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When dealing with all the thoughts and feelings that go with anxiety, it is not unusual to try and avoid them. In fact, from the perspective of the thinking part of your mind, this makes sense. After all, who wants to have these disturbing thoughts and feelings? So we come up with all kinds of strategies to avoid them. In his book, ACT Made Simple, Dr. Russ Harris gives you a way to identify the different ways you try to avoid your anxiety.
Memories are the result of our minds and bodies processing and integrating information. Events happen and they find a place in us. This is true for events that are frightening and threatening. Just like the body goes into action to heal a physical wound, this processing and integrating helps us make sense of the fear and the threat so that it does not overwhelm us and allows us to choose a response.
There are two challenges for a person who has experienced a traumatic event. The first thing you have to do, of course, is survive the trauma. Fortunately, your mind and body have built-in systems to help you survive trauma. These are your fight/flight/freeze responses. A traumatic event involves two elements. First, there is the situation that creates a great deal of fear and stress. Second, there is the inability to escape the situation. When this happens, your fight/flight/freeze responses allow you to survive what is happening.
Thoughts and feelings can come and go; they can be all over the place. But this observing self allows you to feel the difference between this thought or feeling, these actions, and YOU. From the place of the observing self, you have enough flexibility to choose how you want to be in any situation, in the presence of any thought or feeling, no matter how distressing it might be.
It is easy to become so fused with thoughts like “I am shy” or “I am unloved.” You don’t even notice it happens. And yet, every time you say, “I am…,” you become what comes after the “I am.” So if you say “I am anxious” or “I am worried,” it is like you are saying something about your essential self, instead of something that is happening to you. But the truth is thoughts and feelings are a part of you. But they are not YOU.
It is easy for problems like anxiety to push us around. That is hard to admit; in fact, you may resist the idea. But it really can happen. It can begin the moment you start to feel the anxiety. The world around you says that anxiety is not a good thing. It tells you that the presence of anxiety is a problem, and it might even suggest that you are a problem for having it.
In the 1998 movie, Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a young Englishwoman living in London who has just been fired from her public relations job. The plot of the movie splits into two parallel universes, based on the two paths her life could take depending on whether she catches a London Underground train or not. The two paths are vastly different.
Stories are the way we make meaning. Who am I and how will I be in the world? The answers to those questions come in the form of stories. Let’s imagine we are at a party. When you ask me who I am, I don’t respond by saying, “I am a 66-year-old white male, 5’11’’, with a thin frame, and salt and pepper colored hair.” I would probably share something like this, “My name is Gary. I have lived in this area for 17 years; originally, I am from Mississippi. I enjoy working out and playing golf.” In other words, I tell you a rudimentary story…and you would do the same.
In an earlier blog, I described the problem of living on autopilot and how it can contribute to depression (Depression and Living on Autopilot). Autopilot is going through the motions of life with limited awareness or intentionality. Now there is a way that autopilot is a good thing; it allows you to build rhythms and routines in your life. But these routines can become ruts. These habitual behaviors dominate each day, and it is easy to end up filling your life with activities that have little or no connection to your values. Or at least you don’t see how they can be connected to giving your life meaning.
The couple sitting before me was clearly distressed. I had been working with them for several sessions, and they had done some good work on their relationship, so they were able to tell me the story of their struggle. The husband reported that he came in from work; his wife was already home sitting at the kitchen table. He said that he walked by her own the way to the bedroom and greeted her; she said nothing.
