The Observing Self v. The Conceptualized Self

People often describe themselves in terms of their self-self-percieved role in the world. For example: “I am a nice guy,” “I am a people person,” “I am a hard worker,” or “I am a parent of two kids.”  We clump these little snippets of ourselves together in order to form a larger narrative about who we are, and our place(s) in the world. “That’s just the way I am,” is an often popular sentiment. And the conclusion to the sentence “I am a person who _____ ,“ is the beginning of a statement capable of generating scores of reasonable and accurate responses.

This kind of thinking is a slippery slope, however, and it is pretty easy to understand why. Over time we generate dozens of these little self-stories that fuse with our identity and form our persona. Defining who we are. And becoming what we say we are is one of our greatest ambitions. We want to be congruent. We—the observing-self—are trying to be who we—the conceptualized-self—say/think we are. And in the event that, for whatever reason, our personal story about ourselves changes we now have to reconcile that change. To our own self, and the world around us.

Problem of being fused to the conceptualized self:

Think about an example of a girl who graduated at the top of her high school class. She dreamt about becoming a lawyer. She talked with her family and friends about her goals. In college she did well in her classes but during her Junior year she decided that law school was just not a good fit. Can you imagine how difficult this conclusion might be for her? Especially if she has been wrestling privately with this decision for weeks, months, or even years. How difficult would it be to see her friends on summer break and explain the reasons law was not longer her passion?

Well, if she is not fused to her conceptualized-self it should not be terribly difficult. After all, people change their minds all the time. However, in building up this conceptualized version of herself attempts to make changes could be met with great resistance. Not only internally, but externally as well. This might lead a person to attempt to maintain congruence between their attachment to their conceptualized self and their observing-self.

The alternative is being filled with guilt about disinterest in law school. Telling your friends that you had a change of heart seems difficult. Taking yourself seriously may seem more difficult. After all, you abandon a long held belief. What’ might you abandon next? Conversations about your future are something you may not fully understand yourself. And we are expected to explain, or defend these decisions to other people? Friends and family simply want what is best for us. We know that. The difficulty is that they adopted our believe that Law school was what’s best for us. Now, they need to have that believe structure modified.

“Fusion with the conceptualized-self can lead to an attempt to maintain consistency by distorting or reinterpreting events if they seem inconsistent with the self-story.”

What about another example?

Imagine that I believe myself to be a kind person. Believing that I am kind, I may have a very difficult time interpreting my own behavior as unkind. In fact, if I am fused to the concept that I am kind person, I may distort or reinterpret events in order to maintain consistency with my self-story. This is a common attribution error made by people who bully others—‘I couldn’t possibly be a bully, I was just joking around.’ Our goal should be one of stepping away from our conceptualized-self so that we can weaken those attachments, and more realistically assess if we are living according to our values. Again, “fusion with the conceptualized-self can lead to an attempt to maintain consistency by distorting or reinterpreting events if they seem inconsistent with the self-story” (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012).

What can we do to integrate ourselves?

So, how do we battle against the tendency to build attachments to the conceptualized versions of ourselves? The first step is to take an open, loving, and accepting perspective of yourself. Being conscious of your own reality can also help you empathize with others. The second benefit to taking an open perspective of yourself could be that you allow yourself to process changes as they happen, in the moment. In the example of the young pre-law student above, if she took and open/accepting perspective, she may have noticed that her values shifting from law, to something else.

Trouble comes when those kinds of things sneak up on us. And out of nowhere, create chaos in a place where we thought was organized and structured. The second way to make congruent the relationship between the observing-self and conceptualized-self is to align your actions with your personal values. In that case, your observing-self can always look at your conceptualized-self and consider whether your actions are moving you closer or further from your valued endpoint.

An activity to conclude:

We could even use this strategy to better understand if we are making the “right” choices. or not. We know what is “right” based on whether our choices produce an outcome that we find acceptable. Lastly, self-as-context is deeply related to mindfulness. And it might be helpful to try an activity to illustrate the point:

if you are concerned that your conceptualized-self is dominating your observing-self, close your eyes and simply notice your thoughts. Notice where they are around/inside/above/below you. Notice if they are pictures, or sounds, or a movie playing along in your mind. Bring your attention to the fact that your thoughts are ‘over there,’ and you are the one who is observing them. Now, bring your attention to how you are sitting. Notice what you can see, smell, taste, and hear. At each of those points, bring your attention to the fact that you are noticing (e.g., notice how you are sitting, and as you do, be aware that you are noticing).

Bringing ourselves into the present moment in a mindful and conscious way will help us to remain oriented to our observing-self. Which will help us remain de-fused from our conceptualized-self. After all, it is ok to remain flexible throughout our lives while we develop our Values, and attempt to live meaningful lives.

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What are the things that can get in our way?

How does one manage all of the stress?

Align with our Values?

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            What a journey! Even writing that paragraph above is a reminder of how much amazing material Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) has to offer, and how much material we have covered over the last 5-weeks. (If you are just joining us in this series, I would encourage you to read all about psychological flexibility in our previous blog posts.) A ton of questions always come to mind when I think about values: 1) what are they; 2) how do I identify them; 3) where do they come from; 4) how do I know if mine are any good; 5) can I pick my values, or are they inside of me already and waiting for me to discover them? Well, hopefully by the end of this post the concept of values will feel a little less ambiguous, and maybe it will get you thinking about what you might say your values are in this moment. 

             Imagine that I put to boxes that were identical in every way in front of you and said “pick one.” You may have a number of questions, but given that I refuse to answer any questions or differentiate the boxes in any way from one another, you chose the second box. Why did you choose the second box? Well, the choice was completely arbitrary, and your answer might be “I don’t know, I just picked one.” It is easy to see how the consequence of this choice would have very little outcome on a person’s life, even if there were ¢5 cents inside the box they chose and $50 in the box they did not choose, there is no way to be attached to the outcome because the decision was made randomly. One key to values is that they are freely chosen and they reinforce our activities, motivating us to make some choices over others. Said another way: we cannot value everything, and we have to make choices about what things we do value because the scope of our values is limited. We cannot value everything equally, and if you have ever had several tough classes at once you may remember that you probably did not weigh each class the same, spending equal time preparing for multimedia as you did for Honors Chemistry. This helps us understand how we answer our first question above (what are values?): values are the fundamental beliefs that guide & motivate us, and that exist behind our behaviors. 

The power of values, questioned by point number 2 (how do I identify them?) is that we can look at our behavior and see if it matches what we believe our values to be. This can be very motivational in the sense that we can find incongruence between valued life directions (e.g., being a good friend) and our current behaviors (i.e., knowing that I have not made enough time for my close friendships, lately). Finding these areas where we are incongruent can help us identify our values, and move in a more valued direction. Another way to reflect on our values is simply to look at the areas of our lives where we believe ourselves to really shine! Knowing that you enjoy spirituality, physical fitness, or deep and meaningful interpersonal relationships, can help you identify some of the things you value over other areas of your life that you may value less (maybe at the moment Marriage/Intimate Relationships, for example, is not a “value” that you hold). Where these things come from—point #3—can seem like a mystery; however, we can remember that since a critical feature of values is that they are “freely chosen,” in some sense we get to decide how we prioritize our values, but we would have difficulty creating our own values from nothing. To find what is meaningful to us, we have to explore who we are as an individual. In some cases we can look back at our own behavior and excavate some of our values, we can read great books, and think about the people we admire, and through that process we can discover some of the things we value. And then we can close the amount of incongruence that lives between our actions and those things we value to push ourselves in a goal-directed way. Along that process of discovering our values, and by extension discovering who we are, we may find that we have an internal ‘nature’ that we have to contend with. That we may value some things other people do, but we are fundamentally different than other people. For example, I can tell you with certainty that I see value in the work of software engineers, and engineers of all types for that matter—my father was an engineer; however, I can tell you with certainty that my personality is one who needs to interact with people, often and deeply. Therefore, sitting in front of a computer designing a bridge, or software program, or iPhone App, is probably not a place where I will find that I am thriving as a person. But I sure am grateful that other people do find great meaning in those areas. They have the ability to make the world a better place!

So, we arrive at point #4, how you know if your values are any good! Well behavioral psychologists have a basic theory as to how to approach this problem. We start living! More specifically, we attempt to live out our values, and we watch what happens as a result. If one of my values is interpersonal relationships, then I should try to be the best friend that I can be and ideally, I would see my existing friendships deepen and become more meaningful, and I would see new friendships begin to emerge. I would know this was a positive outcome if I begin to experience an ideal future. But what happens if in reality as I gain new friendships, my existing relationships begin to suffer in a way that was unexpected and unappreciated? Well, then I need to think about how I am living my values, because something happened that was unexpected (losing friendships), and I need to assess why. Now, consider whether we can pick our values. We touched on this briefly above when we talked about discovering our values, and it seems very unlikely that I could just decide to become a long-distance runner; however, the wonderful thing about values is, again, that we get to choose. We get start ACTING like a runner: maybe we start getting up early, walking regularly or jogging, signing up for a 5k with a friend, who knows…Maybe that’s exactly how someone becomes a runner, one step at a time J

And maybe that’s how we connect with our values. Just take things one step at a time. 

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Think about an example of a girl who graduated at the top of her high school class and talked to her friends and family about wanting to become a lawyer. For years she dreamt about practicing law and never hesitated to share her dreams with others, in college she did well in her classes but during her Junior year she arrived at the conclusion that law school was just not a good fit for her. Can you imagine how difficult this conclusion might be for her, especially if she has been wrestling privately with this decision for weeks, months, or even years? How difficult it would be for her to see her friends on summer break and have to explain to them the reasons for her change of career interests. Well, if she is not fused to her conceptualized-self it should not be terribly difficult—after all, people change their minds all the time; however, in building up this conceptualized version of herself, it is possible that attempts to make changes would be met with great resistance. Not only internally, but externally as well. This might lead a person to attempt to maintain congruence between their attachment to their conceptualized self and their observing-self, because the alternative is one where you now have to explain to your parents why you are no longer interested in law school. You have to tell your friends, who may be in the process of applying, that you had a change of heart after years of dreaming. These conversations about your future are something you may or may not fully understand yourself, let alone have a solid enough grasp of to explain or, even more challenging, defend to other people who you know just want the best for you. 

In another example, imagine that I believe that I am a kind person. If I believe that, in my heart, I will have a very difficult time dealing with instances where I behave in an unkind way. And, in fact, if I am fused to the conception that I am kind person, I may distort or reinterpret events in order to maintain consistency with my self-story (this may be a common attribution error that is made by people who bully others—‘I couldn’t possibly be a bully, I was just joking around’). Our goal should be one of stepping away from the conceptualized self-image that we have so that we can weaken our attachments and more realistically assess if we are living according to our values. Again, “fusion with the conceptualized self can lead to an attempt to maintain consistency by distorting or reinterpreting events if they seem inconsistent with the self-story” (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012^[1]).

So, how do we battle against the tendency to build attachments to the conceptualized versions of ourselves? The first step is to take an open, loving, and accepting perspective of yourself as doing this will not only give you the ability to conscious of your own reality, but it will give you the ability to take the same position for others as well. The second benefit to taking an open perspective of yourself could be that you allow yourself to process changes as they happen in the moment. In the example of the young pre-law student above, if she took and open/accepting perspective, she may have noticed that her values shifting from law, to something else. Trouble comes when those kinds of things sneak up on us out of nowhere and create chaos in a place where we thought was organization and structure. The second way to make congruent the relationship between the observing-self, and the conceptualized-self is to align you actions with a set of values that you create for yourself. In that case, your observing-self can always look at your conceptualized-self and consider: do my actions move me closer to, or further from, my valued endpoint? We could even use this strategy to better understand if we are making the “right” choices or not, based on whether our choices produce an outcome that we find acceptable. Finally, self-as-context is deeply related to mindfulness and it might be helpful to try an activity: if you are concerned that your conceptualized-self is dominating your observing-self, close your eyes and simply notice your thoughts. Notice where they are around/inside/above/below you, notice if they are pictures, sounds, or a movie playing along in your mind, bring your attention to the fact that your thoughts are ‘over there’ and youare the one who is observing them. Now, bring your attention to how you are sitting, noticing what you can see, smell, taste, and hear. At each of those points, bring your attention to the fact that you are noticing (e.g., notice how you are sitting, and as you do, be aware that you are noticing). 

Bringing ourselves into the present moment in a mindful and conscious way will help us to remain oriented to our observing-self, and to remain de-fused from our conceptualized-self. After all, it is ok to remain flexible while we develop our Values, and attempt to live meaningful lives.

^[1]Hayes, S.C., Strosahl, K.D., & Wilson, K.G. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The process and practice of mindful change. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

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            When was the last time you remember being so busy or preoccupied that you felt like you may have missed out on something important? Most of us can look back and think about a time or experience that we wish we could make linger a little longer—summer vacation just ended, after all. But, there are always a dozen reasons not to stop and smell the roses, putting things off until ‘later’. Make no mistake about it, we have to sacrifice to think about the future and to make plans; however, this sacrifice comes at the expense of the present moment—think about procrastination being the direct opposite: sacrificing in the future (the all-nighter before the final paper is due) for the sake of comfort in the present moment (not worrying about that paper until AFTER Thanksgiving break!). Sometimes we have to think ahead though. When I need to plan my finances, for example, thinking about when I need to pay rent and how much money I am going to need to do that, not living fully in the momentis probably a good thing. But the fact remains, thinking about the future takes me out of the glorious moments of the present, and sometimes when we live with the promise of living more fully later, “later” never seems to come at the right time. We have all had that thought: “if I can just make it through _______, then I will be ok.”We repeat this mantra to ourselves over and over again; if I can just make it through: this class; this year; this mile; this difficult phase of my life; THEN, I will relax and invest in my relationships, I will go back to school, I will pay off some debt, etc.

            Developing the willingness and ability to live fully in the present moment is central to learning to live more mindfully day-to-day. Further, living a conscious life that is guided by our values is based on being in contact with the present moment so that you can identify what our values are, and how closely we are adhering to them. So, let’s talk about some things that we can practice in order to learn to be more mindful in our daily life and help bring us back to the present moment if we start drifting into distressing thoughts of the future or ruminating on the past: 

1) pay attention to the sights and sounds in the world around you, it will help bring you into the moment as the rest of the world only exists in the here and now; 

2) remind yourself to be present and fully engaged when you are interacting with other people—really listen to people when they speak, and attend to the things they are saying; 

3) close your eyes and focus on the pattern of your breathing; 

4) do not be judgmental of the thoughts you are experiencing in the present moment. Instead, simply attempt to notice the thoughts for what they are: neither inherently good, nor inherently bad; 

5) try paying attention when you are eating: what are the textures and smells of the food you are eating, pat attention to the process of eating and notice how you feel satisfied as you become ready to complete the meal; and 

6) maybe next time you are out for a walk, cleaning your room, doing the dishes, or any other task you are completing throughout the day, try simply attending to the task in that moment and doing nothing else.

            Why does being mindful and attending to the present in a flexible way matter? Well, the alternative is a constant barrage of information such that we are unable to focus on any of it. When our attention is constantly shifting around from place to place—looking at our phones, while listening to a friend we are sitting with, while thinking about what we want to do after school, we “see” and “hear” all of it while making sense of very little of it. And pretty soon, because of the way our brain prioritizes incoming information in order to decide what to pay attention to, we struggle to remain in the present moment when we are under-stimulated. It gets to the point where watching Netflix is no longer enough and you end up watching Netflix while scrolling through Instagram or watching YouTube at the same time because you require that level of input to feel stimulated. Being mindful and engaged in the present moment is critical for coping skills, as seeing those reasonable alternatives to the problems we face in any given moment require us to be able to look directly in front of us and identity them. So, try some of the activates above to put yourself more fully in the present moment and not only will the people around you be thankful, you will thank yourself when you experience the full joy that each moment that this lovely world, and the people in it, have to offer.

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There are all kinds of instances where we fuse with unhelpful thoughts. How quickly does making a mistake in our lives translate into that classic thought “I’m so stupid.” How about being called to the office, or having a teacher ask to speak to you after class? I remember all kinds of thoughts welling up when I was young and got a request like that. Well, these types of ideas are the kinds that we internalize over time and can tend to be a very sticky things that we end up fused to. The technique of defusion is one that encourages us to step back, and look at our thoughts, instead of looking at the world from the perspective of our thoughts. After all, we know that words in our minds can be a tricky thing to control, or eliminate; therefore, we want to learn the skill of pulling the words away from their meaning if they are not helpful. In the example of a person making a small mistake and immediately having the thought “I am stupid” ‘Pop!’ into their head (we have all been there), we can first simply start by acknowledging the fact that I am having the thought that “I am stupid”as a result of something that happened outside of my head. This moves us one layer away from being fused to an otherwise unhelpful thought and gives us a little space between ourselves and the thought.

One of the examples used earlier, being called to the office, results in feelings of stress and anxiety and often forces us into a situation where we are rehearsing for ourselves a situation where we believe that the only reason that we would be called to the office is if we were in trouble; therefore, the reason that we are being called to the office IS that we ARE in trouble. Again, something happens around us and spotlights an area where we are fused to our thoughts. Defusion is the process of stepping away from those thoughts and giving yourself room to breathe. So, instead of fusing to the thought “I am being called to the office and I am probably in trouble!”remind yourself that “I am having the thought that I am going to be in trouble because I was called to the office,”and see that although there is anxiety in both statements, in the second you have a little bit of space between your thoughts so that you can evaluate your choices more objectively and take action. So, if you have been asked to stay after class by a teacher and you feel your heart beating fast and anxiety about this impending meeting, the first step might be to say to yourself ‘I am noticing that I am feeling very anxious at this request’ and then resist the powerful drive to avoid the feelings of this thing that is creating worry. This might give you the chance to slow down your thinking, and recognize that you just did very well on the last test, and the teacher may want to ask that you help others who may be struggling with the material; or that the teacher had some ideas about a project that they knew you were working on and is excited to talk to you about them!

            Let’s think about another example: when I was a kid I was a competitive swimmer, I started when I was 6 years old and I swam all the way through college, as a scholarship athlete at the University of Utah. At different points in the year, local, regional, and national level competitions would be scheduled and it was usually the case that within any 6-month period of time, I was preparing for a “big-race.” I can tell you that at this time, I was training long hours, and putting lots of pressure on myself to do well. Before college, I was really trying to ensure that I could earn a scholarship to University, and in college I really wanted to keep my scholarship and do the best I can for the team to qualify for bigger races. On any given week I could gauge my performance relative to a strict schedule that was put together to track my progress (this was a schedule that I put together with the coaches at the beginning of every season as a way to ensure that we could meet our goals). Suppose that I am becoming increasingly nervous about how I will perform on the day of the “big-race,” and I start visualizing myself ‘choking.’ I might imagine my teammates being disappointed in me. I might think about having a tough conversation with my coaches after a disappointing result. In fact, just thinking about what my coach might say in response to falling short of our goals causes me to panic. This raises my concerns about failure even further. In some sense, I seem to have stumbled on this treasure trove of anxiety that starts to identify the big race as a negative one, even though we are still weeks away.

In a state where I am fused to my thoughts, the thought of the disappointment, panic, and sadness associated with all of the preparation I had been doing not providing the result that I expected would become the focus of my anxiety. Not the big race itself. Notice, in this example, that I am weeks away from the big race. In fact, I may never have been to a competition like this before. Yet, because of fusion, many of the verbal tools that I use to describe my feelings about the big race have brought the anxiety of the performance that is months away, right to my door step. Today. And without having even been to the big-race, I am already experiencing the feelings of panic and anxiety that are tied to my perceived failure. At this point, I have the option of Experiential Avoidance, or the idea that moving toward something we really want often will bring up feelings that are not positive (e.g., think about the goal of going to college versus the stress of taking the SATs), or I can defuse from my thoughts and simply try to notice that I am feeling anxious about the big race, giving myself a little space between me and the anxiety and a chance to make a plan and keep moving towards my goals and values. Remember, the goal of defusion is to get your arms around the language we use so that it does not control us (become fused to our actions), and we can manage difficulty on our way to living out our values and chasing after meaning in our lives!

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People are used to following a whole bunch of rules while we live our lives: you stop at red lights, when there is a line, stand in it, and never propose at someone else’ wedding! But there is an even more basic rule about what has motivated us throughout our history: put simply, we should attempt to avoid ‘bad’ things, and seek out ‘good’ things. You can see how this kind of thinking served us well for a long time. We should avoid cold, and seek warmth; we should avoid danger, and seek safety; we should avoid people who want to harm us, and seek those who want to embrace us. One can see how this kind of thinking worked well for a long time; however, things got complicated when we started using language to describe not only the world around us, but the world inside of us.

            We use words to label a wide range of feelings (e.g., anxiety, sadness, fear, happiness, joy, love), and we have simultaneously transcribed those emotions on our original axiom of avoiding bad and seeking good. So, it is natural for us to believe that anxiety, stress, and fear are bad and should be avoided, and that happiness, joy, and love are good, and should be sought after. While it is easy to arrive at that conclusion, we forget that anxiety, sadness, and fear are simply emotional responses to aversive events. Not the events themselves. This idea is at the center of experiential avoidance, and it stops us from being able to make the voluntary and values-based choice to remain in contact with personal experiences in a non-judgmental way. Let’s think about an example: applying for college. This is a huge undertaking that often takes months or even years of planning, taking the SAT/ACT, writing personal statements, asking teachers and mentors to write letters of recommendation, researching schools, the expense and time involved in applications, and the risk that you might do all that work, and not get into the college you hoped for. Even though the entire process is incredibly stressful and gives us the feeling that turning back would be the best thing, we persist. Even though we might get rejected, we persist. And the reason we persist, is because we know that the upside (going to college) will be worth it, even if we have to endure a bumpy road along the way. Well, the harm of experiential avoidance comes when we let the stress involved in the application process turn us around, running the other way, before we even get the chance to fail. Moving toward something that we really want often brings out negative thoughts and feelings (e.g., What if I fail; What if it doesn’t work out;What if we break up), and moving away from those thoughts brings relief, even though we may have been moving toward something that would bring us a lifetime of fulfillment. If we act as though our goal is to avoid stressful emotions, we start to construct our lives around avoiding things that we don’t want, instead of moving toward things that we do want.

            Well, what do we do to fight against those negative feelings that come up while we work toward things that we think matter? We have to keep in mind that those feelings are simply a normal reaction to values-based action. Acceptance is a values-based choice, not failure or tolerance, not giving-up or giving in. The goal of acceptance is to acknowledge that we are demanded by life itself to feel, think, sense, and remember the things that come up in the process of living a meaningful life. It is to acknowledge the fact that while we pursue the things that are important to us, we can expect to encounter rough waters. We can expect to second guess ourselves, and to have people we care about second guessing us. But attempting to scour out the (alleged) sources of our anxiety so that we can control them will always leave us trying to dig our way out of a hole. Instead, we should opt to curiously explore the nature of our anxiety, our fears, and our stressors, so that we can change our response from running away from stress, to accepting that stress is a normal part of our lives, and does not have to inhibit our movement toward our values. There are several things that we can do to increase the likelihood that we choose acceptancev. avoidance: 1) always remember that regardless of what it may look like on social media, EVERYONE is going to experience bumps in the road, and we should be very careful when we think that it would just be easier to trade places with someone else; 2) remember that moving towards the things that we value can present with difficult times, but weathering the storm will be worth it; and 3) know that feelings of stress and fear, and anxiety, and depression can be very normal things that we all experience!^[1]

^[1]If your feelings of anxiety or depression are lasting longer than a couple of days, and reaching several weeks or months, that could indicate a clinical diagnosis that ought to be referred to medical professionals for further support; additionally, thoughts of suicide or self-harm should also be treated as an emergency and seek evaluation

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Have you ever wished that you could control upsetting feelings of anxiety, fears, or unwanted thoughts and memories? One of the things that people seeking therapy always wonder is if I could just control my thoughts, I would be happy/healthy! Well, it turns out that attempting to control or get rid of our ‘unwanted thoughts’ is a behavior that is driven by the idea that healthand happinessare the absence of distressing thoughts. We look around and we see that everyone around us appears to be facing the world, bravely. Everyone around us appears to be in control of their emotions, and their Facebook and Instagram further evidence their happiness. But, do these things really reveal the truth? Dr. Steven Hayes, one of the originators of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), suggests that ‘the idea that suffering is best described in terms of chemical abnormality (i.e., mental illness) has a superficially appealing flip side, namely, that health and happiness are the natural homeostatic states of human existence.’ He refers to this idea as the assumption of healthy normality, and indicates that we may have done a great dis-service to ourselves in our attempt to rid ourselves of these “unwanted” thoughts and feelings. In fact, it may be the case that a flexible approach to one’s personal experiences is more likely associated with health and while being, even when those experiences might be upsetting, or painful. And attempting to control our thoughts, even the ones that we find distressing, may even give the thoughts even more fuel!

            Imagine that a dog is exposed to something upsetting—think, mailman—the dog will bark and bark, run around in circles, and maybe jump up on the couch and stare longingly out the window as long as the truck is in view or the faithful civil servant may be around. Once the mailman is gone, however, the dog goes back to his life. He does not spend time anxious about the stress of the mailman in the future. His stress about the mailman is confined to the moments in time when he can see him. Now, we could make the case that being a person is a bit more…complicated…than being a dog, and the reason we might say that is because people have discovered how to use a complicated system of communication—speech—to describe every part of our world; including the world that exists inside each and every one of us. The dog does not spend time avoiding the negative emotions of the mailman throughout the day because the dog only responds to the mailman in the moment of his/her presence. People, however, get in our mind that the metaphorical-mailman is coming tomorrow, and we identify that this mailman makes us feel insecure, and all of a sudden just the thought of the mailman can elicit feelings of anxiety! Just like that, we become pre-occupied with the future in a way that takes us out of the present, and makes us a target for all kinds of negative emotions. 

            So, what can we do to make ourselves more psychologically flexible? Well, the first step is to identify our values: “when people are out of touch with closely held personal values, their behavior is instead controlled by social conformity, attempts to please others, or avoidance.”The next step is to realize that Mindfulness, or our ability to contact the present moment, can help us be aware of unwanted internal experiences and use that awareness not to miss out on our lives while ruminating about the past or future. Third, try to watch your thoughts without judgment and be aware of where your mind wanders throughout the day; when you find that your mind is wandering, try to simply notice to where it was wandered, and acknowledge that instead of pressuring yourself to get back on track. 

Devoting finite attentional resources and energy to regulating emotions, whether it is attempting to decrease the negative or increase the positive, “steals” time and effort from living out our goals and values. Ironically, by being flexible and living in service of our deepest values instead of being narrowly focused on achieving happiness, we end up experiencing more frequent joy and meaning in life and less distress; we end up with greater vitality and degrees of freedom to live each moment. In the coming posts we are going to explore the different areas in the ACT model of psychological flexibility, and see what we can do to increase our psychological flexibility! 

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