Where are you spending your energy?
Something hard shows up within our minds. It might be a thought or an image. As hard things are usually unpleasant, our natural reaction is to try and stop experiencing them. Often we try to rationalize them away, fight them with other thoughts, distract ourselves, numb ourselves, or avoid situations that might prompt their existence. It can take an exceptional amount of energy and work to get away from these thoughts. Depending on your strategy, the cost might be harm to your relationships, your body, your goals, or your energy levels. Sometimes these strategies might be fruitless, but sometimes they might work for a while, which motivates you to keep doing them. But even then, when we look closely many of these strategies tend to be a short-term fix with a high cost.
The reality is, I've never met a person who successfully frees themselves from hard thoughts forever. Our brains' efforts to protect us and survive means our thoughts often focus on the unpleasant ones more anyways, just in case it helps us avoid danger. This means to "get rid" of these thoughts would be a neverending battle.
The reality is, I've never met a person who successfully frees themselves from hard thoughts forever. Our brains' efforts to protect us and survive means our thoughts often focus on the unpleasant ones more anyways, just in case it helps us avoid danger. This means to "get rid" of these thoughts would be a neverending battle.
Now before we go further, I'm not saying that practicing these types of coping strategies that might give you a break from unpleasant thoughts should
never be done. If a strategy is used infrequently and leads to a positive
improvement to your life (in the short and long term) then by all means,
use what works for you. But in a situation where you might be using these strategies often, the strategy isn't working for you or the life you want to build, or where
the cost in energy and time is too high, it might be time to consider
another approach.
What if we put all that time and energy we used to fight off these thoughts into something different? What if we simply let them exist as they are, without working to get rid of them? It might seem counterintuitive, but making space for those hard thoughts to exist means we no longer have to devote so much energy into addressing them. Dr. Russ Harris calls this approach "dropping the struggle." It certainly takes practice to watch these thoughts/images come and go as they please in our mind, but it also takes a lot less work.
When we drop the struggle, our energy can instead be spent taking action that helps us build the lives we want. We can spend the energy considering what the thought is trying to tell us about a situation, and consider if the message is even relevant or useful to improving our lives. Then we can devote our energy to solving problems with effective and values-guided actions. Or if a thought isn't really serving you (regardless if it's true or false), we could instead focus our attention onto something that does serve you - such as connecting with a loved one, caring for yourself, working towards a goal, or any other activity that is important to you. When we choose these values-guided activities, the thoughts might still be whispering to you, or maybe they'll come and go and reappear, or maybe they'll burn themselves out and fade away. The point is it doesn't really matter - we're letting the thoughts come and go and change as they please while we focus our energy on what's important in that moment. In sum, we want to shift our energy from reacting to our thoughts, to intentional actions that will make positive changes in our lives regardless of what thoughts are there.
You might ask "but how do I manage to just let them be, when these hard thoughts are so strong and overwhelming?" Well this involves holding our thoughts more lightly, recognizing them simply as words and images that only gain power when we buy into them. Through practice with various strategies, ultimately we can change our relationship to our thoughts rather than fruitlessly trying to eliminate that relationship altogether. How to go about this is a separate topic, but in Acceptance and Committment Therapy the name for this technique is called Cognitive Defusion.
Now take a moment and reflect on your own experiences. How do you respond when an unpleasant thought shows up? Where are you spending your energy?
When we drop the struggle, our energy can instead be spent taking action that helps us build the lives we want. We can spend the energy considering what the thought is trying to tell us about a situation, and consider if the message is even relevant or useful to improving our lives. Then we can devote our energy to solving problems with effective and values-guided actions. Or if a thought isn't really serving you (regardless if it's true or false), we could instead focus our attention onto something that does serve you - such as connecting with a loved one, caring for yourself, working towards a goal, or any other activity that is important to you. When we choose these values-guided activities, the thoughts might still be whispering to you, or maybe they'll come and go and reappear, or maybe they'll burn themselves out and fade away. The point is it doesn't really matter - we're letting the thoughts come and go and change as they please while we focus our energy on what's important in that moment. In sum, we want to shift our energy from reacting to our thoughts, to intentional actions that will make positive changes in our lives regardless of what thoughts are there.
You might ask "but how do I manage to just let them be, when these hard thoughts are so strong and overwhelming?" Well this involves holding our thoughts more lightly, recognizing them simply as words and images that only gain power when we buy into them. Through practice with various strategies, ultimately we can change our relationship to our thoughts rather than fruitlessly trying to eliminate that relationship altogether. How to go about this is a separate topic, but in Acceptance and Committment Therapy the name for this technique is called Cognitive Defusion.
Now take a moment and reflect on your own experiences. How do you respond when an unpleasant thought shows up? Where are you spending your energy?
The information in this article is based on the research and
writings of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioners. Much of
this information is discussed in more detail in Dr. Russ
Harris' The Happiness Trap.
Harris, R. (2008). The happiness trap: How to stop struggling and start living. Trumpeter Books.