Seeing Your Self as Your Context: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series

In our series on Acceptance and Commitment therapy, we have laid the foundation of several basic principles of ACT.  We’ve discussed using mindful awareness to remain in contact with the present moment in order to observe and take notice of your internal world.  We’ve reviewed what acceptance is and isn’t, and discussed how practicing acceptance leads to more openness through releasing what is outside of our control.  We’ve also explained and practiced thought defusion, lessening the power we assign to the products of our mind, like our thoughts and feelings.

All these steps involve taking on the role of an observer.  Contact with the present moment allows you to notice your thoughts, feelings, memories, or urges, as well as how you assign power to them in a way that influences your behavior.  Observing shows you how circumstances outside of your control affect you and lead you to struggle with acceptance.  With this next concept, we’ll take observing deeper, exploring how you can separate the products of your mind from your identity – who you are as a person – in order to offer alternative ways of responding to your circumstances.

Self as Context

What does it mean to see your self as your context?  Rather than overidentifying with your thoughts or other internal experiences, self as context requires you to view yourself through the lens of an observer who sees all parts of you, not just the one you’re experiencing right in this moment.  Who you are is not the same as your fleeting feelings, urges, physical sensations, memories, or thoughts.

Your internal experiences don’t need to define your identity.  In the observer role, you notice that while your self contains these internal experiences, they are not one and the same with the whole of who you are.

Attachment to the Conceptualized Self

In contrast, when we link our thoughts, emotions, urges, memories, etc. to who we are as people, we often become locked into rigid ways of responding to the world around us.  We begin to feel stuck, unable to change the patterns that are causing us more harm than good.

We tell ourselves stories we believe to be true about who we are.  These can be long-standing narratives adopted from a young age, that came out of abuse, or that we’ve heard from others in our adult years.  These stories about ourselves dictate our actions in response to a thought, memory, emotion or urge.  For example, if I believe the narrative that I am always late, chances are I will not arrive to meetings or appointments on time.  Even if this is a habit that annoys me, my belief that it is true about myself will influence my behavior.

Similarly, an addict feeling an urge to use their drug of choice might have the thought, “This is the only thing that makes me feel good.”  Believing that narrative, they remember previous euphoric experiences that came after using their drug of choice and feel desire to use again.  Overidentifying with these thoughts can lead this addict to feel as though they have no other choice but to respond by using.

Attachment to the conceptualized self leads to hopelessness and resignation, as you find yourself repeating destructive patterns despite not wanting to continue.  Over time, the believe that you cannot change and deep-seated resistance to other options become solidified.

Why does self as context matter?

As an observer, you can watch what happens internally with some level of detachment.  You also learn that your observing self typically remains stable – your sense of self doesn’t change even though your internal experiences change moment to moment. Who you are is much deeper than just what happens in your mind. Your internal experiences are transient and therefore carry less weight than the sum total of who you are.

Seeing yourself as your context offers more options for actions in response to your circumstance, rather than the rigid, inflexible ways of responding to which you are accustomed.  Instead, self as context sets you up for flexible perspective taking, or seeing multiple points of view or options on how to respond.  When you can take the perspective of others, that often opens up different choices for behavior or perception of your experience.

For those who struggle with addiction, understanding self as your context leads to recognition that the urges you have do not make you a lost cause, but they are part of your addiction.  You can observe and respond to these sensations with actions that are in alignment with what is important to you.  Similarly, those who deal with depression or anxiety can benefit from distancing themselves from taking on the identity of an anxious or depressed person.  Defining yourself as depressed because you have depressed thoughts or a depressed mood can perpetuate the symptoms of depression.  Believing that you are an anxious person and overidentifying with your worst-case scenario thinking can consume your thoughts and trap you.

Principles

You are more than your thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, and urges.

When you are overly attached to this internal world, you may find yourself limited by it.  It may feel like the workings of your mind consume you and make up the bulk of who you are.  But this is not true. Who you are is multifaceted, and these thoughts, feelings, or urges are just one part of your experience that is transient and will likely change in just a few moments.

From the observer perspective, you can distance yourself from the thoughts.  As we discussed in the practice of thought defusion, using a phrase like, “I’m having the thought…” instead of accepting it as true can create psychological distance.

You can observe the workings of your mind as if from outside.

You can look at your thoughts, feelings, and other internal experiences from the perspective of an outside observer to see other perspectives on what you might be going through, implementing the concept of flexible perspective taking.  What might someone else be thinking if they could listen in to what’s going on in your head?  If you were talking with a friend and they shared this with you, how might you respond to them?  What would you be feeling or thinking about them?

Flexible perspective taking helps you to identify alternative explanations and options you’re your ingrained, rigid ways of responding.  Consider: what are other reasons you could be responding this way?  What are other actions you’ve seen others take or that you could take when you feel this way? 

Not every story we tell ourselves is true of our identity.

As you explore some of your narratives that come up repeatedly, you might find it helpful to challenge their validity through flexible perspective taking.  Even those that have a basis in reality (maybe you are someone who tends to run late!) don’t constitute all of who you are.  Allowing yourself to explore various different narratives about yourself rather than limiting yourself to one definition that may or may not be true can help you release the limitations you feel.

You have options and the ability to choose.

Who you are is flexible in different situations.  You can choose what you want to do and who you want to be based on your values.  For example, you have the ability to choose confidence and directness in your relationships with coworkers, while choosing to be fun-loving and laid back while at dinner with friends.  You have options about how to respond in different contexts because who you are is nuanced.  You have options of how you act in those various situations, rather than being stuck in one way of responding.

Your self is stable, despite the changeable nature of your internal experiences.

The more you practice observing your mind, the more you will notice that your observer self doesn’t change.  The emotions, thoughts, and memories you have change over time and in different contexts, but who you are is fairly stable.  You’ve been you for your entire life, while the workings of your mind are in many ways different from the way they were five years, days, or even minutes ago.

Practices

Observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment.

Going back to contact with the present moment, notice over the course of a few days the various thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, urges, and sensations you have.  Track the triggering event and your behavioral response afterward.

As you do this, seek to keep a nonjudgmental perspective.  Watch these internal experiences as they come and allow them to pass by.  Do your best not to fixate or evaluate them as “good” or “bad,” but instead to notice them as they happen. 

Identify a few common stories you tell about yourself.

Look for themes in what you’ve recorded to pull out narratives that keep surfacing about yourself, either from your own mind or how others treat you.  These could be personality traits you believe you have, actions where you don’t feel like you have a choice, or moments of feeling hopeless or trapped.

Identify the specific incidents that taught you this was true from your past.  Where did it come from? Did someone say something to you that solidified this narrative in your mind?  Have you repeated it to yourself over time?  Have you interpreted it based on your actions? 

Imagine your younger self’s perspective.

Imagine yourself 5-10 years ago and look at your current experience through their eyes.  You’d be surprised what different perspective you might notice. You may clarify the origin of your ingrained narratives about yourself.  You might notice more or less pain in your past self.  How might your younger self compare with where you are now and offer a different point of view?

Imagine your older self’s perspective.

Now look ahead into the future. Imagine yourself 5-10 years from now and ask for the point of view of the future version of yourself.  What would an older and wiser version of you say?  If it’s hard to connect to yourself in this way, you can think of an older mentor or close friend who has a more wise perspective.  What might they think?

Consider how someone you admire handles similar situations.

Bring to mind someone who you think does a good job of handling situations like the one you find yourself in.  What different options might they have?  What do you see them doing or believing that is different from you?  What different perspective or point of view might they have?

Remind yourself of options.

Consolidate the insights from these different perspectives and make a list of the options you might have, both in your internal world and behavioral responses.  How might you think differently about yourself?  What other narratives or layers might you be missing that could open up options?  In terms of action, what other options might you have for how to respond?  Do you have to do what you usually do?  Are there any ways that could change?

Visualize taking one of these options.

What would it feel like to try a different option from the way you usually operate?  Visualize yourself taking that path.  Imagine yourself acting in a way that fits with your values, different from your normal experience.  What resistance or feelings of being trapped do you notice?  What makes you not want to take that option?  Would it be uncomfortable in any way, and why?

As we move into the upcoming foundational principles of ACT, values and committed action, you may need to come back to this step when you feel stuck.  Explore what is getting in the way of you taking value-based action from these various perspectives.  Notice how the stories you tell yourself can limit you from fully embodying the person you want to be.

Break the Power of Intrusive Thoughts

Have you ever been on a tall building and had a strange feeling you might lose control of your body and jump off the side?  (This is actually a common experience, called “high place phenomenon,” that 50% of people reported having in a recent study).  What about waking up in the middle of the night with a racing mind, or being unable to fall asleep because your mind is consumed with insecurities about the day before or worries about the future? Have you ever had a mental flash of a disturbing violent or sexual image that seems to come out of nowhere?

These are all examples of intrusive thoughts, distressing thoughts that pop into your mind out of nowhere.  They are often called “unwanted intrusive thoughts,” because they are often undesired and can create fear and distress in the person having them.

What are intrusive thoughts?

Intrusive thoughts can take many different forms.  Some contain disturbing or distressing content, like violence, sexual imagery, or harm to self or others.  On a less disturbing but just as painful level, intrusive thoughts can include negative self-talk, critical thoughts about yourself or others, or worries that won’t leave your mind.  Most of us have dealt with self-critical thoughts at some point, such as, “I’m worthless,” “I can’t do anything right,” or “I’m not good enough.”  Or maybe we’ve felt fear for our loved ones and had intrusive images of their death or harm.

Every person faces intrusive thoughts to some degree or another.  Moments like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this article are universal.

When do intrusive thoughts occur?

There are a few clinical situations in which intrusive thoughts like these are more common.  In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), intrusive thoughts and fears invade the mind and motivate compulsive behaviors like repeated hand-washing, counting, turning lights off and on, and other behaviors.  Intrusive thoughts are more common in what is referred to as “pure O” OCD, in which obsessions and compulsions both take place in the mind and don’t impact outward behaviors.

Intrusive thoughts also manifest in depression and anxiety. Depressed individuals are often plagued with self-critical or negative thoughts about the self, the world, or others that interfere with daily living.  Anxiety is characterized by worries about the future, and can cause insomnia due to being unable to shut off the mind at night or waking up with anxious thoughts.

Addicts often find that intrusive thoughts about their drug of choice motivate their urges to act out or use again.   Euphoric recall, or a memory related to past use of substances or addictive behaviors, can be a powerful trigger that pulls someone back into their addiction.  In sex and love addiction, fantasy about past or imagined sexual encounters and imagery from pornography or other material can intrude into the addict’s brain unannounced and affect desires to use.

Women in the postpartum period after giving birth can also face unwanted intrusive thoughts.  In fact, almost all women surveyed in a recent study reported unwanted intrusive thoughts of harming their infant, although there was no increase in actual violence toward their children. 

Emotional Response to Intrusive Thoughts

Often intrusive thoughts can be incredibly frightening.  Let’s say you have a disturbing, violent image pop into your mind.  If you identify with the thought as part of who you are, or as an actual desire or impulse to act in that way, you will likely feel fear.  You might believe there is something wrong with you and that you are the only one who has these thoughts happen to them.  Particularly if the thoughts repeat themselves, you might find yourself avoiding situations related to the thoughts, keeping the thoughts secret, attempting to make them go away through self- punishment, or other means of controlling the thoughts.

Often attempts to control thoughts, however, are fruitless.  Fighting them only makes them worse or more intense.  When your attempts to stop your thoughts don’t yield results, you might worry or fear that you are mentally unwell or that you may act on the impulses in your mind. 

“The Secret History of Thoughts”

In 2015, the NPR podcast Invisibilia kicked off its first episode, “The Secret History of Thoughts,” with a fascinating story about a man plagued by intrusive, dark thoughts.  In his case, he faced thoughts of harming his family that left him a shell of himself, frightened of carrying out the images that played throughout his mind.  He tried many of the ways mentioned above of controlling the thoughts to no avail.

Eventually, this man sought out a counselor for help.  His counselor took a radical approach, incorporating mindful acceptance with exposure therapy methods.  You can learn more by listening to the podcast about why he took this approach and how psychology’s approach to thinking about thinking has changed over the years.

For this individual but also for many who struggle with intrusive thoughts, the problem isn’t the dark, intrusive thoughts themselves.  Instead, the problem was how he reacted to the thoughts. His attempts to control them or make them go away only fed his fears and made them worse. 

How to Respond to Intrusive Thoughts

Label them for what they are.

Simply having a name for what you’re going through can make it less scary.  Naming intrusive thoughts as such helps you categorize them as normal parts of the human experience.  You can know they are a common type of thought that many people have.  You are not alone in them, and they can be managed.

By definition, intrusive thoughts cannot be controlled, and they don’t have the same importance or power as voluntary thoughts.  They are also different from behaviors: thoughts are not intentions or impulses, but simply the firing of a synapse in your brain.

Understand the right relationship between the thoughts and the self.

The approach of assigning meaning or significance to all thoughts can do more harm than good.  Overidentifying with your thoughts and making them part of your identity can cause you to imagine that you are a violent, predatory monster if you have a distressing intrusive thought. 

Instead, know that your thoughts are not who you are.  There’s no need to focus on them and give them inordinate power and meaning.  Know that you do not have to listen to your thoughts or yield to the impulses they are urging you toward.

Accept your thoughts and let them pass by.

In the acceptance and commitment therapy model, which is a mindfulness-oriented approach to thoughts and behaviors, intrusive thoughts are seen as separate from the self.  Rather than being afraid of intrusive thoughts, this model encourages defusion, or reminding yourself that thoughts are just thoughts and they do not have power unless you assign it to them.

To deal with intrusive thoughts, an ACT practitioner may suggest that you continue whatever activity you had been doing before the thoughts and/or focus on a value-oriented activity that you can do in contrast to those thoughts.  For example, rather than obsessing over thoughts of self-harm, practice self-care.  If you have a flash of a sexual or violent image, shift your focus to the present moment through mindfulness breathing.  The more you treat these thoughts as insignificant, unimportant, and uninteresting, the less they will carry an impact.

Assess and reframe your thoughts for accuracy and helpfulness.

The cognitive-behavioral therapy model takes a more active approach, addressing your thoughts by questioning their validity or helpfulness in your life.  You may intentionally shift your thinking patterns by reflecting on what you might say to a friend who was worried about intrusive thoughts.  How might you encourage or support them?

Remind yourself of what is true about yourself in response to a thought.  For example, if you have a violent image pop into your mind, remind yourself of why you don’t want to carry out that impulse and what your lack of desire to do so says about you as a person.  Coping statements like, “these thoughts are not reality,” or “I don’t want to do these things, they are just intrusive thoughts” might be helpful replacements for disturbing or distressing thoughts. 

Know when to get help.

If you notice intrusive thoughts impacting your daily functioning, leading to compulsive behavior patterns common to obsessive-compulsive disorder, or worsening over time, please seek help.  Reach out to your doctor or a counselor if these thoughts turn into obsessions or if they are accompanied by behaviors like preparing to carry out violence or harm on yourself or others.  If the thoughts came on rapidly, as with a new medication or recent life change, get in touch with your doctor.  In some extreme cases, you may need to go to the emergency room for care, which your doctor will be able to help you discern.

Surrender to the Process: Task 3 in Carnes’ 30 Task Model for Addiction Recovery

A common struggle for addicts entering recovery is the tug-of-war of their desires: wanting to stop acting out while still feeling a pull toward addictive behaviors.  Early in recovery, there’s often an expectation from yourself or from a spouse or loved one to change instantaneously.  And at the beginning, that can feel possible: after discovery or disclosure of addiction, you might have an immediate sense of disgust or distaste for the addiction that fuels sobriety. But with time, that initial emotional response subsides, and the addiction can easily come back when the underlying roots of the problem are still hidden.

One of these underlying roots is a sense of control: a belief that you can force yourself to stop your addictive behaviors, you are in control of your own recovery, and you can pick and choose what you do to get better.  Notice, however, that one of the hallmarks of addiction is repeated attempts to stop without success.  Often early attempts to stop are half-hearted, done in isolation, or not informed by recovery principles. 

The momentary willingness that comes after disclosure or discovery will not turn into long-term sobriety unless there is a recognition that past attempts to control don’t work.  Unless there is a true surrender of control, change will not last.

Surrender to the Process vs. Attempts to Control

What is Surrender?

Surrender is a recognition of the reality that you do not have the power to get better from your addiction on your own or by manipulating or controlling your recovery.  This ties into 12 Step work and breaking through denial as you recognize your own powerlessness and unmanageability.

Surrender acknowledges that the attempts you’ve made to change have been futile.  Often, this is because they are done by yourself without the support or accountability of others.  Or because you approach recovery in a piecemeal fashion, only choosing to do some things and leaving behind necessary tasks for your recovery that stir up discomfort.  Or you may be still on the fence about recovery in general.

What is Control?

Control happens when we believe that we are not powerless and that we can do the work of recovery on our own.  This often leads to white-knuckling, a term that refers to forcing yourself to stop acting out behaviors by sheer willpower.  The term “dry drunk” refers to someone who may not be acting out in their addiction, but hasn’t addressed the underlying root causes of the addiction to create lasting, holistic life change because they are still seeking control. 

Control can be obvious, as in some of the examples above, but it can also show up in subtle ways.  When you are only doing some of the work of recovery and ignoring putting into practice that which makes you feel uncomfortable, you are exercising your own control.  Control shows up in comparing yourself to others in recovery, seeing yourself as better or more capable than them.  Thoughts like “if I just do better, then it will all be fine,” are denial statements that foster this sense of control, but then lead to feelings of lethargy, depression, or self-hatred when you cannot follow through on change.  Another indicator is a lack of willingness to rely on others for support or help through the process, meaning you aren’t attending meetings, don’t have a sponsor, and have no accountability with other group members.

Characteristics of Surrender

Surrender requires you to be uncomfortable.  When you’re surrendering to the process of recovery, you will feel discomfort with some of what you are tasked to do.  You might not like some of the early restrictions or accountability you need to put in place, like an internet blocker, location tracking app, or daily accountability with a sponsor.  But remember that picking and choosing what you feel comfortable with in recovery is a setup for slips and relapse.

Surrender releases anxiety to experience peace.  When you are attempting to stay in control, you put incredible pressure on yourself to change on your own, followed by devastating shame when you inevitably fail.  If you choose to surrender to the process, you can experience the peace of knowing that you aren’t alone and help is available. 

Surrender requires that you say no.  You will need to learn what your limits are in recovery.   We like to think that we can do everything we want and resist temptation to act out in addiction, but this isn’t true. One of the ways denial perpetuates addiction is to tell you that you should “test your strength” or “test your resolve” by putting yourself in risky situations. But this is another form of ritual and preparation for acting out.  You need to identify appropriate boundaries and restrictions early on to set yourself up for success.  Addicts are notoriously bad at boundaries – that’s part of the addiction – so surrendering to boundaries that others help you identify or that have been tenets of the 12 Step recovery process are necessary. 

The Spiritual Nature of Surrender

If we can’t do recovery on our own, then what does that mean? Who can do it for us?

Surrender is a spiritual discipline.  Recognizing the role of God in this process is essential.  In 12 Step, incorporating God or your Higher Power involves recognizing something bigger than yourself that is guiding you toward health, because your self isn’t cutting it.  Step Two and Step Three of the 12 Step program dig into this exploration in more detail. 

Surrender to God or a Higher Power can be a tricky endeavor for those whose views of God are complicated, who have difficulty trusting in God, or who don’t believe God has the power to create change.  These roadblocks are worth working out in the context of your 12 Step group or with your sponsor.  At the bare minimum, believing that there is something outside of yourself that will guide you through recovery, even if it is as simple as the 12 Step process or your work with a sponsor, gives you a good place to start.

Practical Steps for Task 3

Ask for help.

The easiest way to recognize surrender in someone is their willingness to no longer tackle the addiction on their own, but to actively seek out help from others.  This can come in the form of joining a 12 Step group, therapy group, support group, or going to counseling.  Take it a step further by connecting with a sponsor or other group members for contact outside of the group.  Recognize that asking for help requires vulnerability and openness: you need to share the realities of your addiction openly with someone rather than offering partial information.

Identify your Higher Power.

This can be the God of the Bible if you are a Christian believer, or can have a foundation from your religious background.  If you chafe at the idea of religion, you may choose the 12 Step group, people who have gone before you in recovery, recovery itself, or a particular value you hold like love or compassion.  Again, seek to identify something bigger than yourself and have conversations with others in the program to open yourself up to faith and be curious about this process. 

Name denial-based roadblocks.

Denial in your thoughts can be a major factor that keeps you in control and prevents you from offering full surrender.  When you look at the subtle types of control listed above, do you identify with any of them?  Make a list of the denial statements that are most common to you that fuel these attempts to control.  They can include thoughts like, “I don’t need to do that,” “I’m not as bad as so-and-so,” or “other people might need 12 Step, but I don’t.” 

Now consider: what have you tried before in terms of your recovery?  How successful was it?  Is your denial telling you the truth or not?  Look also at what beliefs might be causing you to resist placing trust in your Higher Power or in the support of others.

Grieve the losses associated with surrender.

Surrendering addiction is hard, often because it can feel like you’re giving up the only coping mechanism you have available when stress or other painful emotions arise.  There are aspects of addiction that were appealing or pleasurable to you, and you will need to let go of them.  It also may require you to let go of the belief that you are in control or that you are capable of stopping on your own.  Surrender is a process of letting go.

Remind yourself of your commitment.

When you choose to surrender, it is not a one-and-done moment.  Surrender is a daily practice.  Repeatedly remember your commitment to surrender through a daily reminder, as with a spiritual practice like prayer, journaling, or meditation.  You might choose a mantra or repeated phrase like, “I can’t, but God can,” or “I choose to surrender to the process of recovery.”  Use the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  Regularly reinforce this commitment through the support of a church or religious community.

Invite others to help with boundary-setting.

As mentioned earlier, a lack of understanding and implementation of healthy boundaries is a characteristic of addiction.  Recovery requires going back to basics with boundaries.  Sit down with your sponsor and talk about your limits and what you should say no to in early recovery, even if you don’t want to.  Get specific and honest here about what you truly need.  Your sponsor will help you explore which triggers are in your control and those you can’t control to help you adapt your boundaries accordingly.  Talk to others in your group with similar acting out behaviors about what boundaries they found effective in early recovery and choose to adopt some of theirs if they strike a chord in you.  Read stories of those who have been successful in recovery, many of which can be found in the foundational text of your 12 Step fellowship, and imitate some of the changes they made if they are relevant to you.

Defusion of Distressing Thoughts: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series

How many thoughts would you guess pass through your mind in a single day? Let’s imagine you’re out to eat with a friend.  Even with your best intentions to stay present and listen, there’s a running commentary going on in your mind.  What are some of the thoughts you might have?  I wonder what she’s thinking of me.  Should I have said that?  I sound like an idiot. I’m still so angry from that meeting with my boss this morning.   He’s so overbearing and impossible to work with.  What am I forgetting from my grocery list?  I’m so forgetful, I must be losing my mind.

Needless to say, these thoughts pull you out of the moment and make it more challenging to listen. You might find yourself censoring what you say out of insecurity, comparing yourself to your friend, or even cutting your lunch date short to get back to the office quickly because you’re feeling stressed.

What’s happening?

When you find yourself stuck in your thoughts, you’re likely dealing with cognitive fusion, another destructive mental strategy that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) addresses.  When we’re in cognitive fusion, we believe that the workings of our internal mind (thoughts, memories, images, reasoning, comparisons, etc.) are true and real, such that we allow them to influence our behaviors.  Our thought patterns have power and control over our lives and seem to make our decisions for us.

Often these thoughts include cognitive distortions, like catastrophizing or all-or-nothing thinking.  They can include negative self-talk or beliefs about yourself that you hold to tightly based on past experiences.  When we believe these things, they become self-fulfilling prophecies.  For example, our fears of being awkward contribute to social anxiety or discomfort.  We then avoid social situations to try to manage the uncomfortable feelings that coincide with them, adding to the dynamics of experiential avoidance that lead us to disengage rather than live out what is important to us.

There are several different types of cognitive fusion that we may face.  They include:

• Rules: “shoulds” for self or others, ways the world or people “ought” to work or be.  Example: People should always be kind and respectful.

• “I” stories: identity-based statements about ourselves that become self-definitions and self-fulfilling prophecies.  Example: I’m always late.

• Judgments/evaluations: beliefs about what is fair vs. unfair, good vs. bad, or right vs. wrong.  Example: It’s unfair that I keep getting passed over for the promotion.

• Meaning-making/reasons: justifying what I do or looking for the answer to the “why?” question to explain what happens.  Example: I’m single because I’m so socially awkward and unattractive.

• Worries about the past/future: overfocus on the past or anxiety about the future that pulls us out of the present moment. Example: How am I ever going to pass that exam next Friday?

• “You/They” stories/comparison: beliefs about others that become self-fulfilling prophecies, particularly as they relate to us. Example: She’s better than I am at everything.

Cognitive fusion is a problem because our thoughts and feelings then run our lives for us and toss us around at every whim of our minds.  Yes, thoughts can feel very powerful.  Memories that pop up as flashbacks, ingrained patterns of meaning that carry shame, and automatic responses that elicit strong emotions can feel crippling at times.

Yet it is important to recognize that, though these thoughts can feel powerful and real, they may not have as much power as we think.

What is defusion?

Consider the image of defusing a bomb, as in an action movie.  In order for the hero to save the day, they must somehow disconnect the power this ticking time bomb has in order to keep it from destroying its target.

Similarly, our thoughts act as ticking time bombs that can unleash an explosion of painful thoughts and emotions, followed by destructive behaviors that lead us away from our values.  We can defuse the thoughts by removing the charge that sets them off: the automatic behavioral reaction that comes after the thoughts.  We do this by observing our thoughts from a place of distance rather than getting caught up in the storm they create in our minds.

The previous two concepts we’ve discussed in this Acceptance and Commitment Therapy series are essential building blocks to support this defusion.  Defusion helps us to practice acceptance to willingly encounter painful thoughts and feelings, rather than running away or avoiding experiences we find uncomfortable.  It is also essential for us to remain in the present moment in order to be aware of these thoughts from the role of an observer.

Principles

Thoughts are just thoughts.

Thoughts do not have the power to control your life.  You can have a thought come into your mind, but choose to act in a way that is different from your default response to the thought.  They do not have to control what you do.

Thoughts don’t last forever.

We find some surprising results when we pay attention to how many varied thoughts we have in a day.  To test this, sit quietly in a room with a pad of paper and write down every thought that pops into your head for 5 minutes.  When you’ve completed that list, count how many thoughts you had and multiply that number by 192 to create an estimate of how many thoughts you have in a day.  Recognizing that your thought patterns are fleeting and eventually come to an end can reduce their power.

How we relate to our thoughts is more important than the content of the thoughts.

ACT approaches thoughts differently from a traditional cognitive-behavioral approach, which places emphasis on understanding and changing the content of your automatic thoughts and core beliefs.  While reframing thoughts can be beneficial for some people, ACT theory emphasizes that our thoughts are powerful because we assign that power to them.  Rather than attempting to change a thought that may not be changed very easily, it is more effective to defuse the power of those thoughts.

This approach is helpful if you have tried to change the way you think about yourself or others for a long time, but aren’t finding those changes sticking.  Rather than continuing to try to force a change, allow the thought to be present, but reduce its power by taking an observer role and acting in accordance with your values instead.

Thoughts, emotions, meaning-making, memories, images, and other internal experiences are just products of the mind.

These internal workings don’t have any greater meaning than that.  They don’t have the power to force us to behave in any particular way, despite the fact that we may believe they do. 

At the same time, we can choose situations in which we want our thoughts to have an influence over our behaviors.  We can choose to engage the thoughts that move us more toward what is important to us.  In this way, we’re not eliminating the power of our thoughts entirely, but making an intentional decision of how much power we want to give to those thoughts.

Practices

Keep a record of your thoughts.

Listen to and track your thoughts, noticing whether they carry a positive, negative, or neutral charge.  Identify if there are any strong emotions that go alongside them.  Notice what behaviors flow naturally out of your thoughts and emotions.  Are those behaviors you want to be engaging in?  Or are they impulsive, reactive, automatic responses?  You can find a helpful tracking tool for this step here.

Affirm your role as an observer of your internal world.

After recording your thoughts, you are in a better position to recognize and notice thought patterns as they come up.  When you have a distressing, painful, or challenging thought, see what happens when you intentionally remind yourself of the phrase, “thoughts are just thoughts.”  How does it impact the power of that thought?

Similarly, you could label your internal experience as if you were an outside observer with words like, “I’m having the thought…” or “I’m having the emotion…”. Another strategy is to imagine your thoughts being played on a radio or told as a story outside of yourself.

Visualize the thoughts passing by.

Often we fixate on our thoughts, which gives them the illusion of power.  We obsess over them or attempt to stop them from coming up, which just entrenches them more deeply in our minds.  Instead, use this commonly practiced mindfulness technique: instead of trying to control, change, alter, or rid yourself of your thoughts, just notice them passing by.  Using a visual cue, like imagining thoughts like cars passing on the street or clouds floating by in the sky, can help you to allow them to pass through your awareness without giving them undue attention.  You’ll notice that your thoughts don’t need to command your focus all the time, but that they can come and go.

Write the thought down and look at it regularly.

If you notice a pattern to your distressing thoughts, such as a repeated phrase or belief that feels like it controls you, take that thought and write it down on something you can carry with you, such as a notecard or post-it note.  Throughout your day, pull out the note with your thought on it and read through it.  Notice how it feels when you look at it.  See yourself as an outside observer of that thought.

Notice how the relationship you have to the thought changes.  The words on the paper do not change, but the way you interact with them will differ at various points throughout the day.  This is a good indicator of the importance not of the content of the thought, but of how you relate to it.

Imagine a common situation influenced by this thought, but with a different outcome.

Choose this thought you’ve written on the card, another common thought pattern you’ve identified, or an image or memory that tends to impact your behaviors.  Now imagine yourself having that thought, but making a different decision about how to respond to it.  What behavior might line up better with what is important to you?  What would change?  How would an outside observer see you?  Would it be possible to act in a different way while still having the thought?

Take a risk and put your different outcome into practice.

Now put into practice this shift in behavior in response to your thought.  Release the thought using a statement like, “thoughts are just thoughts,” and take a risk to act in a way that aligns with what is important to you.  For example, if you’re in a social situation with the thought, “I’m too awkward to talk to people like them,” take a risk by engaging in conversation with one of those feared individuals.

Recognize that this will not eliminate the thoughts.  In fact, taking the risk may even intensify your discomfort.  But this practice of stepping out and making a change in your behavior while still experiencing the uncomfortable thoughts can teach you that your thoughts don’t have the power you think they do. You still have control over your own actions such that you can respond to challenging circumstances in alignment with your values.

Coping With Betrayal Trauma Triggers as a Couple

When I work with couples who are recovering from sex and love addiction, one of the most common concerns is what to do when the betrayed partner gets triggered.  This is especially relevant when the addict has achieved sobriety and is working their program, but the betrayed partner continues to experience triggers. A trigger is a reminder in the present of the addict’s hurtful and addictive behaviors in the past.  Triggers can be accompanied by strong expressions of emotion that seem out of proportion to the present situation, flashbacks to the addict’s past behaviors, intense anxiety or fear, or a level of disgust toward the addict.

Triggers aren’t necessarily indicators that the addict has done anything wrong or broken their sobriety.  In fact, triggers will come up no matter how long the addict has been sober.  I often characterize triggers as having “one foot in the past and one foot in the present”.  Though the addiction may not be happening currently, the feeling aroused by the trigger is the same as if it were happening in the present.  They are a normal part of betrayal trauma recovery and broken trust that needs to be dealt with and healed in the relationship.

Types and Signs of Triggers

A trigger can be directly tied to the recovering addict’s behavior, but triggers can also be environmental.  Triggers tied directly to the addict might be observing their interactions with the opposite sex, seeing your partner hide something on their phone or computer, or your spouse arriving home later than expected.  An example of an environmental trigger might be a billboard for an adult bookstore, an explicit scene in a TV show or movie, or the mention of an affair in a book or magazine.

Sometimes these triggers lead to suspicion and distrust of the spouse, especially when patterns of behavior that were used to hide addiction are noted.  For example, if the addict would often engage in sexual acting out behaviors while traveling for work, traveling will likely carry a trigger in the future.  Or if the spouse used pornography late at night, staying up late alone may be another trigger.

Other times triggers are tied to relational dynamics that were present during the addiction.  If defensiveness was used to hide addictive behavior or emotional disengagement occurred as a result of the addiction, these will likely stir up a trigger response.  Emotional manipulation and gaslighting, withdrawing after an argument, and rage/intense anger are all types of relational dynamics that may have been used to hide or distract from the addictive behavior in the past. If they recur, they can remind the betrayed spouse of that experience and arouse suspicion.

As mentioned earlier, triggers often bring strong emotional reactions, to extremes of rage or the silent treatment.  They can spiral the betrayed partner into destructive thought patterns and anxiety, which may lead to a return to safety-seeking behaviors. Examples of these include searching through emails or phones or numbing out with the betrayed partner’s own addiction to food, shopping, alcohol, or other compulsive or impulsive behaviors. 

Some triggers are easier to prepare for, such as the travel trigger mentioned above.  However, many times triggers come on unexpectedly.  Having a plan in place for how you will respond to triggers as a couple can help you be prepared even for those that are unpredictable and arise without warning.

A Plan for the Addict

Slow down and breathe.

When your partner is triggered, often the impulse is to defend yourself against what can feel like an attack or accusation of wrongdoing.  Unfortunately, this can intensify the triggering experience, adding even more distrust to the relationship as you repeat patterns of defensiveness or dismissal that were used to hide the addiction.

Instead, use the tool of your breath to slow yourself down before you jump on the defense.  Take five to ten slow, deep abdominal breaths to help you stay present in your body and prepare to listen to their experience.

Remember what is happening.

Reframe these trigger moments as opportunities to grow in trust. Consider the concept that a trigger is about having one foot in the present and one foot in the past.  Typically, the trigger is not about what is happening now and is more about what your actions were then.  The trigger doesn’t necessarily carry an accusation with it, as much as it is a flashback to what happened in the past.  If there is some truth to the accusation, it does need to be addressed, and we’ll explore that later.

Listen.

Turn your attention toward your spouse and actively hear what they are saying.  It may help you to repeat their words back to them to ensure you understand, as well as clear up any misinterpretations or confusing communication.  This also helps your partner feel heard and have the opportunity to clarify their perspective. 

Contain the shame.

This is the most crucial component of this process for the addict.  Triggers stir up shame because shame comes with facing the reality of the harm caused by your addictive behaviors.  In fact, shame often contributed to addiction in the first place, as the addiction was a way to self-medicate against the pain of shame.

Addicts defend against shame in a multitude of ways.  You might deny your addiction altogether, avoid reminders of the harm done by your addiction, focus more on the future than the past, or even repress or forget moments from the addiction.  All of these options deny your personal responsibility, which can lead your betrayed partner to feel minimized. 

In order to respond to your betrayed partner with empathy, you need to contain your experience of shame by separating your identity from what you have done.  You need to remind yourself that you are not your addiction.  This is work that can be done in therapy or with your sponsor in 12 Step. The ultimate goal is to take responsibility and remember that a trigger is not a threat to who you are. 

Validate the pain of the past.

Connect with your spouse by acknowledging the reality of betrayal they faced at your hands and the hands of your addiction.  Key phrases for this step include words like, “Of course you would feel that way” and, “It makes sense why you would feel _____ based on my past behaviors.” 

Incorporate empathy here if you can.  Words like, “That really stinks” or, “I’m so sorry you have to go through that, it sounds really hard” can be helpful here as well.  A combination of validation and empathy will go far in defusing the tension of the trigger.

Examine your own behavior and apologize if needed.

Self-reflect to see if the trigger your betrayed partner is experiencing is based in anything for which you can take responsibility.  A trigger like passing a billboard or going on work travel aren’t necessarily your responsibiilty, so this may be a situation to simply validate and share empathy.

On the other hand, triggers related to emotional manipulation in arguments, not following through on promised actions, or inappropriate behavior with a member of the opposite sex likely require an apology.

In a more subtle direction, it is important to apologize for safeguards that could have been in place to protect against this trigger.  For example, perhaps the two of you agreed to make a plan before travel to connect during the trip and you failed to do so.  Or you’ve committed to taking responsibility initiating date nights or weekly recovery check-ins, but you haven’t been consistent in following through on those commitments.  Own your actions that set up an environment for a trigger.

Answer their questions.

See if your spouse has any follow-up questions to the trigger, particularly if it involved direct action or inaction on your part.  Answer these questions as openly and honestly as you can.  Remember that any deception here will come back to hurt you when the truth eventually gets revealed, as it inevitably will.

Rebuild trust in the moment.

Ask your partner if there is anything you can do to rebuild trust in the moment.  Physical touch may be a good way to increase connection, if the partner desires it.  They may also have a request for a date night or other shared activity as a way to connect emotionally and relationally.  They may have a request to create a new agreement around the trigger for the future.

A Plan For the Partner

Breathe.

Just as the addict in this situation needs to slow down and connect to their body, the same is true for you. Intense emotions that accompany triggers can either take you completely out of your body or overwhelm your body with emotion.  This is true for anyone facing trauma flashbacks.  Practicing a centering or grounding breathing exercise can help you slow down enough to observe what is happening in your mind and body. 

Reach out for support.

Get in contact with some of the support individuals in your life who know about your betrayal trauma recovery and ask for encouragement or a listening ear.  A source for this support might come from a women’s support group, your therapist, or a close friend who is empathetic and supportive in your recovery.  If you don’t have this support in place, now might be a good time to look for resources in your area or online that you can rely on the next time you face a trigger like this one.

Avoid the impulse to safety-seek.

Triggers that remind you of the addict’s past behaviors can throw you into repetition of the panic, fear, and hypervigilance of the early days after discovery.  Safety-seeking behaviors include actions such as compulsively searching through your spouse’s internet search history, phone contacts, or emails.  It could be manipulating your conversations with them to try to get them to slip up and say something incriminating.

Hallmarks of safety-seeking behaviors are that they are secretive, often carry shame with them, are attempts to feel like you have all the information and are in control, and usually make you feel worse instead of better.  Instead of choosing these destructive patterns, lean into supportive self-care until you are able to have a conversation with a support person or with your spouse.

Approach your spouse with the talking formula.

When you feel affected by a trigger and it feels appropriate to do so, talk about it with the addict using this format: “When I heard/saw [the trigger], what went through my mind was [thoughts] and I felt [emotion word].”

Feel free to ask questions or confirmation about their behavior.  For example, if it would help you to have more information, you might ask, “Would you be willing to share more about what was going on that day?”  Or if you need reassurance of their recovery, you might say, “It would be helpful to be reminded of your recovery plan. Can we go through that together again?”

Make a request for a change in behavior, if needed.

Identify if you would like to approach future trigger moments differently as a result of what you learned from this one.  Adapting your plan can involve both a joint discussion and an individual reflection.  You might ask your partner, “Could we make a plan together for situations like this in the future?”

You can also identify relationship patterns that you’d like to change if they were involved in the trigger.  For example, instead of emotional withdrawal and detachment, you could request that your partner remain present or plan a time to come back together to discuss an issue. 

Practice self-care.

Riding on the roller-coaster of a trigger is not an easy process.  It can be emotionally and physically exhausting to both experience a trigger and to process it in the aftermath.  Practice activities that are self-soothing and bring a sense of peace and calm to your physical body.  Utilize your resources of support to help you process through the conversation you had with your partner.  Regardless of what happens in the conversation with your spouse, you can still care for and validate yourself.

Understanding the Nature of Addiction: Task 2 in Carnes' 30 Task Model of Addiction Recovery

At this point, you’ve been propelled into recovery through a crisis of decision.  You may have faced a rock bottom moment, like an STD or a spouse’s discovery of your behaviors, that led you to begin to break through denial and admit that you have a problem outside of your control.

But when you begin your journey of recovery from addiction, chances are you are unfamiliar with the specifics of the illness with which you are dealing.  Even though you have plenty of experience living out addiction, you probably don’t know much about the underlying causes of what you’re going through. 

Task 2: Understand the Nature of the Illness

In this task, you will learn more about sex and love addiction, including common symptoms, information about how addiction forms, and patterns it follows.  If you are facing sex and love addiction, there are several different manifestations of addiction that you will come to understand through Patrick Carnes’ ten types of behavior, a categorization system created to describe the significance of varied areas of sexual acting out behavior.

Learning about the mechanics of addiction can answer many of your “why” questions, like “why is it so hard to stop?” or “why do I keep coming back to this?”  As you explore addiction, you’ll learn about neurochemistry and how process addictions (those that involve a behavior rather than a substance like drugs or alcohol) work in the brain.

You may also find connections between your personal history and your present-day addiction.  Abuse and neglect are common factors in many addicts’ histories.  Sexual development is often disrupted, leading to a faulty understanding of healthy sexuality.  Even without an obvious history of abuse or neglect, you may uncover messages communicated to you about yourself, your body, or sex. Critical life events that had an impact, like an unexpected death or illness in the family, or your family’s culture and structure may have inadvertently contributed to your addiction.

Feelings of isolation and loneliness are common in addiction, as you don’t know many others who have felt the ways you have in addiction. Getting connected to other addicts, hearing their stories, and recognizing the patterns of your own addiction that match up with theirs can help you feel less alone.

Practical Steps for Task 2

Read!

Gather information about your addiction by reading and researching more about it.  While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition (DSM-5) does not utilize sex and love addiction as a diagnosis, you can compare your experience with the DSM-5 criteria for substance use disorders, as in alcohol use disorder.  Learning from books, listening to podcasts, or reading articles from trusted sources can all help you see stories of addiction that mesh with your experience.  It can also explain some of the symptoms you’ve experienced but not fully understood.

Here are a few books I would offer as a starting place for reading and learning more:

• Out of the Shadows by Patrick Carnes

• Sex Addiction 101 by Rob Weiss

• No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction by Marnie Ferree

• Ready to Heal: Breaking Free of Addictive Relationships by Kelly McDaniel

• Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody

• Facing the Shadow by Patrick Carnes

• The Green Book of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous

• The SLAA Basic Text

Similarly, here are a few informational articles I’ve put together about sex and love addiction:

• Is This Normal or Do I Have a Problem? Six Questions to Ask Yourself If You Think You Might Be a Sex and Love Addict

• Addicted to Love: Signs You Might Be Struggling with Love Addiction

• The Seduction of Fantasy: Why Your Obsession with Romance Could Signal Sex and Love Addiction

• Hooked on Porn? How Your Online Sexual Activities Might Hint at Sex and Love Addiction

• How Sex and Love Addiction Impacts Your Brain

• The Effects of Sex and Love Addiction on Your Brain and Body (and How to Change It!)

• 5 Lies Female Sex and Love Addicts Believe

• Romance, Objectification, and Trauma: Why I Treat Female Sex Addicts Differently From Men

• A Dangerous Spiral: The Cycle of Addiction in Sex and Love Addicts

• How Do Christians Deal with Sex and Love Addiction? A Christian Therapist’s Perspective

• Understanding the Role of Stages of Change in Recovery

Review and personalize the cycle of addiction.

In several of the materials listed above, you can find information about the cycle of addiction.  Review the steps involved with a particular focus on preoccupation/fantasy, ritual, acting out behaviors, and despair.  See if you can identify how each of these steps manifests for you.

What were the first triggers that got you thinking of your compulsive sexual behaviors?  What was on your mind while you were fantasizing or preparing to act out?  What behaviors prepare you to act out?  What form did the acting out take?  How did you feel afterward?

If you have multiple different forms of compulsive sexual behavior from which you are seeking healing (eg. pornography use and engaging in affairs), create a separate cycle for each of those forms of acting out.

Identify the function of your fantasies.

As you focus on the fantasy component of the cycle, ask yourself: how does your fantasy work to propel your addiction forward?  What types of situations or scenarios do you fantasize about?  What need are they meeting?  Don’t limit this exploration to sexual fantasies, but include non-sexual fantasies, such as a career you’ve dreamed about, for similar themes.

Often fantasies reveal an underlying need that has gone unmet in the past or is currently unmet by your lifestyle.  If your initial thought about your need is for “more sex,” identify what sex represents to you and why you feel you need more of it, as that might get you closer to a core need. 

If you’re still having trouble getting to the deeper need, connect with a therapist or trusted mentor, like a sponsor, to help you uncover any underlying desires that might be at play. 

Learn about sexual anorexia and the binge-purge cycle.

Often addiction can go unnoticed because it is coupled with sexual anorexia, forming a cycle of bouts of sexual behaviors followed by avoidance and fear of sex.  Sexual anorexia is, simply put, “an aversion to being sexual” (Carnes, Facing the Shadow).  Sexual anorexia involves intentionally depriving yourself of sexuality in order to avoid the discomfort or pain that it brings up, often due to past abuse or negative messaging about sex.

Addicts can be both addicted and anorexic at the same time.  For example, an addict who uses pornography daily but avoids sex with his spouse is exercising both sexual addiction and anorexia.  It can also appear in a binge-purge pattern of use, where an addict binges by acting out frequently over a short period of time, followed by a long stretch in which they avoid sexual behaviors or thoughts.

If you relate to this description of sexual anorexia, Patrick Carnes has written an in-depth book on this issue entitled Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred which may be worth a read to help you understand. 

Review and list the consequences of addiction you’ve experienced.

As you read, you’re likely to learn about impacts of sexual behaviors of which you weren’t aware previously.  Perhaps you had some problems in your life that you didn’t realize were connected to addiction, but you’re noticing their connections after learning about the symptoms.  Facing the Shadow has some helpful exercises related to exploring these consequences more deeply.

Identify common factors with others in recovery.

While one of the most important first steps in breaking through denial is joining a group and finding accountability with other recovering addicts, you can also understand the illness of your addiction more fully as you listen to the stories of others and identify stories that line up with your own.  Though you may have vastly different manifestations of acting out or consequences to your behavior, look for the common factors you share.  These factors might have nothing to do with addiction on the surface but might include such historical information as a rigid family upbringing or a lack of adequate education on healthy sexuality.

Create a timeline of your sexual history.

Consider your own sexual development.  What were some of the key sexual experiences you had throughout your life?  Break this timeline down into time periods, such as childhood, early adolescence, late adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, etc.  Your timeline may include abuse or harmful experiences, but it can also include more positive or neutral moments as well.  You can use defining events (eg. going to college, getting married, losing a job) as timeline markers, particularly if they had a significant influence on the progression of the addiction.

Reflect back on the messages you received about sex growing up.  Were you given adequate sexual information?  Was anything left out?  How were sex or sexual matters discussed in your household?  Some of the messages about sex you received may be indirect.  Perhaps your parents never had a conversation with you about the birds and the bees, but you picked up your knowledge of sex from peers or porn.  Maybe TV shows, cultural norms, or images depicted in pornography had an influence on your view of sex. 

Include how you came to understand your masculinity or femininity.  Often we receive messages from similar sources (parents, media, peers) about what it means to be a man or a woman, which can teach faulty messages that contribute to addiction.  Addiction itself can also teach distorted messages about men and women.  Abuse is another factor that can impact this messaging, so be aware of any influences from that arena. 

Share this timeline with someone else.

In the same vein as sharing with a sponsor or trusted friend about your addiction, as mentioned in task 1, once you’ve compiled this timeline of sexual behaviors, go over it together with a sponsor, mentor, therapist, or trusted friend.  Opening up to someone who you trust to be able to receive and listen to your story without judgment is a necessary part of recovery.  Ask for feedback or themes that they notice of which you might not be aware.

This is great preparation for sharing your First Step with a sponsor or in the context of a 12 Step meeting.  Understanding your personal history and how it applies to your story of addiction can lead to significant insight into how your addiction functions.

Practicing Acceptance: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series

Tell me if you’ve had a day like this one: you’re in your car on the way to work.  The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the road is clear…until you hit the freeway and traffic comes to a standstill.  You’re slightly annoyed, as you don’t want to be late for your meeting at the beginning of the workday.  Suddenly, a car whips in front of you, nearly hitting your front bumper.  Your anger skyrockets.  You might yell some curse words or make a rude gesture at the driver.  By the time you arrive at work 15 minutes late for your meeting, your day is ruined.  You may think to yourself, “why do I always do this?  There’s no reason to get this worked up about traffic.”

We began this Acceptance and Commitment Therapy series with an overview of ACT’s purpose: to approach all situations and circumstances with an eye toward personal values and committed actions in alignment with those values.  The first concept discussed was contact with the present moment, which requires staying in tune with your sensations, thoughts, and emotions in any given part of your day.  But what happens when those internal experiences are frustrating or overwhelming?

Acceptance

The next concept of ACT is so crucial to this theory that it makes its way into the name: acceptance.  As humans, we often attempt to avoid or control our pain. In so doing, our creativity and perspective become narrowed, and we are disconnected from what is important to us.  Our interpretation of events magnifies our pain and disrupts our daily life. 

When we resist acknowledging the painful realities that exist in our internal world and our external experiences (circumstances, other people, relationships, etc), we create tension that interferes with taking action and causes us to feel stuck.  In his book Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the creator of ACT called this experiential avoidance, defining it as “efforts to control or avoid private experiences (eg. sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, urges) when doing so is ineffective, unnecessary, or contrary to living a meaningful life.” 

Why We Need Acceptance

It makes sense that we would act in ways that attempt to protect us from pain.  But often the end results of our self-protection are consequences and disconnection from our values.  And trying to force our internal world to change doesn’t always work.  We can’t force ourselves to feel a certain way, we can’t suppress our urges for very long, and our thoughts arise automatically.

In the same vein, it is impossible to control things that are outside of ourselves, as much as we may try.  We cannot force someone to love us, change others’ thoughts or experiences, or control how bad traffic is on any given day.

In addiction recovery, addicts often find that trying to suppress their urges to act out or use their drug of choice end up backfiring.  Similarly, denial of the reality of harm done by their addiction in relationships can lead to the dissolution of those relationships and more severe consequences than if reality was accepted and acknowledged in the first place.

What Acceptance Is…and Isn’t

We need to practice acceptance in order to thrive and create the life we want.  But what does acceptance look like on a daily basis?  It requires taking the role of an observer of both your internal world and external circumstances to see things as they are without judgment, removing any labels like “good” or “bad.”

But acceptance is not the same thing as settling or resigning yourself to your fate.  Settling is a passive response: putting up with their circumstance without any hope of taking action.  Often, those who feel they have settled carry some degree of anger or resentment, even if it is buried beneath the surface. They feel stuck in a situation they don’t want, and it seems impossible to change.

We think acceptance means a barren life, but the opposite is actually true.  Acceptance is not a resignation or giving up, and it doesn’t require you to like the situation in which you find yourself.  In fact, acceptance leads the way to change.  In order to change what isn’t working, we must first accept the reality of what is.

Principles

Suffering is universal and unavoidable.

None of us can go through life without pain.  Pain will be there whether we accept it or not.  Many of our efforts to avoid or control pain end up creating more harm for ourselves or others, in such forms as addiction or relational disengagement.  Accepting the reality that we will experience pain can help us prepare for it and be conscious of it when it happens, rather than being taken by surprise, believing that we should always be happy, or expecting that we will think positive thoughts all the time.

Observe negative thoughts or painful emotions without attempts to change them.

One recent study showed that repeating positive self-statements did not have a positive effect on those with low self-esteem, but rather left them feeling worse.  Attempts to avoid pain by forcing positive thoughts actually had a negative effect on those individuals.

According to ACT theory, attempts to change negative thoughts or painful emotions only exacerbate the pain and don’t allow for acceptance.  This principle exists in contrast to more traditional cognitive theories, like cognitive-behavioral therapy, that encourage reframing or changing thought patterns.  ACT also contrasts the cultural message that if you’re struggling with negative thoughts or painful feelings, you must not be trying hard enough to get better.

Often in acknowledging these thoughts and emotions and letting go of the need to change them, you can experience a greater peace as you become an observer rather than a controller of your experience.

Open up to what shows up. 

Acceptance is characterized by a mindset of openness, both to circumstances outside of yourself and your internal response to those circumstances.  It involves a willingness to engage and receive whatever comes, whether it is painful or joyful.  We choose to engage with the feelings and circumstances that we would rather avoid, moving closer to them in an attempt to grow toward thriving in a meaningful life.

Foster creative hopelessness.

As you’ve made attempts to cope with painful emotions and circumstances, you’ve probably noticed that your coping strategies have varied levels of impact.  However, one thing you’ll likely see is that none of your coping strategies eliminate pain forever.  Even if it is a temporary fix, the pain will come back at some point.

Creative hopelessness comes when we recognize that none of the things we do to try to change our internal or external worlds actually eliminates pain.  Many of our attempts to do so are futile in the long term, even if they provide temporary relief.  Acknowledging this reality means that we can begin to explore more creative strategies about how to live out our values. 

Practices

Observe your thoughts, feelings, and urges intentionally.

Sit in a comfortable position and set a timer for five minutes.  During that time, observe any thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, or urges that float through your mind and body.  As you’re doing this, recognize that there is no need to change them, but simply to observe them.  Notice how long they take to work their way through your system or if they repeat or resurface.  Notice any impulses you have to suppress or push them away.

The purpose of this observation time is not to clear your mind, but instead to watch your mind and body and catch what comes through you.  There is no judgment of these thoughts as “good” or “bad,” but rather an impartial awareness. 

List experiences you are avoiding.

Make a list of any experiences, both internal and external, from which you are trying to stay away.   Maybe it’s an emotion, like anger, that comes with an urge toward violence or lashing out verbally.  Perhaps it’s a belief you have about yourself like, “There must be something wrong with me.  I’m so stupid.”  Maybe it’s an uncomfortable social situation where you tend to feel shame or embarrassment.  Usually, these avoided experiences are those that create some form of pain in your life, whether due to an internal cause or a circumstance outside of yourself.

Identify attempts to control, avoid, or influence painful experiences.

Make a list of behaviors you do to try to control or influence your circumstances, reduce discomfort, and/or avoid pain.  More obvious behaviors are external, such as going for a walk or binge-watching TV.  But also include those behaviors that are internal, such as suppressing thoughts or overanalyzing your emotions.  This list can include both self-destructive or harmful behaviors as well as supportive coping behaviors.

Now ask yourself: do any of these internal or external coping behaviors eliminate pain completely?  Do they make it so that pain will never come back?  Or do they provide only temporary relief within the larger context of life?  Chances are, you’ll find that no behavior can completely erase the experience of pain.

Dig deeper into your behaviors.

Look back at the list you just created and notice patterns of behaviors that help you avoid or control pain.  Ask yourself: what would happen if I did not carry out these behaviors?  What thoughts, feelings, urges, memories, or sensations would be left?  What, in essence, am I avoiding?

Similarly, you might ask yourself what function the behaviors serve.  How do they work for you, and why do you keep going back to them? 

Evaluate the function of your avoidant behaviors.

It is important to acknowledge and validate your process of avoidance so that you don’t begin to shame yourself for your behavioral response.  We will never fully eliminate the urge to control pain with these behaviors, so seek to understand and accept your coping behaviors with kindness and compassion.

One way to recognize a behavior’s function over time is to track the ways in which you avoid pain in the upcoming week. Notice how that goes.  Recognize how different behaviors work or don’t work for you, and notice where avoidance gets in the way of value-based living.

Slow down and acknowledge.

Practice slowing down to acknowledge a painful internal experience.  Use the prompts in the first observation practice to connect to your body and mind as you consider a painful moment.  Can you survive the temporary feeling of pain?  Often we think we can’t handle or survive a painful emotion or experience, but reality tells a different story. 

Then imagine holding that internal experience in your awareness while also doing something that is important to you.  Is it possible to be acting in a way that is in accordance with your values while also feeling pain?  Can you feel a certain way, have a memory resurface, or think a painful thought and still show up how you want in life?  Can you exist and thrive with these thoughts, feelings, urges, sensations, and memories still being present?  Imagine yourself doing so and see what comes up.

Uncovering the Truth About Your Codependence: A Review of Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody

The words “codependency” and “codependent” are becoming more commonly used to describe a person who has an intense drive toward people-pleasing, often to their own detriment.  Increasing numbers of therapists are advertising themselves as experts on codependence, and individuals are self-identifying with the team more readily.  But what does this term mean? 

Pia Mellody, the author of Facing Codependence, defines codependence as a series of symptoms that indicate an intense focus on controlling relationships and a lack of awareness of the self, both of which have likely been perpetuated by abusive situations in the past.  These symptoms include difficulties with, “experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem, setting functional boundaries, owning and expressing their own reality, taking care of their adult needs and wants, and experiencing and expressing their reality moderately.”

While codependence is a common topic in addiction recovery circles, I believe that many people, including addicts, recovering partners, and those without an addiction history may struggle with some forms of codependency perpetuated by their experiences in family-of-origin or even in our culture as a whole.

In Betrayed Partners

Codependence has been used synonymously with “co-addiction,” proposed to be the illness partners of addicts experienced as an addiction to their addicted partner.  Fortunately, there has been a movement away from this labeling, as it can inadvertently blame the betrayed partner for the addict’s behavior.  Yet for many individuals whose behaviors led them to be labeled as “co-addicts,” more subtle forms of codependence were likely at play.  Codependence symptoms such as low self-esteem, difficulty moderating emotions, and trouble maintaining appropriate boundaries can all show up in traumatized partners.

While not all betrayed partners are also codependents, the symptoms associated with codependence can exacerbate the experience of pain and trauma of being betrayed.  The origins of codependence symptoms originate in family-of-origin trauma and painful experiences in childhood.  It may be helpful for partners to explore the symptoms of codependence and discern whether or not they occur and/or have roots in family-of-origin trauma.

In Addicts

Addicts are likely to have codependence as a factor that led them to addiction in the first place.  Often addicts have a history of abuse or trauma, which leads to maladaptive coping through addiction.  In order to deal with the pain of the past trauma, addicts turn to their drug of choice, masking the intolerable reality of the abuse they experienced.  In sex addiction, for example, sexual connection is used to manage this emotional state, which inhibits true intimacy and creates an unhealthy dependence on sexual experiences to feel “okay.” 

Symptoms of codependence that are relevant to addicts include difficulty setting boundaries, inability to meet needs and wants in healthy ways, and difficulty owning and expressing their own reality.  These can show up in deception and denial.  Boundarylessness leads to justification of their actions.  Sometimes self-esteem issues can show up as arrogance or grandiosity instead of low self-esteem, which fuels addictive behavior through entitlement and minimization.

What about you?

Do you struggle with codependency?  Whether you are an addict or betrayed partner, it may be beneficial to review common symptoms of codependency in a codependency assessment or through reading Pia Mellody’s book Facing Codependence. 

Facing Codependence

Pia Mellody’s extensive research in treating codependency, as well as her own experience recovering from it, has equipped her well to share information about codependence and the first steps toward healing.  Facing Codependence includes practical information about the disease and wraps up with where to start in recovery.  It incorporates awareness of how codependence correlates with addictive behaviors, and how recovery programs can help.  She normalizes the experience of codependency through many examples, both personal and clinical.

Often one of the hardest tasks for codependents is facing up to their past.  One element that they find challenging is labeling parents’ or others’ behaviors as “good” or “bad.”  However, Mellody’s facilitates this exploration through encouraging the label of “functional” and “dysfunctional” behaviors instead.  She also addresses misgivings people have about calling their parents to account for their mistakes because they need to defend or minimize their own mistakes with their children.  Instead, Mellody tells codependents that the best gift they can give their children is working their own personal recovery, and that without acknowledging their own hurt, they will be unable to create lasting change in their families.

“In a functional family the members know that EVERYBODY is imperfect.”

— Pia Mellody

While this book doesn’t get into a full recovery program, it does offer some beginning steps and points toward an additional resource Mellody has put out, a companion workbook called Breaking Free.

Why I Recommend This Book

More comprehensive review of symptoms of codependence

As listed earlier, the symptoms of codependence include difficulty with appropriate levels of self-esteem, setting boundaries, owning your own reality, meeting wants and needs appropriately, and expressing reality moderately.  Mellody gives deeper descriptions of these symptoms with in-depth explorations of their consequences and origins.  She also explores experiences that hint at these symptoms, such as high intensity of emotion or complete lack of emotion, as signs of codependence.

Understanding these symptoms can be incredibly normalizing for you, as you explore how they developed and know that you are not alone in facing them.

Includes less-than-nurturing experiences

To further normalize your experience, Mellody broadens the definition of abuse to include any “less-than-nurturing” behavior your family or others may have displayed.  This helps those who haven’t had any serious or extreme abuse understand the presence of their codependence symptoms.  Mellody includes not only signs of overt abuse, but also neglect or other covert abuse behaviors that may have been at play.

For many people, taking a critical look at their family-of-origin and harm they may have experienced is nearly impossible, as they prefer to believe they had a “normal” or “good” childhood.  This is where the language of functional and dysfunctional behaviors comes in handy, rather than labeling them as “good vs. bad” behaviors. 

“...looking at our histories, identifying the specific incidents about which we had our original overwhelming feelings, and finding a way to own and release those feelings can bring freedom from the sabotaging cycle that makes our lives so unmanageable and painful.”

— Pia Mellody

Prepares you to explore your own history

In advance of outlining various types and examples of abuse, Mellody warns the reader about defense mechanisms that arise to protect against facing up to the reality of what happened to us.  Exploring these defense mechanisms first encourages more openness to understanding where your story fits within these categories. 

She names and defines such defenses as denial, minimization, repression, and dissociation and expresses how they protect you from facing the realities of your past.  This prepares you to delve into your own history with awareness of how you might protect yourself against looking at the truth.

Encourages exploration of your story

Mellody describes five different categories of abuse: physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual abuse.  In these chapters, she gives a variety of examples and invites you to consider your own experience in comparison.  She emphasizes the need to explore this history, not as a way to dump all the blame onto your past, but to allow parents or caregivers to be accountable for their actions, as well as encouraging your own accountability for present-day behaviors.

Mellody identifies how these less-than-nurturing experiences have influenced your feelings of shame, motivated by what she calls the “shame core.”  Shame can be helpful in that it reminds us of our imperfections and fallibility.  But when caregivers act in shameful or abusive ways toward children and don’t take accountability for those actions, they can pass along that shame as “carried shame” into children, leading to repetition of abusive patterns.

An interesting claim Mellody asserts is that all abuse is spiritual abuse because of the impact it has on relationship with God, or a Higher Power.  For those who are Christian, this can be an eye-opening experience of why it has been difficult to trust God or believe certain truths about Him.  Also, for those in recovery, it can explain why surrendering to a Higher Power feels impossible.

First steps to recovery

In the last chapter of the book, Mellody lays out some basic, practical tools to get started in your recovery journey.  These early steps include such actions as getting involved in a 12 Step group, finding a sponsor, working the 12 Steps, and finding a counselor with an understanding of codependence.  While this isn’t a comprehensive recovery plan, she does point to the companion workbook Breaking Free to provide a more in-depth approach.

Getting involved in a supportive recovery community and using resources to work through the 12 Steps can help you put action steps into practice that will actually change your experience.  This will allow you to begin to set healthy boundaries, which are essential to recovery from codependency.  Your work in these groups will also encourage and help you to look for ways to re-parent yourself so that you can change the ingrained patterns of thought and behavior from the trauma.

Pia Mellody’s Facing Codependence is a great starting point that I would recommend to identify and begin to explore your own codependence, as well as point you in the direction of some tools and resources to continue on your journey of healing.

Breaking Through Denial: Task 1 in Carnes' 30 Task Model for Addiction Recovery

What do you do after you realize you have a problem with sex and love addiction?  Maybe you’ve been found out by a spouse or significant other, and you know you need to get help.  Perhaps you’ve had legal or financial consequences that put you in a position to make some serious changes.  You may have even begun therapy with a counselor to address your addictive behaviors.  But what does treatment for sex and love addiction look like?

The 30 Task Model

Dr. Patrick Carnes, the pioneer in research and literature on sex addiction, designed his treatment model centered around 30 essential tasks to recovery.  These 30 tasks are broken into three sections: early recovery tasks, long-term recovery tasks (internal and external), and relational/family recovery.  He explores the first seven of these tasks in his workbook Facing the Shadow, while the next set of tasks is outlined in the follow-up books The Recovery Zone 1 & 2.

While all thirty of these tasks need to be addressed during the 3-5 year period of recovery from addiction, they aren’t necessarily completed in order.  You may find yourself working on spirituality (task #30) while you’re in the early stages of learning more about addiction (task #2) and establishing sobriety (task #5).  Or you may find that, several years into your recovery, you need to break through denial (task #1) about a new area of addiction that has replaced your sexual acting out (task #8).  Or while you’re working on your marriage relationship (task #27), you’re also grieving the losses your addiction has created in your marriage (task #12).

The 30 tasks don’t directly correlate with the 12 Steps, they share much of the same DNA.  For example, task #3 (surrender to the process) is very similar to what you’d find in Step 2 and Step 3.  In fact, task #7 (participate in a culture of support) is implemented through involvement in support groups and 12 Step programs.

The 30 Task Model can give you a roadmap to follow in treatment for sex and love addiction.  They can also be a helpful reference point when you’re in the middle of recovery and looking for what’s next or when you find yourself getting off track.  I’ve used them in sessions with clients as a means to define our goals together and as a self-assessment to identify potential areas for continued growth. 

In this series, we’ll take an in-depth look at each of the 30 tasks in Carnes’ model and explore some of his recommended activities (as well as a few of my own) for addressing this task or returning to it later in recovery.  Kavod Psychotherapy created a reference diagram briefly describing each of these 30 tasks.  More information on the tasks can be found in Facing the Shadow, The Recovery Zone series, or the Recovery Start Kit, all created by Dr. Patrick Carnes. 

Task 1: Break Through Denial

The essential starting point for any addict in recovery is the shift in thinking from “I don’t have a problem” or “this isn’t a big deal” into facing the reality of the presence of addiction and its destructive power in your life.

To put the label of “addiction” on your behaviors can be challenging, as we often associate addiction with moral failure or flaws.  Denial allows you to avoid a sense of shame or guilt about these behaviors.  Labeling behaviors as addiction also compels you to change, while denial can justify or minimize the impact of your behaviors.

Often the first call to break through denial comes when a loved one, like a spouse, finds out about your compulsive sexual behaviors.  This often begins the process of therapy and support.  Sometimes you’ve experienced a sense of guilt or being unable to stop that you’ve been aware of, but there isn’t any motivation to make a change until you hit that crisis point. 

Practical Steps for Task 1

Take an addiction-related assessment.

When you begin working with a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT), they’ll typically encourage you to take one of a few different types of assessment to compare your symptoms and behaviors to a norm.

One is a quick inventory that you can take on your own: The Sexual Addiction Screening Test, or SAST.  This compares responses from a non-addicted population to a population of self-reported sex addicts.  This way, you can see whether or not you fall within range of normal behavior or addictive behavior. 

If your scores from the SAST put you in range of addictive behavior, you may be asked by your therapist to take a Sexual Dependency Inventory (SDI).  This is a much more extensive assessment that helps you clarify the form your addiction takes, as well as various additional measures that identify potential roots for the addiction.  Some of the questions for this particular assessment are found in the Facing the Shadow book in Chapter 3, so you can review those on your own if you choose.

Another alternative is to compare your experience of compulsive sexual behaviors with the criteria for addiction listed in the DSM-5.  While there isn’t yet a diagnostic category for sexual addiction in the DSM, you can use the same criteria as alcohol or drug use disorder and simply replace the substance listed in the criteria with compulsive sexual behaviors.

Write out any problems or consequences you’re experiencing.

Make a list of any problems you’re facing in your life, whether they are obviously addiction-related or not.  Often problems seem unrelated to the addiction, but their solutions can be influenced by the time and energy the addiction takes.

Examine your list to identify which of these are either directly caused by or intensified by your compulsive sexual behaviors.  Include not only physical consequences you may have had as a result of the addiction but also emotional and spiritual consequences.

Make a list of the secrets you are keeping and from whom you are keeping them.

Addiction thrives in secrecy.  One major way to break through denial is to identify where that secrecy is taking place.  This deception can be about major things, like hiding your compulsive sexual behaviors for fear of rejection or pain.  But they can also be about minor things, like finding yourself compulsively lying or hiding aspects of who you are as a person.

Take note of these, as well as from whom you’ve been hiding them.  Notice if there is anyone in your life who knows everything.  If not, be curious about why that is.  If you run into a pattern of presenting a different person in different contexts, explore what might be influencing that behavior. 

Recognize the “stinkin’ thinkin’” of addiction.

Denial exists primarily in our minds as a way of interpreting our behaviors and our thoughts.  It can show up as making excuses, minimizing, justifying, feelings of entitlement, blame-shifting, taking on the victim role, and many others.

Begin to recognize the beliefs you have that allow you to continue on in your addiction.  Utilize resources such as this article to identify different types of beliefs that might show up in your denial.

Sometimes these beliefs are so strong that they’re hard to label as denial.  Understanding delusion and self-deception can help make sense of these thoughts and place them into the correct category.

Tell the whole story to someone.

Once you’ve sorted through how denial functions to protect you from facing the reality of your addiction, now you can work against that denial by sharing your story of addiction with a safe and trusted person.  This person could be your therapist, sponsor, pastor or spiritual mentor, or a close friend who has offered understanding and empathy when you’ve talked about difficult things in the past.  It may be helpful to write a letter or narrative to help you express your thoughts and ensure that you are as honest as possible.

Many 12 Step programs encourage you to share this information in your First Step.  You might share parts of your story with a group during a regular meeting or present your First Step as a whole to the group.  Telling another sex and love addict in recovery can be helpful, particularly in a group setting. They will know how and when to challenge you, as they can relate to the experience in a unique way.

Obviously, it can be challenging to work up the courage to share your First Step with the group in a way that feels supportive and kind to yourself. Get connected to a sponsor or other support individual and share with them first before you do so in a more public form.  In the meantime, listen to others’ First Steps to consider what pieces of your story relate to theirs.

Check your story with others.

The way we perceive the world, especially when it comes to our own actions, isn’t always the way others see it.  If you’re wondering about the impact of your behaviors and you feel able or comfortable to do so, ask others.  Similarly, you can observe when others in your group talk about the impact of their addiction on their loved ones and draw connections to how your loved ones may be feeling.

If you are married or in a significant relationship with another person, you may go through a formal disclosure process at some point.  As part of the disclosure, your loved one will read you an impact letter they’ve written that describes how they have felt as a result of your addiction.  This can be a helpful experience to come back to as a reminder of the reality of the pain caused by your behaviors. 

Repeat.

Keep coming back to these components of breaking through denial at each stage of your recovery.  You might find the stinkin’ thinkin’ re-emerges when you’re about to face a new challenge to your sobriety.  At around 6-8 months of sobriety, you may become overconfident and observe some of these denial patterns coming back in again.

Create and add to a list of beliefs that push you into addiction, denial statements, entitlement, and excuse-making statements so you can continue to recognize those thought patterns when they come up.  The more you are able to recognize and be on guard for this denial, the more likely you will be to catch it and redirect into your recovery.

Contact with the Present Moment: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Series

Imagine with me that you’ve been in therapy for a while.  You’ve been addressing the faulty thinking patterns of shame and self-doubt that led you into depression.  Or you’ve been working through panic and crippling fear that propelled you into treatment for anxiety.  Perhaps addiction and its lasting effects on you and your family led you to seek counseling, and you’re beginning to experience healing.  Or you’ve learned strategies to cope with some of the worst of your chronic pain. 

Yet, in spite of these gains you’ve been making, you find that you still get stuck.  Whether you wish you could just make the anxiety go away, or you are hit with triggers of addiction at the most inopportune times, the lasting impact of these experiences might never disappear.  You wonder to yourself, “will I ever just be happy and not have to deal with this anymore?”

Enter the game-changing principles of acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT.  ACT is based around the concept of psychological flexibility: an openness to your present experience that allows you to adapt your response to any circumstance in service of your personal values.  Rather than attempting to change or eliminate negative thoughts or alter emotions, ACT focuses on utilizing mindfulness to recognize and separate who we are from our negative internal experiences (acceptance) and focus instead on implementing value-based actions (commitment).  It acknowledges that suffering is a universal and inevitable reality, and the goal of “being happy” isn’t always realistic to life.

Often where we get stuck in our work through varied mental health and life struggles is wishing they would disappear entirely.  But when that is not an option, ACT provides another path that can enrich and deepen your life.

In this series, we’ll be covering the six components of psychological flexibility that make up the foundation of ACT.  These include contact with the present moment, acceptance, defusion, values, self as context, and committed action. 

Contact with the Present Moment

Consider the thoughts you’ve had in the past hour.  How many of them have been about something that’s coming up in the future?  What about past experiences and events?  Or have any of them been focused on what’s happening right now?

The majority of our thoughts are focused on recalling past events or planning for the future, rather than being in the present.  Therefore, we don’t accurately observe what we’re experiencing in the moment.  Our lack of connection to present experience causes us to feel confused when we react in a way we don’t expect to certain situations.  We don’t often understand the cause and effect of our actions because we are distracted by our thoughts.

Contact with the present moment requires you to “be here now.”  Be present with your thoughts.  Be aware of what is happening in your body.  Notice the sensations you feel, the ways in which your five senses are interacting with the world around you.  Be conscious of your emotional landscape.  In essence, this component invites you to bring attention to your current experience without the filter of your thoughts and judgments. 

Principles

Nonjudgmental awareness

What does it mean to bring attention to your experience without a filter?  It requires you to contextualize your emotions, sensations, thoughts, and urges as data of which to take note, rather than interpreting those events with certain labels or assumptions.

We tend toward these judgments naturally.  Have you ever had thoughts like, “This is bad,” “I am stupid,” or “That would be perfect”?  Most commonly, we label things as “good” or “bad.”  For example, you might feel excitement about an upcoming event and label that experience as “good,” but fear about driving through rush hour traffic is labeled as “bad.”  On the way, a car could cut you off in traffic, and you automatically have a negative thought about someone else, label the thought as “bad,” and become angry with yourself for having that thought. 

Instead of jumping to judge, this component encourages you to approach those thoughts and emotions differently.  Notice what happens and occurs in your body instead of instantly moving to label or assume something about yourself or someone else.

Let go of the “why”

We often seek to make meaning out of our experiences, whether consciously or not.  We have a natural tendency to try to figure out why things work the way we do, including our minds and our bodies.  However, that can sometimes backfire and prove unhelpful, particularly in situations that have many factors outside of your control.

Attempting to find the meaning behind an accident or sudden death can keep you stuck in pain much longer than is needed.  Similarly, wondering why you’ve been hit with chronic pain or illness simply intensifies the experience.  Staying with the present moment and experience without venturing into the “why” of it is another way to prevent losing contact with the present.

Mindfulness as an access point

Mindful awareness in ACT is intended to help you come to know and understand yourself more fully.  The purpose of mindfulness here, moreso than relaxation, is to recognize our minds, feelings, urges, body sensations, and experiences in a way that helps us come to terms with our reality.  Mindfulness is not emptying the mind, controlling the mind, or focusing concentration. Mindfulness can happen even if you aren’t sitting still or you struggle to focus on your body.  Any moment can provide an opportunity to check in and become more aware of your internal landscape.

There is no right or wrong way to approach mindfulness.  In fact, the way in which we approach mindful awareness can often teach us something about how we are living our lives and the challenges we experience.  Have trouble connecting with your body? That’s a piece of data you can take away and learn about yourself.  Find yourself falling asleep when you try to do a mindful breathing exercise? That could hint at some clues about your pace of life or your needs for sleep.  Let the process of mindfulness be another source of learning about yourself.

Practices

Create intentional space for mindful awareness

In your busy day, you might find it difficult to devote an extended period of time to a guided meditation or mindfulness exercise.  Instead, look for opportunities to create a moment or two where you pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and experiences in the present moment in a different manner than you would normally.  I’ve written previous articles about quick meditations or simple grounding exercises that may provide helpful strategies or ideas to implement this.

Use formal or informal practice

You might be someone who is well served by setting aside a specific time each day for a mindfulness meditation or grounding exercise, like those listed in the article above.  If that describes you, find a time in your day where you can slot 10-15 minutes to sit quietly, breathe, and bring awareness to your internal experience.  Meditation apps like Headspace or Calm may help you if guidance would feel supportive.

But what if you don’t have the time to set aside for mindfulness meditation?  Remember what we discussed earlier – you can be mindful at any moment throughout your day.  Bring awareness to the warm water on your hands and the smell of dish soap as you wash the dishes.  Notice the thoughts that are running through your mind while you’re out for a walk.  Pay attention to the feelings that arise in you while you’re having a conversation with your spouse or a friend.  Any moment can be a mindful moment if you choose to bring present awareness to your thoughts, emotions, sensations, and urges.

Build in a daily pause

Create a time each day where you can slow down and observe or describe your experiences.  This might be first thing in the morning before you hop out of bed or as you prepare to fall asleep.  You may want to set an alarm for some point during the day as a reminder to check in with your internal experience.  Focus on what’s happening, rather than interpreting what is happening through a label of judgment.  What’s more important for you is the growing awareness of what is happening internally, not the mind’s interpretation of what is happening.

Make it work for you

Don’t allow someone to tell you, “you need to meditate every day for 15 minutes or else you’re doing it wrong.”  As mentioned earlier, there is no right or wrong way to be mindful!  Adapt what works for your circumstances at this point in your life.  Allow for flexibility as you seek to connect more with the present moment, and let go of any rigid expectations or needs for the time.  Often you’ll find that it’s challenging to become aware of the present moment, or your experience doesn’t go how you would expect.  Resist the urge to label that as a “bad” experience and instead remember that it is all normal, part of the learning process, and also providing you with helpful information about yourself.

Keep an eye out in future weeks as we continue to explore the different components of psychological flexibility found in ACT that can help you get unstuck in your healing process.