How Mindfulness Can Enrich Your Life

by Auti Scolman

Mindfulness. We hear that word all the time, but what exactly does it entail? Think of it as the practice of focusing your awareness on the present moment, and acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts, and sensations in your body. In other words, mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the here and now in a non-judgmental way.

There are so many benefits to practicing this therapeutic technique. Here are just a few:

Respond to Stress and Anxiety More Effectively:

One of the most well-known benefits of mindfulness is its ability to help us cope with stress and anxiety. When we’re mindful, we’re better able to regulate our emotions and handle difficult situations. Mindfulness takes us off autopilot and creates a space from which we are more able to identify our triggers and take thoughtful steps to manage them.

Improve Physical Health:

Research has shown that mindfulness can improve physical health in a number of ways. It has been linked to lowered blood pressure, improved sleep, and a strengthened immune system. It can also help ease chronic pain and other physical conditions that impact your quality of life. 

Enhance Mental Health:

Mindfulness can also improve our overall mental health. It’s been shown to reduce symptoms of depression and improve overall well-being. Many people who practice mindfulness report an increased ability to be present rather than stuck in rumination, a greater enthusiasm for life, and improved self-compassion.

Promote Better Relationships:

When we’re present and aware, we’re able to actively listen and be fully attuned in our interactions with others. This can lead to stronger communication and deeper connections.

Increase Self-Awareness:

When we’re mindful, we’re better able to witness our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which can help us make informed decisions that move us toward our values and help us live a more authentic life.

In conclusion, mindfulness is a powerful tool that can bring about a number of benefits to your daily life. Mindfulness, or Present Moment Awareness, is one of the six core processes taught in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and is one of the skills that helps increase our psychological flexibility. In other words, it helps us observe and make space for uncomfortable thoughts and feelings so that we’re able to move toward the things that matter most to us. There are a lot of activities that incorporate mindfulness and it may take some time to find what practices work for you. You can try journaling, meditating, or restorative yoga, or simply pay attention to the present moment using your senses—notice what you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste in a non-judgmental way. The key to developing a mindful mindset is consistent effort- you’ve got this! If you would like some support in practicing mindfulness and increasing psychological flexibility, CSAM can help.

IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE NEEDS SUPPORT AND MIGHT BENEFIT FROM COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY (CBT) OR ACCEPTANCE AND COMMITMENT THERAPY (ACT) FOR ANXIETY, PANIC, PHOBIAS, STRESS, PTSD, OCD, OR STRESS RELATED TO COVID-19, OR IF YOU WOULD LIKE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR TELEHEALTH SERVICES, PLEASE CONTACT US AT (858) 354-4077 OR AT INFO@CSAMSANDIEGO.COM

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Reference: 

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_ways_mindfulness_meditation_is_good_for_your_health

Lessons from Traveling in Time

By Annabelle Parr, MA, AMFT

Have you ever wished you could have a do over? Go back in time and alter an embarrassing moment, or seize a missed opportunity, or simply get more time to do the things that matter most to you?

What might we learn if we could travel back in time and do things differently?

Every year around New Year’s, I watch my favorite movie, About Time. It’s a rom com about a man who learns that the men in his family can travel back in time within their own lives, and it is filled with sweetness and some profound messages that are remarkably consistent with the core principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). If you haven’t seen the film, warning: spoilers ahead. In his travels through time, Tim, the main character, learns a number of lessons about creating and living a full, vital life.

Lesson #1: Traveling in time gives you unlimited chances to behave differently, but the outcome of your behavior is still always beyond your control.

Upon learning that he has the ability to time travel, Tim quickly clarifies that what matters most to him is love (values), and what he most wants to use this unique ability to achieve is finding someone with whom to share his life (goal). One of the first things he learns is that even with the ability to go back in time and try things differently, he ultimately cannot control the outcome of his behavior, just like the rest of us. He can pursue his goal by showing up to each moment bringing the qualities he most wants to embody (values), but the outcome of his actions is outside of his control. He may get to test things out more than the rest of us, and may gather more information on what behaviors may make a particular outcome more likely, but just like the rest of us, in the end, the outcome is still beyond his control.

Lesson #2: All the time travel in the world can’t erase pain.

Nevertheless, Tim continues to show up to each moment fully (present centered awareness), holding his goals for the life he hopes to build lightly and being the kind, loving, humorous man he hopes to be (committed actions), and ultimately he does build a beautiful life and family filled with love. As he does so, he learns that even his gift cannot shield him from the pain that comes with being human. Just like the rest of us, if he wants to engage in the joys, he must also be willing to have the pain that is inevitable if we are willing to care, to love, and to be loved (willingness).

Lesson #3: The secret to a rich, meaningful life is being fully present and choosing how you will meet each moment. 

Toward the end of the film, Tim shares my favorite lesson of all. He shares his father’s secret to a good life. His father tells him to live each day twice: “the first time with all the tensions and worries that stop us noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing.” In the simple act of noticing (present centered awareness), and making a conscious decision about how he responds (committed action), Tim finds how much richer and fuller life can be.

The film finishes with Tim sharing,

“And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did. The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”

In this final lesson, Tim sums up the goal of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: to meet each day fully, with openness to whatever shows up and awareness of our experience, and to choose to actively engage in each moment with the qualities that we most hope to embody. When we are fully present, we begin to notice all of the opportunities we have to engage in our lives as the people we most hope to be. As Tim discovers, we don’t actually need time travel at all; the moments we are given are already full of opportunity to be who we most hope to be right now.

CSAM IS HERE TO HELP

If you or someone you love needs support and might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxiety, panic, phobias, stress, PTSD, OCD, uncertainty or stress related to COVID-19, or if you would like more information about our telehealth services, please contact us at (858) 354-4077 or at info@csamsandiego.com

Fostering Resilience during COVID-19 by Connecting with Our Values

By Annabelle Parr

As we enter Mental Health Awareness Month this year, we are collectively experiencing not only a global health crisis, but also a stressor which has potentially significant repercussions for our mental health. At the very least, we are likely to be experiencing a range of painful emotions as a result of this crisis. On any given day, I find myself feeling at least some combination of the following: anxiety, fear, stress, grief, frustration and/or exhaustion. 

As an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapist, when I am struggling, I ask myself the question: can I be willing to have this pain, and still choose to move in the direction of what matters most to me? The goal of ACT is to help us to live more vital, meaningful lives even as we struggle with the inevitable pain and discomfort inherent in being human. And goodness knows this pandemic has given us all a whopping dose of pain and discomfort.

But what does a meaningful life look like during a global crisis?

Prior to COVID-19, I felt like I had developed a pretty good sense of how to move toward what matters even when I feel anxiety or fear or frustration. But this pandemic has challenged me. At first, I felt overwhelmed as it seemed the world had turned upside down, and I struggled to find ways to live my values when life suddenly felt so restricted by forces beyond my control.

So I began to consider: how can I continue to move toward what matters most to me, even as life has become more restricted by this pandemic?

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling Instagram and came across a post posing the question: “if someone told you that you could save a life, would you?” The post went on to remind us that we are all being given that otherwise very rare opportunity, and that in staying home right now, we are actually saving lives.

https://www.instagram.com/igo_medical/

After reading this Instagram, it clicked for me: I don’t necessarily have to do anything monumental or new or different right now in order to make significant, values based decisions. Instead, I can consider what I am already doing – like staying home except for essential errands, or wearing a mask and maintaining six feet from others when I do need to go out, or calling and connecting with friends and family – and I can connect these actions with my values.

What are values?

Values from an ACT perspective are a collection of verbs, adverbs, and adjectives that describe qualities of being; a.k.a. who and how do I want to be in the world? For me, a few of my values include being compassionate, conscientious, kind, and loving.

Connecting with our values can infuse the choices we are already making with purpose.

When I connect even the simple action of staying home with being compassionate or loving, rather than becoming fused with thoughts about how terrible, frightening, or overwhelming this all is, I can ground myself in a sense of purpose and meaning beyond my discomfort. And I can bring my values to anything I do: when I call family or friends, I can choose to show up lovingly; when I go to the store, I can offer gratitude to the essential workers I interact with; when I watch my favorite TV show, I can connect with my value of being kind and gentle with myself. The key is being intentional about why I do what I do.

You are enough just as you are.

Navigating a pandemic is exhausting; it demands so much of us already, and additional pressure to do more when just getting through the day feels taxing enough can feel less than helpful. Part of the beauty of ACT is that values based actions are not always huge, monumental gestures; in fact, more often, they are the small, intentional choices we make to show up in a particular moment as the type of person that we hope to be in the world. So rather than beating ourselves up for feeling like we are falling short somehow, we might ask ourselves instead, how can I bring the qualities I hope to embody to the actions I am already taking? How can I connect the things I am already doing back with the kind of person that I hope to be? 

“Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.”

I keep coming back to the wisdom of Viktor Frankl during this time; as a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, he is particularly well suited to guide us through crisis. He noted that “those who have a why to live can bear almost any how,” and I might add that those who have a why to act can bear almost any how. The “how’s” of our day-to-day right now pose a whole host of new challenges for us, but when we can connect with a why behind these challenges, we are likely to meet them with much greater resilience.

CSAM IS HERE TO HELP

If you or someone you love needs support and might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxiety, panic, phobias, stress, PTSD, OCD, insomnia, or stress related to COVID-19, or if you would like more information about our telehealth services, please contact us at (858) 354-4077 or at info@csamsandiego.com

Empowering Yourself with Mindfulness: Attending Intentionally to What Matters in This Moment

By Annabelle Parr

We wake up each day to a new series of updates about coronavirus and its wide reaching effects: perpetually breaking news stories with new research, new statistics, new predictions, new guidelines, new stressors. Our attention is yanked like a yo-yo by the instant and constant stream of news in the palms of our hands. Additionally, attending to what used to be a basic task – grocery shopping – now feels like a massive feat involving lots of planning and caution. For those with kids at home, we are trying to attend to their needs, their schoolwork, and their emotions, even as we do our best to navigate working simultaneously.

Where we used to have separate spaces for separate parts of our lives, at least to some degree, we are now navigating the jumble of integrating every facet of our lives into one space: our home. With so many demands and pressing issues competing for our attention constantly, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel like our minds have been hijacked in the same way that it feels our lives and routines have been.

This is hard, AND…

Yes, this is a scary and difficult time. Yes, there is a seemingly endless list of stressors to occupy our anxious minds. Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty and only so many variables within our control. AND. We are not helpless or powerless. As our hearts are flooded with emotions, our minds retain their ability to make choices about how to proceed when faced with the facts and the resulting feelings. We can choose to empower ourselves within situations in which our control over external variables is limited.

What does it mean to empower ourselves during COVID-19?

When I say that we can empower ourselves, I don’t mean that we can empower our way out of our pain. Our pain – our fear, our anxiety, our grief, our anger – is a natural human response when faced with loss and uncertainty, of which we are all getting an enormous dose. Our pain simply is. It is here for good reason, and it often points directly toward what matters most to us. It deserves to be felt and heard.

Empowering ourselves involves increasing our psychological flexibility in service of greater meaning.

When I say that we can empower ourselves, I am drawing on the wisdom of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which says that suffering is a result of psychological inflexibility. When we increase our ability to think and respond flexibly in the face of pain and stress, we empower ourselves to make choices based on our values. We reduce the struggle that comes from fighting with our pain – as if that were the battle to be won – and we free ourselves up to pursue that which brings meaning to our lives.

In his beautiful work Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and creator of logotherapy (another form of therapy grounded in meaning), Viktor E. Frankl (1959) stated “that everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (p. 66).

What if I feel guilty for focusing on meaning when basic needs demand my attention?

It may feel incredibly difficult or even indulgent to consider what brings us meaning when we are facing such a collective threat to our health and our financial stability. It may also feel trivializing to invoke the words of a Holocaust survivor here, as even though what we are facing is difficult, it is nowhere near the level of the atrocities which Frankl witnessed and endured.

Yet he suffered such unfathomable horror, pain, and loss, that the wisdom he emerged with certainly seems worth attending to during our own trying times. Additionally, suffering is not something that is meant to be compared. Frankl (1959) himself noted, “suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative” (p. 44).

In other words, we do not have to experience the rock bottom of human atrocity in order to allow ourselves space and self-compassion for our emotional experience in the midst of suffering. This is hard. Your pain makes sense. 

An important piece of the psychological flexibility puzzle is mindfulness.

So, how exactly do we empower ourselves to become more psychologically flexible? A good place to start is with mindfulness, or present centered awareness. Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994), founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, succinctly defines mindfulness as the ongoing practice of “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (p. 4).

In her book, Be Mighty: A Woman’s Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry, & Stress Using Mindfulness & Acceptance, CSAM director Dr. Jill Stoddard (2019) invites us to imagine that when we are not engaging mindfully, we are like airplanes on autopilot. Not fully present to what is happening inside and outside of our skin, we are running on muscle memory. We are still making choices for which we are responsible, but we are not totally conscious of the fact that we are doing so.

It is easy to get lost in this space. When we are running on autopilot, we are more likely to react rather than respond: “if your autopilot has commandeered the cockpit, the space between intense emotion and response is utterly nonexistent, leading to an instant, impulsive reaction. It’s as if the intense emotion is a detonator and the reaction is a bomb” (Stoddard, 2019, p. 45). 

Sheltering in place during a pandemic is likely to create some intense emotions and difficult circumstances to which we may react. If we are on autopilot, we are much more likely to react in unhelpful ways, like lashing out at our loved ones and communicating ineffectively. Additionally, when we are on autopilot we may be unaware of what we are actually feeling and experiencing. We may be more likely to numb out in unhealthy ways, and less likely to attend to the things that help care for our minds and bodies. Also significant, we are likely to miss the little nuggets of joy that fly by us as we zone out into the distance.

So let’s flip it around. What does mindfulness empower us to do? When we show up to each moment mindfully, that is, we focus our attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, we are able to….

• Notice and identify our emotions. Our emotions can span the full range of experience, from afraid to anxious to stressed to exhausted to angry to sad to grateful to joyful. Remember, the purpose of mindfulness is not to judge our experience, but simply to notice it.

• Choose how we internally respond to our own emotional experience. Responding gently, with the same kindness and compassion we might have for ourselves as children, for our child, for our friend, or for another loved one is generally a good place to start.

• Choose action in line with the kind of person, partner, parent, friend, employee, citizen, etc. that we want to be. It can be helpful to consider the qualities of being you aspire to embody, such as being compassionate, loving, loyal, diligent, reliable, kind, etc. Then you can purposefully choose to behave in a way that aligns with your personal values.

• Choose what we point our attention towards. This is especially important right now, given that our smartphones are perpetually present and can alert us to every single news update all day long. It’s important to stay informed enough to stay safe and responsible, but that doesn’t mean we are required to be glued to the news all day. When we are more present, we can make a choice about when we decide to update ourselves, how often, and for what purpose. It’s also easy to mindlessly let the day slip away watching Netflix or going down some other rabbit hole of distraction. It’s okay to watch Netflix or to let ourselves be unproductive, but it’s important that we connect with our intention and our reason for our behavior. When we watch our favorite show mindfully, we get to actually engage with it from a place of enjoyment so that we can return to our other tasks more rejuvenated.

• Be present to the things for which we are grateful. When we are more fully present to the moment, we give ourselves the opportunity to appreciate the sweetness in small moments we might otherwise miss. As much as this period of time is full of tragedy, there is goodness to be found if we know where to turn our attention. John Krasinski is working on helping us out here, with Some Good News. But we don’t need a celebrity news channel to tune in to gratitude and goodness. There is goodness to be found in the gift of time with our loved ones, watching our children play together, waving to neighbors from a solid 6 ft. + physical distance, or reconnecting virtually with friends we rarely find time to talk to under normal circumstances. Mindfulness allows us to be present to the joys when they show up and to actively cultivate engagement with the things that bring us meaning; we might just have to be a bit more creative in how we engage those things right now.

CSAM IS HERE TO HELP

If you or someone you love needs support and might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxiety, panic, phobias, stress, PTSD, OCD, insomnia, or stress related to COVID-19, or if you would like more information about our telehealth services, please contact us at (858) 354-4077 or at info@csamsandiego.com

References

Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York, NY: Hyperion.

Stoddard, J. A. (2019). Be mighty: A woman’s guide to liberation from anxiety, worry & stress using mindfulness & acceptance. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

5 Life Lessons From Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

By Annabelle Parr

In her new documentary, Miss Americana, Taylor Swift not only gives her fans a whole new window into her life, she also beautifully exemplifies a way of being that is remarkably consistent with the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

The documentary takes us through Taylor’s life and her rise to fame. She shares how for the first part of her career, she was consumed with a hunger for approval from others. Her entire persona was built on the premise of being a “good” girl: sweet, agreeable, likeable, pretty, thin, reserved, perfect.

A nice girl doesn’t force their opinions on people. A nice girl smiles and waves and says ‘thank you.’ A nice girl doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable with her views. I was so obsessed with not getting in trouble, I’m just not going to do anything that anyone can say anything about.

In ACT, we would say that Taylor was caught in “self-as-content” mode. She viewed herself as equivalent to the content of her thoughts and the content of others’ opinions about her. She was fused to an idea about who and how she was and had to be. And for good reason. She was and is constantly bombarded with both positive and negative messages about herself from millions of people.

1. We are designed to crave acceptance and connection.

For Taylor, just like for every one of us, there are very good reasons for why we come to view ourselves in a particular way: we exist in a context in which we pick up messages about who we are or how we should be, and our minds latch on to those ideas to try to protect us. Back in our hunter-gatherer days, our literal survival was tied directly to social acceptance and cohesion with the group. So we are hard wired to need connection and acceptance.

2. Often we seek that acceptance out by trying to make ourselves into who we think we are supposed to be.

Taylor, like so many of us, tried to fit herself into the mold of what others wanted from her. However, as Taylor found, this strategy often comes at a high price.

First, it cuts us off from parts of ourselves that are absolutely integral to who we are.

Our wholeness suffers when we are required to squeeze into a box of who we think we “should” be. We lose touch with who we truly are as we seek approval and try endlessly to please others. Taylor notes, “I became the person who everyone wanted me to be.” She literally stopped feeding herself in an effort to make herself small enough to fit into the mold of what was expected of her. 

Second, no matter how desperately we try, we will never please everyone.

Approval from others is a fragile foundation on which to lay our self-worth, because inevitably we will disappoint some people sometimes. Even as Taylor was starving herself, she saw that “there’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting.” There are a number of double binds that are particularly present for women, and they include more than just paradoxical beauty requirements (e.g. be skinny, but also have a big butt). As Dr. Jill Stoddard noted in Be Mighty: A Woman’s Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry & Stress Using Mindfulness and Acceptance Strategies, “we are evaluated as less competent when we are seen as likeable; when we are considered competent, we are more likely to be labeled unlikeable (Heilman et al., 2004; Rudman and Glick, 1999)”. This likability bind is another that Taylor is intimately familiar with. As Taylor states so poignantly,

When you’re living for the approval of strangers, and that is where you derive all of your joy and fulfillment, one bad thing can cause everything to crumble…When people decided I was wicked and evil and conniving and not a good person, that was the one I couldn’t bounce back from because my whole life was centered around it.

Most of us are not mega-famous like Taylor, but her words are incredibly relatable for anyone who has ever relied on approval from others to feel okay.

3. The thing is, we cannot avoid discomfort.

It might seem like if we just make ourselves perfect enough, we could avoid rejection or criticism or failure. But even if we could be perfect and avoid all of those things, we then would have to wrestle with the pain of making ourselves smaller to be more acceptable. ACT teaches us that pain is inevitable, and that the problem is not the pain itself but the rigid and inflexible ways we respond to it and the ways we restrict our lives to try to avoid it. 

4. It’s not your fault, and it is your responsibility to do something different if you want to see change.

Taylor describes feeling muzzled for most of her career. She says that it was her own doing, which is true to an extent in that she discovered that she could choose to speak up and be true to who she really is. However, it’s also important to note that she was muzzled by a culture and a context that told her in order to be liked, accepted, successful, and safe, she was not allowed to have an authentic voice. It was not her fault that she was muzzled, but it was up to her to break free. And in doing so, she is setting a powerful example for other women, pop star and otherwise, that authenticity and success are not mutually exclusive. She is helping to shift a culture that has muzzled women for centuries.

I want to wear pink and tell you how I feel about politics. And I don’t think that those things have to cancel each other out.

5. Our values can help set us free.

As viewers watch Taylor descend into isolation and depression resulting from others’ negative opinions of her, we also see her begin to change and grow in really powerful ways. She transforms from the stereotypical picture of a “good girl” into a bold, strong, mighty, authentic woman. She is no longer driven by the opinions of others, but grounded in what is important to her: being present with her family and her partner, and using her voice to stand up for what she believes in. She displays a willingness to risk rejection and discomfort in the service of speaking up for women, the LGBTQ+ community, sexual assault survivors, and minorities. She is often advised to stay small and quiet, but chooses instead to be true to who she is.

ACT in ACTion.

In cultivating a willingness to risk pain and rejection, getting present to who and what matters most, and recognizing she is far more than the stories told about her, Taylor is able to make choices in line with her own authentic, personally held values. The documentary finishes with Taylor saying,            

I want to still have a sharp pen and a thin skin and an open heart.

This last piece of wisdom is important: the key is not to stop caring, but rather to get grounded in who you are and what you care about. Our pain points us toward our values. It hurts precisely because we care. Vulnerability is a strength, and it is only when we are willing to risk discomfort that we are truly able to connect with what matters.

Rather than let her experiences and her pain harden her, Taylor allowed herself to feel her feelings and to use them as fuel to get clear on who she wants to be in the world. Her thin skin and open heart are not only the things that give her songwriting such power, but also the things that empower her to stand strong in herself even when it isn’t easy or comfortable.

Mental Wellness Month: How Do We Define Wellness?

By Annabelle Parr

According to the internet, January is Mental Wellness Month. Sounds like a good cause, right? Absolutely! But pausing to consider our definition of mental wellness is important. Because if you spend much time on the internet, it might have you believing that wellness and self-care are defined by bubble baths, weighted blankets, and being perpetually Zenned out. And bubble baths, weighted blankets, and being in touch with your inner Zen are great! But mental wellness and caring for ourselves are not quite that simple.

So from a therapeutic perspective, what exactly is mental wellness? If we define illness based on a list of symptoms, do we define wellness simply as a lack of said symptomology? Or does wellness have its own particular set of characteristics equally worth defining?

If illness is a sense of dis-ease, is wellness a perpetual state of ease?

Psychiatry and psychotherapy developed based on a model which was focused primarily on pathology and illness or “dis-ease.” Beginning with Sigmund Freud’s exploration of the unconscious mind and evolving toward a medical model of treatment centered around the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychotherapy has historically been centered around identifying and diagnosing a problem and working to treat it. And of course, this is a worthy mission, but it is an incomplete picture of the larger whole of life. Life is not simply about absence of illness, dis-ease, or discomfort. It is about engaging in life in a way that brings us meaning, purpose, and hopefully some joy as well.

Wellness is not about the absence of discomfort, but rather the presence of meaning.

From an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) perspective, mental wellness is defined by our ability to engage in life in ways that bring us a sense of meaning, purpose, and vitality. Mental wellness is characterized by our ability to, moment by moment, make choices and take action in the service of our personally chosen values. And this might be surprising, but it is actually deliberately NOT defined by a lack of painful emotions, such as anxiety, fear, worry, and stress. Not only are these feelings and experiences an unavoidable part of being human, but they are directly and inextricably linked to our values.

“We hurt where we care.”

Steven Hayes, one of the ACT co-founders, noted that we hurt where we care. As Dr. Jill Stoddard pointed out in her book, Be Mighty: A Woman’s Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry & Stress Using Mindfulness & Acceptance, when we look at the things that keep us up at night, the ones that weigh heavy on our minds and hearts, they probably do not include the fate of Netflix. We might enjoy a good Netflix binge, but whether Netflix will continue to thrive is probably not on our list of worries. Instead, the things that we worry about tend to be the things that matter to us on a deep level, such as our family, friends, work, home, etc.

Pain and values are two sides of the same coin.

In other words, when we look closely, the emotional pain we experience tends to point directly to what’s important to us. If we want a life that is full of wellness – full of those things that truly matter to us, that bring us joy, connection, passion, and purpose – we have to be willing to risk having difficult and painful feelings. We cannot have one without the other because it wouldn’t hurt if we didn’t care and vice versa. When we try to rid ourselves of all painful feelings, we also restrict our ability to engage with the things that we really care about. As much as we might wish otherwise, we cannot have joy without also risking pain. As Brené Brown said so well, we cannot selectively numb emotion. When we are unwilling to have pain, we will also be less able to experience joy.

Our emotions are not problems to be solved; the problem is when our behavior prevents us from engaging in life in functional and fulfilling ways.

From a diagnostic perspective, it is not simply the presence of anxiety that warrants a diagnosis; rather it is the functional impairment that the anxiety creates that helps determine whether someone meets criteria for diagnosis. Said otherwise, a diagnosis includes consideration of whether your experience of your emotions, thoughts, and sensations causes you to limit your behavior such that your life is restricted in significant areas, like work, school, and relationships.

Wellness is about how we respond to pain when it shows up.

Therefore, wellness is not defined by the absence of stress, anxiety, grief, worry, anger, or frankly any other emotion. Instead it is all about how you are able to manage difficult thoughts, feelings, and experiences and still continue to engage in life in a way that is fulfilling, meaningful, and guided by what is important to you. And ACT, beyond emphasizing the importance of values-based actions, has plenty of wisdom regarding how to increase psychological flexibility such that you are able to respond more effectively when discomfort arises.

If you find that your thoughts and feelings are holding you back from living your life in the way that you might want, ACT can help. For some excellent resources, check out our suggested reading and our suggested podcasts. For professional support, an ACT therapist can help guide you on your journey.

CSAM IS HERE TO HELP

If you or someone you love needs support and might benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for anxiety, panic, phobias, stress, PTSD, OCD, or insomnia, or if you would like more information about our therapy services, please contact us at (858) 354-4077 or at info@csamsandiego.com