An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor We try to stop thoughts, but thatʼs impossible. Itʼs like trying to constantly hold an enormous inflatable beach ball under the water, but it keeps popping up in front of our faces. We can allow the ball to float around us, just letting it be. So rather than stop the thoughts, we can…
An Acceptance and Commitment Metaphor There are things in our language that draw us into needless psychological battles, and it is good to get a sense of how this happens so that we can learn to avoid them. One of the worst tricks language plays on us is in the area of evaluations. For language to work at…
An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Metaphor Do you care how many people wear argyle socks? Well, what I want you to do isreally, really develop a strong belief that college boys have to wear argyle socks. Reallyfeel it in your gut. Really get behind it (I canʼt!) Well, really try. Feel overwhelmingly strongly about this. Is…
Picture your life as a movie. The first episodes have already been shot. Now the production is moving on. Imagine that you are the director and you can direct an actor that plays your part. But you’re a special kind of director with limited power. You can’t go to the screenplay writer and ask him to change the…
Imagine you are going on a journey. Somewhere really special, where you really want to go, somewhere you’ve wanted to go your whole life. When you get to the train station you see two trains. One is a bit odd-looking and strange, some of the seats look a bit hard and overall it looks a…
Imagine that you are in the process of climbing up a big mountain that has lots of dangerous places on it. And imagine that my job is to watch out for you and shout out directions if I can see places you might slip or hurt yourself. But I’m not able to do this because…
When you are playing cards with your mind, how do the trumps work? Does ‘Rational’ or ‘Makes Sense’ always trump ‘Feelings’ or ‘Thoughts’?
Picture your thoughts as “cold call” sales representatives – the type who phone you when you are getting dinner ready. Some of them aren’t really all that gifted for the job. You just tell them you are not interested or that you are busy right now and they will apologize for having disturbed you and…
Thoughts and feelings drop into our awareness like water dripping into a pond. They create ripples – other thoughts and feelings. We don’t like “bad” thoughts and feelings, so we bat at them. We interfere by splashing around. The droplet comes in and we can choose to observe it, or meddle with it. What is…
Our mind is like a GPS. These systems are very convenient and useful. But it’s still important to keep one’s eyes wide open and look out of the window from time to time. Some people have ended up driving into a river because a bridge had gone down and the system hadn’t been updated. In…