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The ACT of Feeling

How to Accept Feelings and Make Changes

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My teenage self would say, "I don't have feelings." This laughably untrue statement led me to believe that being strong equated to "not feeling." In truth, I had so many emotions and couldn't differentiate my feelings from another person's. Emotions are the gateway to accessing information inside oneself; neglecting them meant neglecting me (sound familiar?). Needless to say, I changed tune upon entering the social work field, years of personal therapy, and making a career that requires talking to people day in and day out about their emotions (which I love). Culturally, emotions have the stigma as weak, unnecessary, and problems to be solved. When we're more accustomed to keeping on and carrying on, how do we begin to access our feelings?

Feelings Matter. Feelings give us information about ourselves in the world around us. For example, feeling anxiety each time you receive an email from your boss provides information. In this one example, there are plenty of ways to interpret the emotional data:

• My boss only emails when something has gone terribly wrong
• The feeling of getting an email from my boss takes me back to being in school and fearing getting in trouble
• I'm bad at my job, and this email is a reprimand for how bad I am
• I knew it; I'm getting fired
• There's something I need to do, and the anxiety is giving a sense of urgency
• What anxiety?

Our individual experiences influence our interpretation of the emotional data. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) teaches us that arguing with the "truth" of the story doesn't help. Often, our inner critic leads the investigation to discern truth, which leads to rigidity, unhelpfulness, and stuckness. Before anxiety leads into a slip-and-slide down the eternal rabbit hole of worry and despair, we can observe the emotional state. The six core processes in ACT include:

• Acceptance: Rather than avoidance of the emotion/situation/state, acceptance alleviates the friction of fighting against what is happening.
• Defuse: We become judgmental when we're rigid around how things "should" or "ought" to be. Defusion allows for possibilities that change statements such as, "I'm unworthy" or "I am bad." We can begin with observing these as thoughts rather than truths. If these thoughts are like shirts you can buy, would you buy these thoughts?
• Presence: Be in touch with the here and now. Our minds love to come up with stories, conclusions, resentments, or fantasies. Seeing our life experiences as processes helps us remember that all events are fluid.
• Self as Context: Like in meditation, our self is an observer of an experience. Separation encourages detachment from our unhelpful attachments, including identity.
• Values: Understanding what matters to us helps us to differentiate bestowed ideas of what our values ought to be, and how to discern them for ourselves. Values allow us to simplify what truly matters in life, freeing us from getting lost in unhelpful weeds of thoughts. Values are not goals, they're pillars for how we want to live and be.
• Committed Action: Action in alignment with values creates meaningful changes. Actions have goals; they're behaviors we want to see. The one percent rule helps when taking action. For example, If I identify as a person whose community matters, how can I do this 1% better than last week?

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ACTfully,

Brittani