So whenever we perceive a threat, the fight-or-flight response immediately activates. In prehistoric times, this response was lifesaving. When a woolly mammoth charged you, if you couldn’t escape, your only hope was to kill it or at least fight it off. However, in this modern age, most of us rarely find ourselves in life-threatening predicaments, and the fight-or-flight response is often triggered in situations where it is of little or no use to us.
Once again, evolution is the culprit here. Our mind, trying to make sure we don’t get killed, sees potential danger almost everywhere: in a moody spouse, a controlling boss, a parking ticket, a new job, a traffic jam, a long line at the bank, a big mortgage, an unflattering reflection in the mirror—you name it. The threat may even come from the mind itself, in the form of a disturbing thought or image. Obviously, none of these things are actually life-threatening, but our brain and body react as if they were.
If our brain judges an event as harmful, the fight-or-flight response is triggered and it rapidly evolves into an unpleasant feeling such as fear, anger, shock, disgust or guilt. If our brain judges the event as ‘good’ or beneficial, we rapidly develop a pleasant feeling such as calm, curiosity or happiness. The former feelings, we tend to describe as ‘negative’. The latter feelings, we tend to describe as ‘positive’. But actually, they’re neither positive nor negative—they’re all simply feelings.
‘Well,’ you may be saying, ‘they may be simply feelings, but I much prefer the positive ones to the negative ones.’ Of course you do; so does everybody—it’s human nature. But unfortunately, this preference often becomes so important to us that it leads to serious problems, contributing to something I call the ‘struggle switch’. Care to find out more? Then keep reading.
Have you ever seen one of those old movies where the bad guy falls into a pool of quicksand and the more he struggles, the faster it sucks him under? If you should ever fall into quicksand, struggling is the worst thing you can possibly do. What you’re supposed to do is lie back, spread your arms and lie as still as possible, floating on the surface. (Then whistle for your horse to come and rescue you!) Acting effectively in this situation is tricky, because every instinct tells you to try to escape; but if you don’t stop struggling, pretty soon you’ll sink beneath the surface. Sure, it’s not exactly fun to be floating on quicksand, but it beats the hell out of
drowning
in it!
The same principle applies to difficult feelings: the more we try to fight them, the more they smother us. Now, why should this be? Well, imagine that at the back of your mind is a switch—we’ll call it the ‘struggle switch’. When it’s switched on, it means we’re going to struggle against any physical or emotional pain that comes our way; whatever discomfort we experience, we’ll try to get rid of it or avoid it.
For instance, suppose the emotion that shows up is anxiety. If our struggle switch is ON, then that feeling is completely unacceptable. So we could end up with anger about our anxiety: ‘How dare they make me feel like this!’ Or sadness about our anxiety: ‘Not again! This is tragic!’ Or anxiety about our anxiety: ‘This can’t be good for me. I wonder what it’s doing to my body.’ Or guilt about our anxiety: ‘I shouldn’t let myself get so worked up! I should know better. Once again, I’m acting like a child.’ Or maybe even a mixture of all these feelings at once! What all these secondary emotions have in common is that they are unpleasant, unhelpful and a drain on our energy and vitality. And then we get angry or anxious or depressed about that! Spot the vicious cycle?
Now imagine what happens if our struggle switch is OFF. In this case, whatever emotion shows up, no matter how unpleasant, we don’t struggle with it. Thus, when anxiety shows up, it’s not a problem. Sure, it’s an unpleasant feeling and we don’t like it, but it’s nothing terrible. With the struggle switch OFF, our anxiety levels are free to rise and fall as the situation dictates. Sometimes they’ll be high, sometimes low, and sometimes there will be no anxiety at all. But more importantly, we’re not wasting our time and energy struggling with it.
Without struggle, what we get is a natural level of physical and emotional discomfort, depending on who we are and the situation we’re in. In ACT, we call this ‘clean discomfort’. There’s no avoiding ‘clean discomfort’; life serves it up to all of us in one way or another. But once we start struggling with it, our discomfort levels increase rapidly. And all that additional suffering, we call ‘dirty discomfort’.
Our struggle switch is like an emotional amplifier—switch it ON and we can have anger about our anxiety, anxiety about our anger, depression about our depression, or guilt about our guilt. We could even have guilt about our anger about our anxiety—and then depression about that!
But it doesn’t stop there. With our struggle switch ON, we are completely unwilling to accept the presence of these uncomfortable feelings, which means, not only do we get emotionally distressed by them, we also do whatever we can to get rid of them, or distract ourselves from them. For some people, this means turning to drugs or alcohol, which then leads to addictions, relationship issues and a whole host of other messy problems. Others may turn to food as a distraction, which can then lead to obesity or eating disorders. Humans find an almost infinite number of ways to try to avoid or get rid of unpleasant feelings: from smoking and sex, to shopping and surfing the Internet. As we saw earlier, most of these control strategies are no big deal, as long as they’re used in moderation, but any of them is problematic if used excessively. For example, I’ve had clients who developed huge credit card debts from excessive shopping, and others who destroyed their relationships by making unreasonable sexual demands. All these secondary problems, and the painful feelings associated with them, fall under the heading ‘dirty discomfort’.
With the struggle switch OFF:
With the struggle switch ON:
Take the case of Rachel, a 43-year-old legal secretary. Rachel suffers from panic disorder, a condition characterised by sudden episodes of overwhelming fear: so-called panic attacks. During a panic attack the sufferer has an intense feeling of impending doom, associated with distressing sensations such as breathlessness, chest pain, a thumping heart, choking, dizziness, tingling in the hands and feet, hot and cold flushes, sweating, faintness and trembling. This is a common disorder, affecting up to 3 per cent of the population in any given year.
Rachel’s major problem is actually her intense dislike of anxiety. She thinks anxiety is something terrible and dangerous, and she will do anything possible to avoid it. This means that as soon as she feels any sensation that remotely resembles anxiety, such as a racing heart or tightness in the chest, that sensation will itself trigger further anxiety. Then, as her anxiety level rises, those unwanted sensations grow even stronger. This in turn triggers even more anxiety, until soon she is in a state of full-blown panic.
Rachel’s world is steadily shrinking. She now avoids drinking coffee, reading thrillers, watching scary movies or doing any physical exercise. Why? Because all these things make her heart beat faster, which can then set off the whole vicious cycle. She also refuses to ride in elevators or aeroplanes, drive on busy roads, visit crowded shopping centres or attend large social gatherings because she fears she might feel anxious in those situations, and that might lead her to have a panic attack, which is something she wants to avoid at any cost!
Rachel’s case is an extreme example, but to a lesser extent we all do the same thing. All of us, at times, avoid challenges in order to escape the stress or anxiety that goes with them. And as I’ve said before, in moderation this is not a problem. But the more habitual that avoidance becomes, the more we start to suffer in the long run.
‘Yes, that all makes sense,’ I hear you say, ‘but how can I stop struggling with difficult feelings when they feel so bad?’ The answer is by using a simple technique called ‘expansion’. But before we come to that, there’s an interesting bit of history we need to explore.
As you read through the emotions listed below just notice, without thinking too hard about it, which ones you automatically judge as ‘good’ or ‘positive’, and which you automatically judge as ‘bad’ or ‘negative’:
You have just read a list of the nine basic human emotions, from which all others are derived by combination. (At least, this is what many scientists believe—it’s still the subject of considerable debate.) Most people tend to automatically judge the first six emotions as ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ and the last three as ‘good’ or ‘positive’. Why is this so? It’s largely because of the stories we believe about emotions.
Our thinking self loves to tell us stories, and we know how they affect us when we fuse with them. Here are some of the many unhelpful stories that our thinking self may tell us about emotions:
You may agree with some or all of the above, or you may have beliefs that are quite different; it depends largely on your upbringing. If you grew up in a family where ‘positive’ emotions were freely expressed but ‘negative’ emotions were frowned upon, then you quickly learned that the ‘negative’ ones were to be avoided. If your family tended to suppress or hide their feelings, then you learned to keep your feelings bottled up. If your parents believed in ‘getting anger off your chest’, you may have learned that it’s good to express anger. But if you were frightened by a parent’s display of anger, you may have decided that anger is ‘bad’ and should therefore be suppressed or avoided.
It’s a useful exercise to spend some time thinking about your childhood programming regarding emotions. This can often give you an insight into how and why you struggle with certain feelings. Please take some time to write some answers (or at least think about them) to the following questions:
One reason we tend to judge emotions as ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ is because they feel unpleasant; they create uncomfortable sensations in our bodies. We don’t like those sensations, so we don’t want them. On the other hand, we do like pleasant sensations, so naturally, we want more of them.
If you judge an emotion as ‘good’, you’ll probably try hard to get more of it; and if you judge it as ‘bad’, you’re apt to try even harder to get rid of it. Thus, judging sets you up for a struggle with your feelings.
In ACT we encourage you to let go of judging your feelings altogether and to see them for what they are: a stream of constantly changing sensations and urges, continuously passing through your body. Just because some of these sensations and urges are uncomfortable doesn’t mean they’re ‘bad’. For example, if you grew up in a family where people didn’t openly express love and affection, then you may find loving feelings uncomfortable. Does that mean they’re ‘bad’? And isn’t it interesting that many people judge fear a ‘bad’ emotion, yet they will pay good money to watch a horror movie or read a thriller, precisely to experience that very feeling! So no emotion is in itself ‘bad’. ‘Bad’ is just a thought: a judgement made by our thinking self. But if we fuse with that thought—if we literally believe that the feeling is ‘bad’—then, naturally, we will struggle with it all the harder. (And we know where that leads.)
Any defusion strategy can help you deal with unhelpful thoughts about your feelings. For example, suppose your mind says, ‘I can’t stand this feeling.’ You could then acknowledge, ‘I’m having the thought that I can’t stand this feeling.’ Or, more simply, you could reply, ‘Thanks, Mind!’
One strategy for dealing with judgements specifically is to label them as such. Suppose your mind says, ‘This anxiety is terrible.’ You could then acknowledge, ‘I’m making the judgement “This anxiety is terrible”.’ Or suppose your mind says, ‘This guilt is awful.’ You could then acknowledge, ‘I’m making the judgement “This guilt is awful”.’
Using this phrase makes you aware of the process of judging. Then you have a choice in how much you buy into those judgements. Alternatively, each time you notice a judgement you can silently say to yourself, ‘Judging...’ and let it be.
Notice that I said the aim is to let go of judging; I didn’t say to
stop
judging. Your thinking self is an expert at judging, and it’ll never stop doing it for long. But you can learn to let go of those judgements more and more, simply by defusing them, as in the above examples.
But what if the feeling really is awful? Then we come back to the pragmatic approach: is this thought helpful? If you fuse with the thought, ‘This feels awful!’, will that help you deal with your emotions or does it simply make you feel worse?
Judging is one of the most common ways that our mind adds to our emotional discomfort, however, there are plenty of others. Below is a list of common questions the mind asks, or comments that it makes, which often stir up or intensify unpleasant feelings.
This question sets you up to run through all your problems one by one, seeing if you can pinpoint what caused your feelings. Naturally, this just makes you feel worse, because it creates the illusion that your life is nothing but problems. It also leads to a lot of time lost in unpleasant thoughts. (And does this process help you in any practical way? Does it help you take action to change your life for the better?)
This question sets you up for self-blame. You rehash all the ‘bad’ things you’ve done, so you can figure out why the universe decided to punish you. As a result, you end up feeling worthless, useless, ‘bad’ or inadequate. (And again, does this help you in any practical way?)
This question leads you to search through your entire life history looking for the reasons why you are the way you are. Frequently this leads to feelings of anger, resentment and hopelessness. And it very often ends in blaming your parents. (And does this help you in any practical way?)
This is another great question for setting you up to spend hours sifting through all your faults, flaws and defects. (And how do you usually feel as a result?)
Variations on this theme include ‘I can’t stand it’, ‘I can’t cope’, ‘It’s too overwhelming’, ‘I can’t take it anymore’, ‘I’m going to have a nervous breakdown’, and so on. Your mind is basically feeding you the story that you’re too weak to handle this, and something bad is going to happen if you keep feeling this way. (And is this a helpful story to pay attention to?)
This is a classic! Here your mind picks an argument with reality. The reality is this: the way you are feeling right now is the way you are feeling. But your mind says, ‘Reality is wrong! It’s not supposed to be this way! Stop it! Give me the reality I want!’ (And is this effective? Does it change anything? Can you ever win an argument with reality?)
Wishful thinking: one of the mind’s favourite pastimes. (‘I wish I felt more confident.’ ‘I wish I didn’t feel so anxious.’) This can keep us wrapped up in second-guessing ourselves for hours, imagining how our lives could be so much better if only we felt differently. (And does this help us deal with the life we have now?)
And the list could go on and on. Suffice it to say, the thinking self has lots of ways either to directly intensify our bad feelings or else to get us to waste a huge amount of time uselessly brooding on them. So, from now on, intend to catch your mind in the act when it tries to hook you with these questions and comments. Then simply refuse to play the game. Thank your mind for trying to waste your time, and focus instead on some useful or meaningful activity. You may find it helpful to say something to yourself like, ‘Thanks, Mind, but I’m not playing today.’
Now you can see how the struggle switch got there. Our thinking self created it by telling us that uncomfortable feelings are ‘bad’ or ‘dangerous’, that we can’t cope with them, that we are defective or damaged for having them, that they will take over or overwhelm us, that they are ruining our life or that they will hurt us in some way. If we fuse with these stories, the switch goes ON and we perceive uncomfortable emotions as a threat. And how does our brain respond to a threat? It activates the fight-or-flight response, which then gives rise to a whole new set of unpleasant feelings!
To draw an analogy, suppose a distant relative shows up on your doorstep. You’ve never met this relative before, but you’ve been told a lot of stories about her. You’ve been told that she’s bad, that she’s dangerous, that no one can stand her, that the only relationships she has are with defective or damaged people, and that she always ends up hurting or damaging those people or taking control of them and ruining their lives.
If you truly believed those stories, what would your attitude be toward this relative? Would you want her in your house? Would you want her
anywhere
near you?
Of course not. You’d do anything you could to get rid of her as fast as possible. But what if all those stories were false or exaggerated? What if this relative were actually an okay person who had just been the victim of malicious gossip?
The only way you’d ever find out would be to spend some time with her, put aside all the gossip and slander, and check her out for yourself. You’ve probably already experienced something like this in your own life. Perhaps there was once someone at school or at work whom you’d heard a lot of bad things about. Then you spent some time with them and discovered they were nowhere near as bad as their reputation.
You may also have experienced the opposite. You may have heard a lot of great stories about someone and then finally met them, only to discover they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. In both cases the lesson is the same: your own direct experience is more reliable than all the stories you’ve been told.
And so it is in learning to handle unpleasant emotions; what you need to do is have a direct experience of them, to connect with them directly via your observing self, rather than automatically believing the stories of your thinking self. When you do this, you’ll discover that those feelings are nowhere near as ‘bad’ as you thought and you’ll realise they can’t possibly hurt you or overwhelm you.
One thing that will help you in this process is more defusion practice. Therefore, you should use the following techniques several times a day, whenever you find yourself getting caught up in unhelpful judgements. (And as always, don’t have any great expectations—just try them and notice what happens.) If you have a judgemental thought such as ‘X is bad’, then simply acknowledge, ‘I’m making the judgement “X is bad”.’ Alternatively, if you notice an unhelpful judgement, then acknowledge its presence, and silently note it as ‘Judging...’
Sometimes when I tell people that their emotions can’t hurt them, they mention the research which shows that chronic anger and depression can have bad effects on your physical health. However, the key word here is ‘chronic’, which means ongoing, over a long period of time. Painful emotions become chronic only when you struggle with them. Once you stop struggling, they are free to move and they generally do so fairly quickly (although not always). So when you respond to your emotions with acceptance, they don’t become chronic, and therefore they don’t hurt you. Acceptance breaks the vicious cycle of struggle and frees you to invest your time and energy in life-enhancing activities.
And guess what? In the next chapter you’ll learn how to do this.