Tag: Counseling for Depression

How to be OK even when everything else is not

by Nathan Chua

Multiple deadlines, challenges at home and at work, you’re about to lose your job, someone in the family has a serious ailment, pressure is coming from all sides…life happens and is coming at you like a savage beast hungry for a fight to the death!  These are the times when people come to see me.  The world has turned against my clients and there seems to be nothing they can do that has succeeded in changing anything.  In fact, the more they try the worse the outcomes become!

It is also during these moments that our minds go on overdrive, drilling judgmental thought after judgmental thought into our consciousness.  The key here is to reach a level of awareness of what is within or outside our control.  If you ever wondered what it is that makes us feel that we are living ineffectual lives, it is our misdirected efforts to control that which is not subject to control.  

Just be the human being that we had become through billions of years of evolution!  We have an assortment of wonderful tools inside our nervous system.  Turning against these evolved functions, is like working against gravity.

Ultimately, what happens to us in life is not within our control, but our responses are.  The goal of psychology as a field of scientific study is to bring to bear what it is that makes us live ineffectually and then find ways to change or interrupt that process to get us moving towards a different, more effectual, and more life-enhancing direction.  So it really does not matter as much what happens to us, as how we face them.  How we handle ourselves in those moments is where we can bridge the gap between what we are and what we aspire to be.

The question we could keep in mind is, “Did we handle it well?”  Here’s a paraphrase of Dr. Darin Cairns words reminding us that we can be okay even when everything around us tells us we’re not.   

“I can’t promise you everyone’s going to like you.

I can’t promise you that people will always know you exist.

I can promise you this, if you like you at that time, if you liked how you lived it, then you’ll like that you were true to what you believed in.

That you liked how you handled yourself in terms of whatever you value, then you’re always ok.

You’re ok when you’re popular, you’re ok when you’re alone, you’re ok after a breakup, you’re ok when you’re scared to death, and you’re ok when you’re hurting. 

You don’t have to stand tall but you do have to stand up.  You don’t have to think that you’re better than anyone, you don’t have to have anyone praise you, but you do have to be willing to exist for you.”

So to you my friend, I can say that no matter how dire your circumstances are at this moment, take a look at yourself ahead of you by a year or so, and ask yourself, “Would your future you like how you, the present you, handled the situation?”  I hope that brings you back in touch with what truly matters for you in each and every moment that comes.  No matter how not okay these moments can get, you can be okay knowing you stood up for you! 

Listen to the podcast version of this post on Spotify! Click here! 

Coping With Covid

by Nathan Chua

It is hard to imagine how all of us have suffered through this pandemic for so long.  None of us, except for a few elite scientists, could have known that this would happen in our lifetime.  This situation has probably sent you through a whole gamut of difficult thoughts and feelings.  From struggles with anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, relationships, boredom, and more; they are all understandable in these times.  

Some of us may be saying, look what Covid has done to me?  I’ve become more irritable, less tolerant, depressed, anxious, angry, and many more.  You are not alone.  You share these thoughts and feelings with anyone who has had a brush with all that this pandemic has been inflicting on us for over a year now.

The key here is to know what is within or outside our control.  With difficult situations come difficult thoughts and emotions, and sometimes it could be difficult relationships as well.  Unfortunately, it is often that we find ourselves judging all of these as unwanted, unnecessary, and even harmful to us.  We can’t be blamed for having these judgmental thoughts.  In today’s “success equals feel good and happy” society, there is really nothing much that can explain why we feel miserable, except that there’s probably something wrong with us.  We are defective in some ways compared to others.  They all seem well put together and coping well in spite of everything.  

You and I have minds that are quick to judge ourselves especially when times are rough.  This is the hardware that we come with.  The depression comes when we buy into the idea that we have something to do with the quality of our thoughts.  We measure our sanity against the seemingly pristine and peaceful minds we see in TV ads, social media, and the gigantic, right on top of us, billboards.  Eventually we discover how futile our attempts to suppress unwanted thoughts are, and begin to have a sense of powerlessness and of being ineffectual.  We fight with the constant murmurs of our minds and get caught up in this struggle.  Here’s the secret sauce, “Give it up!”  It doesn’t matter how many pills or distracting activities we do, let’s come to an acceptance that our minds are simply wired that way.  Next thing we do?    

Commit to doing things that tally well with what we want to do with our limited time on this planet, and more so, with our short, precious moments with those who matter to us.  Take these thoughts and feelings and bring them for the ride of our choosing.  Come back to what truly matters to us with all the unwanted chatter!  Be present with our kids even if our minds continue to remind us of that upcoming mortgage payment.  Be kind and loving even as we feel frustrated with how people around the house are acting.  Act calmly even if we aren’t feeling calm.  We can do it if we are willing to do the hard work, because in the end, it only matters what we have done, not what thoughts and feelings we struggled with in our heads.   

ACT for Trauma Certificate of Completion

Having been trained in psychodynamic therapy, helping trauma clients from a behavioral lens was unimaginable for me as a graduate student. With the use of the inner child, memory and exposure work, it turns out that the two approaches share much in common. From an ACT or behavioral, and scientific perspective however, I have learned the rationale behind such practices, and how our nervous system works to produce the kind of ineffective responses people have towards traumatic experiences. It was difficult having done this together with the ACT for Adolescents course, but it was well worth the effort. I consider it a privilege to be around in an era where people like Dr. Russ Harris, a best-selling author and renowned ACT therapist, are able to share their knowledge and expertise from thousands of miles away! I eagerly look forward to more courses in ACT, Relational Frame Theory, and Functional Contextualism.

An Empowering Kind of Forgiveness

by Nathan Chua

As we live in a predominantly Christian country, forgiveness can take on a lot of meanings.  You and I have heard numerous recommendations from well-meaning friends, relatives, clergy, and even mental health practitioners about the necessity of forgiveness in order for us to live richer, more purposeful lives.  The edict to forgive at all times however, has the unintended consequence of pouring guilt on the victim for not being ready to forgive.  Not only is it hard to forgive people who have caused us great harm through abuse, neglect, or abandonment, people around us make quick judgments on our choices.

Having received my education from Roman Catholic and protestant institutions, I have had my share of confusion and guilt over such matters.  Does it mean I have to forgive everyone at all times?  Am I going against my own values for not wanting to forgive?  Is it inimical to my own peace of mind if I refuse to offer forgiveness?  Is forgiveness about forgetting also?  I know, cliche!  However, they linger and perhaps for some, even haunting!

It was a long search, but I believe I have finally found something that corresponds to my personal experience with forgiveness.  The ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) take on forgiveness stems from the etymology of the word, “forgive.”  To forgive means to give ourselves what came before.  Using this perspective, it is easy to see how we can liberate ourselves from our own resentments about past hurts.  Playing the blame game for how our lives are, can be distressing and disempowering.  Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves.  We can be who we were before the harm was done even as we hold our offenders accountable.  

There is more good news!  I know many of you reading this have some interest in the subject because you have yet to forgive at least one person in your life.  As yet, there is no science that indicates forgiving our offenders is beneficial to our psychological well-being.  Forgiving someone who has deeply wronged us is not a precursor to living a meaningful and values-based life.    

I hope this helps especially those who have suffered terribly in the hands of an abuser.  It is liberating and it protects us from the victim-blaming culture that pervades.  You are not alone. 

Did you like you in your moments?

by Nathan Chua

Most people come to therapy with goals that have to do with being in control of their emotions and also hoping to get some assurance from an old and wise person that they are doing the “right” thing.  Some of these goals are like, “I want to feel more confident.”  “I want to get rid of this depression so I can do things that I have been wanting to do but can’t.”  “I want to know if I am making the right decisions with regard to my relationships.”  Unfortunately, all of these are not within our control and the more we try to do so, the more ineffectual and undesirable we feel about ourselves.

You are not alone.  I had long thought that psychotherapy and counseling were about achieving the goals mentioned above.  After all, who wouldn’t want to make all the right decisions all the time?  Who wants to feel anxious and have the people around them see their trembling hands?  Who wouldn’t want to feel happy once they figured all of these out?  I am the problem that should be fixed!  Who wouldn’t want to be the smiling faces you see in the billboard ads?

Unfortunately, that is a difficult if not impossible task.  No one alive can control emotions, thoughts, and outcomes.  Only the dead can shut out feelings and thoughts and inevitably get the same results…nothing.  Moreover, unless you suffer a major head injury, your mind is going to work up those thoughts and feelings multiple times every day.  No matter how hard we try we can’t control our thoughts and emotions; and we most certainly cannot control the results of our efforts.  

Here’s a paraphrase of Darin Cairns’ words, a therapist from Australia working with a client who has resorted to avoiding difficult thoughts and feelings by not engaging with others.  He said this as he made his client realize the futility of his control agenda.

“I am not gonna promise you this [moving towards relationships] is not gonna hurt.  In fact, I am gonna promise you it will hurt.  I have no intention of making you happy.  I’d like to help you have a meaningful life so that you can have all the feelings you want, because I don’t know about you but that sounds like an awesome outcome, compared to just being happy.  If you want to be happy all the time, first of all you can’t do it, but if you do achieve something like it, we call it mania and we’d lock you up.”

Not everything that makes our lives purposeful and meaningful is about pursuing happiness and avoiding difficult feelings.  Additionally, if we only did the things that we knew would have guaranteed results, think about how many of the things you would love to do, just does not present such outcomes.  

I loved playing basketball when I was younger and I still love it now as a fan.  Playing the game is not all fun.  In fact, there will be anxious moments, times when you don’t like what your teammates are doing, and boring practices.  It’s a microcosm of life.  We play the game of life knowing we will come across anxious moments in the pursuit of what we want.  We won’t be smiling all the time, but it sure beats watching funny movies all day just to feel happy.  Like it or not, we enjoy doing hard stuff, not just happy stuff!  

Many times our thoughts and feelings get in the way of us pursuing the things that we know will make our lives more meaningful.  That job you’ve always wanted, that business you’ve dreamed of starting for so long, that date you always wanted to have with this person you met at your local fellowship group, and many more, are some examples of what can be scary but ultimately life-giving.  Like a basketball player, you don’t know if you’d one day become a champion or just win the neighborhood pick up game.  You don’t know if that date will say yes or no.  You don’t know if you will get the job or that the business will succeed.  But can you take all that uncertainty and anxiety with you in pursuit of something that’s truly important to you?

So the question is, will you take whatever these feelings are and still pursue what you want?  Are these hopes and dreams worth the anxious moments, the sweaty palms, and racing heart rates?  Are you willing to feel everything that comes with going for your best hopes for your life?  Are you going to play the game regardless of the possibility that you would lose?  

I learned this from Darin Cairns.  It is not really about what the other people think about what you did or how well you did in the pursuit of something important, but how much you liked yourself as you did them.  Did you like you in those moments as you pursued being you?  You’d probably be surprised, because you’ll see from hindsight, that the times when you were most proud of yourself, weren’t really the happiest times at all.  In fact, they were the most difficult and trying of times; and you probably liked the way you went through them.  You liked you in those moments…and that was all that mattered, regardless of what you felt and what results you might have or have not gotten!

The Chess Game In Our Heads

by Nathan Chua

One of the awesome features of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)  is the use of metaphors that makes counseling work more experiential and interesting.  One that has recently become my favorite is how an ACT therapist, Chris McCurry, uses the chess metaphor so effectively.  Here’s how I remember some of the ways he describes the chess game and how it is similar to the way our minds work.

Our minds have different thoughts with varying degrees of importance and likeability.  Some are quite important while others are part of our mundane thoughts, like our plans to go grocery-shopping for the day.  The important ones can refer to our sense of meaning and purpose, our thoughts about how we can face life’s tragic aspects, or our important relationships that require our attention.  Now, as chess is a game of two sides of a battle, one side can represent our more positive thoughts while the other will be our negative ones.  In McCurry’s illustration, he says that even if we feel like the positive side may have the upper hand at any given moment, there will always be at least one piece of the negative side that remains.  We can attest to this fact simply by checking in with our personal experiences.  How many times have we enjoyed a vacation and said we don’t have any single negative thought in mind?  Probably not!  If you are married, did you do so with nary a negative thought?  On the other hand, how many times have you been caught up in negative thoughts and still have that little tiny voice inside you that says: You’re alright, don’t worry!  As you can see, neither one can totally eliminate the other.  

In Russ Harris’ version of the chess metaphor for the mind, he shares that each white piece actually generates a black piece and vice versa.  Positive thoughts remind us of our negative ones!  You can test this with your own experience.  See what you sense if someone like me told you that you are the nicest kindest person on the planet!  See what your mind does with that information.  I can also start with a negative judgment.  You are the worst most unlikeable person on the planet!  See what you mind does with that too.  

Did you sense that in the former your mind tells you:  Hogwash!  I am a kind person but certainly not all the time or not compared to everyone else?  On the other hand, did your mind do the same opposite-thinking while hearing me tell you that you are the worst person on the living earth!  Your mind may say something that goes like this:  Yeah, you’re right, sometimes I do feel that way, but that can’t be right all the time!

As you can see in these illustrations that there are no winners in this game that we play in our minds.  It is unwinnable as McCurry describes it.  So it is hopeless trying to be the positive pieces in this war in our heads.  The negative pieces just aren’t leaving for as long as we are alive and with our nervous systems functioning as they are as I write and as you read this post.

The question now is:  Then who could we be in this chess game so that we can get out of this war and move on with our lives?  The answer is the chessboard!  We are the containers of these thoughts but we are not them!  And being the containers, we don’t really need to care who wins or loses in this game.  We can remain as witnesses to this war!  

If you are able to write down your thoughts, then this is a practice in metacognition!  Noticing your thoughts and noticing that you are noticing them!  That’s a part of you that notices everything that goes on in your life!  And with this capacity, we can then choose the particular course of action that is most effective for what is unfolding in front of us!

Furthermore, I love that Chris McCurry also uses the chess game to illustrate life and its tragic elements.  As we play the game, we will eventually lose pieces as we go through it.  The object of the game is to keep playing with the pieces you have left.  This is a bigger metaphor actually of not just our minds but of life itself.  If we live long enough, we will experience the bitter sweetness that life presents.  As Steven Hayes, the developer of ACT writes in his best-selling book, 

“You have only so much time on this earth, and you don’t know how much.  The question “Are you going to live, knowing you will die?” is not fundamentally different than these questions:  “Are you going to love, knowing you will be hurt?” Or, “Are you going to commit to living a valued life knowing you will sometimes not meet your commitments?” Or, “Will you reach for success knowing you will sometimes fail.”  The potential for pain and the sense of vitality you gain from these experiences go together.  If your life is truly going to be about something, it helps to look at it from the perspective of what you would want the path your life leaves behind to mean.”    

Life gives us but one chance and it doesn’t come without moments when we have to say goodbye to our youth, old friends, and loved ones.  Like the game of chess, let’s make the most of what we have at present and live our One Life Only as well as we can. 

How language can affect your mental health

by Nathan Chua

Ah, the functions of language!  Until recent years, I have never thought about how language played a role in our ability to sustain our mental health.  As the theory behind this new approach that I am using is framed upon language and how we use it, I would like to introduce you to a few terms that we use in a way that can cause us to experience unnecessary depression, excess anxiety, and even attempts at suicide!

The first expression we use quite a lot in the field of counseling is the word, “healing.”  I remember in the years I spent in graduate school, this word was used quite liberally.  In fact, there was even a book that had, as part of its title, the words, “wounded healer.”  Healing though connotes the idea that we are somehow broken and that we need to be put together like a puzzle or a broken vase in a clinical setting.  

Reality though would tell us that this can be nothing more than a figure of speech that at the least, could be considered unhelpful.  Because nothing inside of us is really broken.  It is rather a form of learning to resort to certain strategies that provide instant relief from emotional pain that end up unproductive and futile; and thereby rendering us feeling more ineffectual and deserving of our sad fate.  We are whole and complete.  What we suffer when we are said to be having some psychological problems is that of being stuck in a pattern of behaviors that do not serve our best interests.

The next phrase or term I have learned to be used in unhelpful fashions is the idea that comes from stories of people who supposedly went from being dead to surviving a coma. It is often said that they see a great white light and felt immense peace!  Attempts at suicide are basically logical responses to removing the difficult feelings brought on by our attempts at living what comes as meaningful to us.  It is better to die, since one:  it will remove the painful emotions we experience from our pursuits for meaning and purpose, and two:  there will be unimaginable bliss thereafter.  Unfortunately, allow me to paraphrase an expert in behavioral analysis who said in jest that there has so far been no one on record to have answered a survey from death that talks about how much better it is on that side.

The last term for this post is the word, confidence.  We often combine this with the word, “feel.”  This means that confidence is a feeling that we need to achieve in order to do something of significance.  As Dr. Steven Hayes likes to use etymologies in his work, the word actually means having full trust or faith in Latin.  We have somehow in our modern usage of the term used it to mean that it is something we feel rather than something we do.  We can still put our full faith in ourselves even as we feel anxious about doing a certain task. 

Remember that the best way to live is to focus on what we do rather than what we feel, because there is the possibility of redemption in the former.  Our feelings are subject to change and outside of our control.  If we hang our hats on them, we will find ourselves stuck in a cycle of frustration, and eventually see ourselves as broken vessels that need to be pieced together, or brought to a place where we choose to end it all permanently for temporary relief from the varied emotions we experience that come with truly living.

Pursuing the Happy Life

by Nathan Chua

When you raise your head to look ahead as you traverse the busiest streets of Manila, there will undoubtedly be dozens of billboards craning for your attention as you look into the distance and survey the sea of traffic ahead of you.  It sort of is a means to break the monotony of tail lights shimmering about several kilometers ahead.  Lots of cheery faces showing you how much more you can grab out of life if only you had that new car, home, outfit, hairstyle, and yes, even that new loan!  Yeah, that is the good life, the feel good life!

Positivity has become the antidote to much of what we experience in life as trials and misfortunes.  We can always just think about positive things and all will be alright as far as our internal mechanisms are concerned.  

Just recently heard Dr. Steven Hayes in one of his podcast interviews talk about the futility of this approach to life’s realities.  Once again he uses an interesting comparison of this “feel only the good” agenda to just wanting our fingers to feel things that we like.  Unfortunately, that is only doable if we totally remove the sense of touch from our fingers.  There is no way to teach our fingers to just feel the good ones and not the bad ones.  If you feel the soft touch of your pillow at night, you will also feel the roughness of sandpaper as you work on some cleaning project at home.  Removing what we dislike can only be done if we remove all the sensations our fingers can feel.  

It’s a pretty apt metaphor for not wanting to feel unpleasant emotions.  Our minds and our nervous systems come with the ability to experience both sides of the spectrum.  If we constantly wish to run away from difficult thoughts and feelings, we will also end up unable to feel pleasant emotions.  If we numb ourselves from feeling difficult emotions, we also by default have to remove ourselves from feeling the opposite.    

Because of the constant barrage of information we get saying that, the meaningful life ought to make us feel good, we lose touch with what is truly important to us.  Maybe that very thing that you have been looking for to find meaning in your life is really contained in some activity that you wish you could do, if only your mind would stop telling you that it’s too hard!  Forget about it, you will end up just getting hurt.  

Maybe it is in that project you wished you could start because it is where you lose consciousness of time when you engage in doing it.  But you are afraid that you will end up being a laughing stock to your friends and family if you did.  Maybe it’s in that dating life that you wish you can resume after a painful divorce.  But your mind tells you, you better not, because it will hurt even more.  Maybe it is taking that step to talk to your child about something you wish he or she can see from your perspective.  But your mind tells you, you will just end up spoiling your kid and surrendering some of that power you have over him or her.  

All of these yearnings point to what truly matters to us and the existential anxiety we have about how we spend our time as we remain alive and conscious.  If it is important for you to have that career, then you will feel anxious pursuing it.  If it is important for you to have a good relationship, then you will feel terrified by the idea of meeting new people for romantic reasons.  If it is important for you to be loving to your child, then you will feel like you’re walking on eggshells raising one.  

As an old ACT saying goes, we care where we hurt and we hurt where we care.  Anything that is worth pursuing in life will hurt because we care about them.  It won’t always be happy.  There is no guarantee unfortunately.  The only thing that is sure is that if you pursue a life that matters rather than a life that’s happy, you will then know what it means to live meaningfully.  As one 19th century sage put it, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”     

Sunset Mode of Mind

by Nathan Chua

Happiness, contentment, gratitude, a look on the bright side.  These are just some of the terms that we throw around a lot like an old ad slogan, but find eternally elusive.  

I remember a former philosophy professor write this on the board once, “Humans are insatiable beings.”  I have pondered on this truth for so long but have long wondered what the reason for this is.  I am now beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel in my long search for an explanation.  Maybe science has found the answer, the behavioral sciences that is.  

As far as this area of study is concerned, the culprit is really our human minds.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not here to say how stupid our minds can get.  In reality, our minds are wonderful!  Without them we would not be where we are now as a species.  We’d be subject to what other species experience on a daily basis that we can only imagine in movies which depict our prehistoric existence. 

Pardon my writing nowadays as I adjust to talking more like a scientist than before when humanistic language came very easily to me.  So help me out here, I am struggling trying to get a more scientific message across.  Nonetheless, it is my hope that my blog remains as inspiring to you as it is for me to write my thoughts and share them with you, my visitors and subscribers.

I digress!

So here’s what our minds are very good at doing.  Our minds are judgmental machines.  They can churn out all kinds of criticisms anytime, anywhere.  You can try this at home.  Pick any object in your room wherever you may be (you can even be at a friend’s house, but just do this quietly in your head for your sake and your friendship’s!).  Now try to see everything that’s wrong with it.  Go ahead, try it.  When you’re done, do it twice more on two different objects you see in the room.  

If you’re like most everyone else, you would probably notice that your mind can really do a great job of this.  It gets better as you move from one object to another.  Do you see now what I am driving at?  That’s your friend Mind’s forte!

Ever noticed how some of the most successful, famous, and wildly attractive people in the world can’t seem to get to a point where they can say, “Hey, this is great!  I am happy where I am at!”  You would have probably noticed that in yourself too.  Look back about five years ago and think of the things you have now that you wished you had then.  Remember how unsatisfied you were with what you had and where you were at?  If you have been losing some stuff you used to enjoy, then it becomes all the more easier to let your mind go and tell you how much more stuff you still need.

That in a nutshell is what our minds do.  It’s natural and it also is the secret to why humans dominate the earth.  So don’t worry or don’t fret if you feel like a selfish person for thinking that you don’t have enough.  It is your mind, mind you, that’s doing it for you.  It thinks it is doing you a service by keeping you thinking about what you could be missing or what could go wrong when you’re missing what you’re missing.

But what you can learn here that your mind cannot get, is that you are a human being that is capable of noticing what your mind is doing.  All those judgmental critical thoughts of who you are and what you’ve accomplished are just part of the deal of being a human with a brain.  The key here is to know when it’s happening and make a pivot or shift towards what life has to offer in the moment.  For this moment is all we really have.  Neither can we change the past nor control our future.  It is this moment that we can change and we can control!  

It is that mode of mind that tells you you are watching the sun go down, and you look with wonder and surprise at how wonderful it can be.  You know, that sunset mode of mind, like the title of this blogpost?  I betcha you can’t appreciate the sunset and do the exercise we just did in this post!  I don’t think so!  For who wants to see the sunset and figure out what’s wrong with it?  Not me, and I guess neither do you.  

And guess what, science has come full circle to an old eastern tradition of being mindful.  The answer was found in the future, in the form of science that has gone to the past to find the answer!

Mindfulness gets us into that sunset mode of mind…everyday!  Do it while you’re brushing your teeth or walking around your neighborhood…and see how great it is to be alive just by being more present, more conscious, and more aware!  

Until the next (more scientific) blogpost.  See ya!  

Mind Rules

by Nathan Chua

Don’t touch that!  Don’t go there or you’ll hurt yourself!  These are just some of the rules that anyone who grows old enough will learn perhaps during the early childhood stages.  Such rules are important to ensure our safety and survival.  It is precisely this capability that allows us to not always have to rely on our experience to know that something can threaten our physical safety.  This has made us as a species such a success.  In fact, so successful that we dominate the planet!  Ever wondered why such helpless beings as we, with no enlarged fangs or sharp claws, can keep menacing predators away?  We have built cities to surround us and keep us away from such threats.  Otherwise we’d be dinner for some of them!

These rules however, only work when we are dealing with computer problems, external threats of a physical nature, and when we want to fix a leak in the house.  Our minds are pretty useful when it comes to such problems.  Unfortunately, our minds are also unable to discern when these rules are handy, and when they are less helpful or even unhelpful.  In ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) linggo we call this phenomenon fusion.  It is when we fuse with our thoughts that we run into trouble.  Fusing means we either fight away these thoughts or we follow what these thoughts say we should do.  

In the first nine years of working in this field, I can see the parallels between this perspective and my work regarding emotions.  We need to be able to feel our emotions because they can serve as a guide for better living.  From a cognitive behavioral standpoint, it gives us another angle from which to view such phenomena.  Why do we explode in anger?  Or shrink our lives into depression and anxiety?  Where have we learned this strategy that the best way to live our lives is to shirk our unpleasant emotions and grab on to the pleasant ones.  The rule states that emotions are bad for your health; get rid of bad feelings.

Here are some ways that we fuse with our thoughts about emotions.  We fuse with the idea that some emotions are bad and that they need to be eradicated.  Feeling good is not a valued outcome in life.  There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to feel good, but our emotions shift constantly throughout the day.  Having that feel good target in our lives can only lead to one frustration over another.  

And because we have these evaluations about our feelings, we also derive a new rule that tells us that feelings can become causes of our behavior.  As children, it was quite normal for parents to believe that being able to predict their child’s feelings meant having more control of the child’s behavior.  They would not want the child to be angry because anger normally leads to physical altercations.  

Sadly the rule that some feelings are bad or that some feelings can cause us to do something bad takes its roots from here.  The results of such rule-based decisions about our behavior can be constricting to life.  Here are some examples:  

  • I need to feel confident before I can mingle with the people in this party.
  • I can’t exercise if I feel lazy.
  • I feel depressed so I have to go get some comfort food.

Dr. Russ Harris has a great example of how we can actually see that these rules aren’t true, and even if they were true, they’re not helping us live the lives we are aiming for.  If someone pointed a gun at you and told you that you should not feel anxious, how successful do you think you may be?  But if someone did the same thing to you and told you to sing and dance while a gun is pointed at your head, you’d probably be more successful.

So next time your mind gives you these thoughts that somehow you should get rid of “bad” feelings first before you can get on with your life, stop for a moment and see how helpful or unhelpful this thought is.  Are your feelings stopping you from applying for that promotion?  Are your feelings stopping you from calling that person you want to date?  Are your feelings telling you that you’re a loser when it comes to losing weight?

The key here is to learn how to handle such difficult feelings that come with life’s challenges, more effectively.  We normally do great when things are going well in our lives.  It is when we encounter the harsh realities of life that living our lives the way we want to, becomes a challenge.