One of the excerpts from the Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety:
Choose a New Approach to Get a Different Outcome
Your life is a sacred journey. And it is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path . . . exactly where you are meant to be right now. . . . And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love. —Caroline Adams
This chapter is about preparing the way for something new in your life. As much as we hate to admit it, we know that to get a different outcome we need to change what we are doing now. This is a good mantra we use in our own personal lives. The mantra (based on Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999) goes something like this:
"If I continue to do what I’ve always done, then I’m going to get what I’ve always got."
Write it down and keep it with you as you work with the material in this book.
YOU HAVE CHOICES
Here’s the good news: you can choose a new approach to get a different outcome in your life. This new approach is what you’ll get in this workbook. You’ll see that the material in this book will help you act on your anxiety and your life differently by putting you in control of what you can control. Put simply, you can control and change how you respond to your anxiety-related feelings, thoughts, and worries:
You can stop trying to cope with worries, anxieties, and fears (if coping and other management strategies have not worked in a lasting way).
You can learn to leave worries, anxieties, and fears alone and simply experience them as thoughts, sensations, feelings, or painful memories.
You don’t have to act on your anxiety, and it doesn’t need to drive what you do. As much as you feel like running from intense anxiety, you can learn to act differently. You can learn to watch anxious feelings and worrisome thoughts and not do what they tell you to do.
You can learn to move with your anxious discomfort and do something that’s potentially vital in your life.
We know from research and clinical experience that the solution to worry, anxiety, and fear is not more struggle. It’s not about trying to bring them down when they rear their ugly heads. It’s not about trying to get rid of them. It’s also not about combating or replacing negative with positive thoughts. You know this battle firsthand, and so do we. You may think that you must win it—perhaps by trying harder, struggling more, learning better strategies, reading about anxiety problems, finding a new medication, venting, and so on.
The reality is this: this battle cannot be won. But here’s more good news—you don’t need to win this battle in order to begin living the life you want to lead. As you work with this book, we’ll show you why this is a rigged game where the solutions to everyday sources of pain in the world around you are being applied in areas where they don’t really work.
For now, we ask that you entertain the possibility that the solution to your anxiety problems is not to fight "better or harder." The solution is to change your relationship with, and your response to, your anxious thoughts and feelings. You can choose to stop fighting. To get there, you’ll need to learn how to acknowledge anxious thoughts and feelings without "becoming" them, and without acting on them and doing what they say.
As we guide you in learning these skills, we’ll help you develop compassion for yourself and for your anxiety and other painful experiences. You’ll also rediscover what truly matters to you: you’ll focus on what you want your life to stand for and then act in ways that move you forward in your life, even if that means bringing worries, anxieties, and fears, or other unwanted thoughts and feelings along for the ride.
This may not be the first book offering a new relationship with anxiety. But it’s the first book that’ll teach you how to cultivate that relationship with acceptance and compassion, and with both eyes focused squarely on helping you live your life with meaning and purpose.
Our sincere goal is to help you spend your precious time on this earth doing what you care deeply about rather than spending your time and energy trying to control anxiety. Keep this in mind as you work with the material in the book. The prize we’re after is a life lived well—your life lived to its fullest!
WHAT IS ACT?
This workbook offers you a way out of your anxiety and fears and into your life, based on a revolutionary new approach called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, pronounced “act”). This pronunciation is important because it summarizes what ACT ultimately stands for: committed ACTion.
Accept—Choose—Take Action
The easiest way to get the gist of ACT is to focus on what the three letters stand for: Accept— Choose—Take action. Put another way, ACT is about letting go, showing up to life, and getting yourself moving in directions you want to go. Don’t worry if this strikes you as too general or idealistic. We’ll get more specific as you move on and practice the exercises.
For now, we’ll unpack the ACT acronym just a bit to give you a sense of what’s to come.
Accept
This is the first step in ACT and a step that we’ll help you nurture again and again in this workbook and, we hope, throughout your life. It involves active skills that’ll help you to respond differently—with kindness, compassion, gentleness, less engagement—when anxieties, fears, worries, panic, and other sources of emotional and psychological pain show up. The idea is to accept what you’re already having anyway. This skill disarms the struggle you’re having with unwanted thoughts and feelings. As you learn to let go, your anxious suffering will go too. With that, the need to eliminate or change those thoughts and feelings washes away.
After you drop the rope in your tug-of-war with your anxiety monsters, you’ll notice that your hands, feet, mind, and mouth will be freed up to be put to use for the things in your life you truly care about. In the process, your life will grow and develop in ways that may have seemed impossible up until now. Acceptance will help you make anxiety just a part of your larger life.
Choose
The second step is about choosing a direction for your life. It involves identifying what you value in life and what you want your life to stand for. It’s about helping you to discover what is truly important to you—what you value—and then making a choice. What kind of child, sister or brother, student, or friend do you want to be? What types of activities are meaningful to you? Answering these kinds of questions is about choice—choosing to go forward in directions that are uniquely yours and accepting what is inside you and what comes with you and accompanies you along the way. It’s a step you’ll make time and time again.
Here your life is asking you an important question: are you willing to contact and stay in touch with what your mind and body are doing anyway, fully and without avoiding or trying to escape from them? If the answer is no, you’ll get smaller and your anxiety will grow larger. If the answer is “yes,” you’ll get bigger and your life will get bigger too. Living well will become your focus, not living to feel and think well.
Take Action
The third step involves taking steps toward realizing your valued life goals. It’s about making a commitment to action and changing what you can change. This means learning to behave in ways that move you forward in the direction of your chosen values. As you work with the material, you’ll begin to see that there’s a difference between you as a person, your actions, and the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself. And you won’t find us asking you to simply face your fears in the hope of a better life. Our goal is to foster your willingness to take your inner emotional discomfort along with you in the service of your life goals and dreams.
You may feel intimidated by these three big, bold steps. In fact, you may be quite scared. You may say, “This is too big—I can’t do this.” If you do feel this way or have other similar thoughts and feelings, that’s fine. All we ask is that you hold your thoughts lightly. Just keep the book in your hands. Use your eye muscles to keep on reading. Let the thoughts be what they are and let them do what they do. Like other thoughts and feelings, it’s okay if they come, it’s okay if they stay, and it’s okay if they go.
Choose a New Approach to Get a Different Outcome
Your life is a sacred journey. And it is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path . . . exactly where you are meant to be right now. . . . And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love. —Caroline Adams
This chapter is about preparing the way for something new in your life. As much as we hate to admit it, we know that to get a different outcome we need to change what we are doing now. This is a good mantra we use in our own personal lives. The mantra (based on Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999) goes something like this:
"If I continue to do what I’ve always done, then I’m going to get what I’ve always got."
Write it down and keep it with you as you work with the material in this book.
YOU HAVE CHOICES
Here’s the good news: you can choose a new approach to get a different outcome in your life. This new approach is what you’ll get in this workbook. You’ll see that the material in this book will help you act on your anxiety and your life differently by putting you in control of what you can control. Put simply, you can control and change how you respond to your anxiety-related feelings, thoughts, and worries:
You can stop trying to cope with worries, anxieties, and fears (if coping and other management strategies have not worked in a lasting way).
You can learn to leave worries, anxieties, and fears alone and simply experience them as thoughts, sensations, feelings, or painful memories.
You don’t have to act on your anxiety, and it doesn’t need to drive what you do. As much as you feel like running from intense anxiety, you can learn to act differently. You can learn to watch anxious feelings and worrisome thoughts and not do what they tell you to do.
You can learn to move with your anxious discomfort and do something that’s potentially vital in your life.
We know from research and clinical experience that the solution to worry, anxiety, and fear is not more struggle. It’s not about trying to bring them down when they rear their ugly heads. It’s not about trying to get rid of them. It’s also not about combating or replacing negative with positive thoughts. You know this battle firsthand, and so do we. You may think that you must win it—perhaps by trying harder, struggling more, learning better strategies, reading about anxiety problems, finding a new medication, venting, and so on.
The reality is this: this battle cannot be won. But here’s more good news—you don’t need to win this battle in order to begin living the life you want to lead. As you work with this book, we’ll show you why this is a rigged game where the solutions to everyday sources of pain in the world around you are being applied in areas where they don’t really work.
For now, we ask that you entertain the possibility that the solution to your anxiety problems is not to fight "better or harder." The solution is to change your relationship with, and your response to, your anxious thoughts and feelings. You can choose to stop fighting. To get there, you’ll need to learn how to acknowledge anxious thoughts and feelings without "becoming" them, and without acting on them and doing what they say.
As we guide you in learning these skills, we’ll help you develop compassion for yourself and for your anxiety and other painful experiences. You’ll also rediscover what truly matters to you: you’ll focus on what you want your life to stand for and then act in ways that move you forward in your life, even if that means bringing worries, anxieties, and fears, or other unwanted thoughts and feelings along for the ride.
This may not be the first book offering a new relationship with anxiety. But it’s the first book that’ll teach you how to cultivate that relationship with acceptance and compassion, and with both eyes focused squarely on helping you live your life with meaning and purpose.
Our sincere goal is to help you spend your precious time on this earth doing what you care deeply about rather than spending your time and energy trying to control anxiety. Keep this in mind as you work with the material in the book. The prize we’re after is a life lived well—your life lived to its fullest!
WHAT IS ACT?
This workbook offers you a way out of your anxiety and fears and into your life, based on a revolutionary new approach called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT, pronounced “act”). This pronunciation is important because it summarizes what ACT ultimately stands for: committed ACTion.
Accept—Choose—Take Action
The easiest way to get the gist of ACT is to focus on what the three letters stand for: Accept— Choose—Take action. Put another way, ACT is about letting go, showing up to life, and getting yourself moving in directions you want to go. Don’t worry if this strikes you as too general or idealistic. We’ll get more specific as you move on and practice the exercises.
For now, we’ll unpack the ACT acronym just a bit to give you a sense of what’s to come.
Accept
This is the first step in ACT and a step that we’ll help you nurture again and again in this workbook and, we hope, throughout your life. It involves active skills that’ll help you to respond differently—with kindness, compassion, gentleness, less engagement—when anxieties, fears, worries, panic, and other sources of emotional and psychological pain show up. The idea is to accept what you’re already having anyway. This skill disarms the struggle you’re having with unwanted thoughts and feelings. As you learn to let go, your anxious suffering will go too. With that, the need to eliminate or change those thoughts and feelings washes away.
After you drop the rope in your tug-of-war with your anxiety monsters, you’ll notice that your hands, feet, mind, and mouth will be freed up to be put to use for the things in your life you truly care about. In the process, your life will grow and develop in ways that may have seemed impossible up until now. Acceptance will help you make anxiety just a part of your larger life.
Choose
The second step is about choosing a direction for your life. It involves identifying what you value in life and what you want your life to stand for. It’s about helping you to discover what is truly important to you—what you value—and then making a choice. What kind of child, sister or brother, student, or friend do you want to be? What types of activities are meaningful to you? Answering these kinds of questions is about choice—choosing to go forward in directions that are uniquely yours and accepting what is inside you and what comes with you and accompanies you along the way. It’s a step you’ll make time and time again.
Here your life is asking you an important question: are you willing to contact and stay in touch with what your mind and body are doing anyway, fully and without avoiding or trying to escape from them? If the answer is no, you’ll get smaller and your anxiety will grow larger. If the answer is “yes,” you’ll get bigger and your life will get bigger too. Living well will become your focus, not living to feel and think well.
Take Action
The third step involves taking steps toward realizing your valued life goals. It’s about making a commitment to action and changing what you can change. This means learning to behave in ways that move you forward in the direction of your chosen values. As you work with the material, you’ll begin to see that there’s a difference between you as a person, your actions, and the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself. And you won’t find us asking you to simply face your fears in the hope of a better life. Our goal is to foster your willingness to take your inner emotional discomfort along with you in the service of your life goals and dreams.
You may feel intimidated by these three big, bold steps. In fact, you may be quite scared. You may say, “This is too big—I can’t do this.” If you do feel this way or have other similar thoughts and feelings, that’s fine. All we ask is that you hold your thoughts lightly. Just keep the book in your hands. Use your eye muscles to keep on reading. Let the thoughts be what they are and let them do what they do. Like other thoughts and feelings, it’s okay if they come, it’s okay if they stay, and it’s okay if they go.
