, argue with it, or do what it says in order to make it go away. Then set that thought aside. Again, get in touch with the person behind your eyes, your observer-self. From this perspective, contact the target and place it fully in the center of your consciousness; again, watch quietly for other thoughts that may be associated with it. Write down any that appear, and either repeat the process above with each thought as many times as you wish, or just acknowledge them in a defused and accepting way, and watch for the next thought to write down.
__________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ __________________ After you have exhausted this domain, you are ready to move on to your memories.
Memories. Again, see if you can get in contact with the person behind your eyes, your observer-self, the person you have been your whole life. From that perspective, or point of view, get in touch with your target item.
Okay. For the last part of this exercise, imagine you have all the memories from your life on little snapshots, like index cards filed away in a file drawer, all the events of your life from your birth until the present moment. Get in touch with your target, open the file cabinet, and start gently flipping through your cards of memories. Start from the present, and flip back deeper and deeper into your past. If you find yourself pausing at any picture, stop flipping and look at that memory. Write a note to yourself that will remind you later of which memory came up:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Now just notice, from behind the eyes of the person called “you,” your observer-self:
Who else was there?
What were you feeling?
What were you thinking?
What were you doing?
What did you want to do?
Now, see if you can let go of any struggle that might be associated with your memory. It might be a pain associated with the picture, or an unwillingness to leave it because of the happiness associated with it. Whatever your reactions to the memory, just see if you can gently let go of your struggle with it and make room for all of those reactions. See if you can let yourself be willing to have that memory exactly as it is. That doesn’t mean you’ll like it, but that you are willing to have it.
If there is anything in that memory that you didn’t fully process at the time, there will be a sense that the work in the memory is incomplete. For example, you may have felt angry in the memory but hid it. If so, see if you can go into that part of the memory and complete the work you didn’t know to do then: feel what you felt, think what you thought, and so on. Your guide here is a “reverse compass.” If you sense a part of you saying, “Don’t go there,” see if, in fact, it is possible to go there; if it is what it is, not what it says it is.
When you have thoroughly remembered your memory and have a sense that you are open to it, then put the memory back in the “file drawer.”
Now, from your observer-self perspective, get back in touch with the target feeling you chose at the beginning of this exercise. Once again, open the file cabinet and start gently flipping through the cards of memories while you are in touch with your target. This time go farther back. How far back you go is up to you. If you pause over a memory, even if it doesn’t seem to be related, stop and pull it out and look at it. Write it down below.
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Now with that memory, repeat all of the steps you did above.
Who else was there?
What were you feeling?
What were you thinking?
What were you doing?
What did you want to do?
See if you can let go of any struggle that may be associated with the memory. Take your time. If you find resistance or pain, just gently go there and look at the resistance. Look at the pain. See if you can let yourself be willing to have that memory exactly as it is.
Once again, if there is anything in that memory you didn’t fully process at the time, there will be a sense that the work in the memory is incomplete. Once again, see if you can go into that part of the memory and complete the work you didn’t know to do
then: feel what you felt, think what you thought, and so on.
Now put that memory aside. If you didn’t get back into your early childhood, repeat this entire sequence one final time using a memory from your early childhood. Write it down:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ And then rethink it. Try to open up more and more to it and whatever was in that memory. Take a few minutes to do this.
When you are done, close the file drawer. Notice your breathing and take a few good deep breaths, with the air coming in through your nose and out of your mouth. See if you can connect with the fact that you are a whole, complete person. This “tin-can monster” is in you, and so it is an illusion that it is bigger than you are. Ask yourself: Am I willing to be me, with the history I have, and to go on from here carrying all these reactions forward as part of an empowered life?
What did you notice about the various connections between bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, behavioral predispositions, and memories? You can write down any connections you see here:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ How about the memories? What connections do you see between these memories and the issue you are struggling with today? Write down any connections you see here:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ One danger in doing this kind of work is that sometimes we see the sources of our pain in our own history and we reason that we would have done better without this history. That is an illusion of language. It’s true that your past brought you to where you are today, and your past is the source of the setting on your Discomfort dial. But how these thoughts and feelings function today is, in large part, dependent on what you do with them. The issue is this: What can you do to abandon the struggle with your history and behave more effectively now?
What stands between you and being fully willing to have these pieces of the tin-can monster be what they are, without allowing them to play a destructive role in your life? Ponder this for a moment and then write down your answer. (Hint: this is a trick question.)
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ If you wrote down something other than “nothing” or “just me,” then look again. (As we said, it’s a trick question.) If it is anything else, see whether you didn’t write some bit of content. But what stands between you and being willing to have that content in a defused way? Who sets that Willingness dial anyway? You or your history?
EXERCISE: Acceptance in Real-Time
The last two exercises were constructed essentially to expose you to the adverse content in your imagination. You called to mind your target item and this brought up difficult bodily sensations, feelings, thoughts, memories, and so forth that we then took apart and evaluated piece by piece.
But what happens when you’re faced with content you struggle with in real-time? What happens when you are out there in the world, going about your real life, and you are faced with situations that cause you pain? If you’re an agoraphobic, for example, and you haven’t been outside of your home for a long time, you are going to be facing some heavy-duty tin-can monsters when you step outside your front door. How should you handle instances like these?
The short answer is, the same way you’ve been learning to handle all of your difficult experiences. Open yourself to them by first putting yourself in the observer position, and then with your observer-self look at them with a defused, accepting, mindful posture. However, we would also like to help you deal with difficult experiences in a more concrete way than we’ve just described.
What we’d like to do is help you develop a set of experiences that you’re quite sure will bring up the negative content you’ve been avoiding, and then develop a graded-exposure program in which you will actually go out into the world, seek out these scenarios, and experience your experience in real-time.
To accomplish this, you’ll begin with the worksheet below. Fill in the space on the left with actual physical scenarios you think will bring up the willingness target you chose earlier. Note that there are ten spaces, so try to come up with ten scenarios. Choose a variety of different situations in which your target will present itself. Think of some that will cause you a lot of distress and some that won’t cause quite so much discomfort. If you think of one scenario that feels really big and daunting, you might want to break it down into its component parts.
For example, if you are suffering from OCD, and dirt or germs set off your compulsion to clean, it may be too much for you to go out and roll around in the mud. Break it down. In this case, one scenario that might cause your target to show itself could be to put a small amount of dirt on a white cloth and carry the cloth with you for a day. Then, you might want to wear a soiled shirt. And so on and so on.
Once you have done this, order your scenarios from 1 to 10, where 1 is the scenario you think will cause you the least amount of contact with your target, and 10 is the scenario you think will cause you the greatest amount of contact with your target. Numbering them from 1 to 10 will give you a graded way to expose yourself to this material.
Once you have done this, take your first scenario, the one you numbered 1, and decide a time and place you would like to expose yourself to it. You can limit the amount of time of your exposure just the way you did in the Willingness Scale Worksheet exercise, but, again, what you can’t safely limit is your willingness to experience what the exposure brings up for you. Avoidance of any kind has to be off the table. If you aren’t sure you can make that commitment, generate an even smaller step, or limit this step further with limits on the time and situation.
Take some notes in the space below about when, where, and how long you are willing to do this exposure to the first item:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ During the actual exposure you will use the skills you’ve already learned. First we will describe these skills and then we will shrink them down to a bulleted list that you can carry with you to remind you of actions you can take in the situation.
You should notice what your body does. Localize where you feel sensations and emotions in your body. Notice the feeling’s qualities, and where it begins and ends. Scan your body and notice other places where you are feelings things, and after you’ve noticed them, psychologically reach out and allow yourself to feel these feelings without defense or manipulation. Make sure your purpose is simply to be present and willing. Nothing else. This is not a secret way to make bad feelings diminish or vanish, and, even if your feelings happen to change, don’t buy into any thoughts that tell you otherwise.
Look around you when you are exposing yourself and observe what else is happening in the world around you. If there are people there, notice them. If there are objects, or buildings, or plants or trees, notice them. Do not do this to diminish the thing you are struggling with. The point is to add to your experience—in addition to these feelings there is also life going on all around you.
Notice what thoughts come up for you. Notice them the way you would notice a cloud drift by. Do nothing to make them come or go. Do not argue with them. Do not disbelieve them or follow them where they go. Just notice them, as you might notice the sound
of a radio in the background. Thank your mind for generating all its products for you.
Notice the pull to your past and future. But see if you can stay in the present by becoming present with thoughts about the past and future. If you find yourself checking the clock, let go of your attachment to the time.
Notice the pull to act. If you feel the pull to leave or avoid or dissociate just feel that pull— willingly and fully.
Have some fun. Do something (anything!) new in the situation. Tell a joke. Hum. Eat. Skip. Play little mental games. For example, if there are people around, who can you identify with the worst haircut? What interests you in this situation? Be careful! This is not distraction. In addition to what you are struggling with, the point is to notice that there is also the opportunity to do many, many other things. Broaden the range of things that you can do when you’re in contact with your target.
If you feel really bold, find out what your mind is saying you cannot or must not do and consider doing more of it (but only if you are willing!). If you’re anxious and your mind tells you that you might look foolish if you become too anxious, then do something foolish. Put your hat on upside down, or your glasses on backwards. Ask a passerby what month it is. If your mind tells you that you might faint and fall down on the ground, then purposefully lie on the ground and see what it feels like to be there as others react to your prone body.
Notice that you are there as an observing-self, through all of this, unchanged. Use that sense to be present with your experiences (do not use it to dissociate or avoid).
Above all, watch for every tiny little way your mind has been trying to “protect” you by avoidance. Undermine every form of avoidance, let go of it. And all of this has only one purpose: to practice being willing in the moment. No manipulation. This is not a new, secret way to regulate your internal processes. No more of that.
Got it? Okay, now go out and do it. Take all of your skills with you, and experience what you experience in real-time, fully and without defense. Set your limits beforehand.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life Page 22