Largest Mindfulness Lesson – new World Record at UQ, Brisbane 23.07.19

By Tunteeya Yamaoka

On Tuesday 23.07.19 at the University of Queensland 1417 people participated in the world’s largest ever mindfulness lesson, setting a new Guinness World Record! Renowned mindfulness expert Dr Russ Harris, author of “The Happiness Trap” and many other ACT books led the mindfulness lesson for 30 minutes, and took the audience on a thoroughly interesting journey towards living a more present and engaged life. Brisbane ACT Centre was proud to participate in this exciting event, with director Dr Rob Purssey and practitioner Tunteeya Yamaoka serving as official Witnesses for the Guinness team!

Mindfulness skills not only actively increase your focus and concentration but also help you to set clear life intentions so that you can live more fully, according to your personally chosen values, and being far less caught up in your daily struggles with thoughts and feelings.

At the end of the day what we are all looking for is peace, purpose and fulfilment in our lives. During the lesson Russ Harris helped the audience connect with how living a more “Mindful, purposeful and fulfilled Life” can be undermined by our efforts to avoid or escape from difficult life experiences or “getting rid of” unpleasant thoughts and emotions. On the other hand, living more fully can be enhanced by becoming more present in the moment, engaged with our values, mindfully aware of our inner and outer experiences, and letting go of control.

One simple and effective strategy that Russ taught the audience during the lesson was his “ACE Process” to build purposeful awareness.

Awareness: Intentionally building gentle, willing awareness of your inner experiences. Noticing and naming our thoughts and feelings and becoming more skilful at describing our emotions.

Centering: Focussing attention on the breath, as you inhale and exhale, just feeling the air entering and leaving your body, grounding yourself by simply focusing on the physical sensations you experience, gently and mindfully just noticing the breath.

Expanding: Expanding your awareness from your body to what is going on around you. Look around, what can you see? Focussing your attention by using sight, sound, taste, touch and smell to become more mindfully aware of your surroundings.

Life makes a lot of demands on us, and it is easy to be swept away with the tide of busy thoughts and tricky feelings. Practicing mindfulness skills can allow us to stay grounded during challenging life experiences so that we can focus and ACT on what really matters.

Call Brisbane ACT Centre’s experienced team on 07 3193 1072 to explore how mindfulness skills training can help YOU get present in the moment, connect with purpose, and LIVE more fully!

The User’s Guide to Mindfulness, Meditation & Noticing

The User’s Guide to Mindfulness, Meditation & Noticing

Mindfulness, an intentional focusing practice, can have many benefits, amongst them easing up feelings around struggle with anxiety. The psychophysiological exercise practice of intentional focusing activates the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain which is related to thinking and emotion, and this entire process, including such physiological activation appears to help us to deal much more effectively with anxiety.

Mindfulness, also referred to as purposeful focusing practice can also lower blood pressure, improves our sleep partly by a common and pleasant side effect of deep relaxation and undoubtedly lengthens your attention span, as mindfulness IS purposeful attentional focus!

However, practising mindfulness skills can be tricky, for instance by bringing us into contact with unpleasant thoughts and feelings that we may otherwise “push to the back of our minds”, seeking to avoid. Many people think they simply can’t meditate. People often believe that gurus who meditate every day have more willpower, less anxiety or a bottomless depth of tranquility.

These beliefs are often due to common misunderstandings: that mindfulness practice is intended to relax (quite the opposite, it is to allow feelings to simply come, and go, and come again), that meditation CLEARS the mind, in fact we usually notice our mental busyness even more. Intentional focusing is a skill that takes practice like anything else.

Guided vs silent Mindfulness practice

There are many types of mindfulness practice, two of the most popular types are guided and silent. Guided mindfulness involves a guide in person or nowadays often via an app, walking you through the practice of intentional focusing step by step. This can be helpful as it brings us back to the purposeful focus practice, as most of us are often hooked off by our minds in all kinds of directions.

Silent meditation practice however is often done completely solitarily, it is likely what you imagine when thinking of the Dalai Lama or Buddhists meditating. This requires great intention of practice and determination aided in all likelihood by historical and cultural reinforcement! Guided mindfulness practice is therefore often your best bet when beginning your own practice.

Brain dump

Often our minds are busy and full of thoughts. It is simply impossible to “empty the mind”. A practice some find helpful is “dumping” all your thoughts on a page – helping you feel like your mind has at least partially processed these thoughts, possibly allowing a little more mental space. If it’s written down you won’t forget it – it can be dealt with after you’ve finished your practice. A brain dump is an exercise where you write everything that’s running through your brain down, handwriting can often be most helpful. Everything that’s bothering you and needs dealing with, whatever pops up in five or ten minutes of writing. It’s a bit like writing a journal, but more flowing and less constrained. It doesn’t have to make sense, just write. Writing down your thoughts and feelings can give you space to experience mindfulness.

Following Thoughts

An ongoing challenge everyone has with mindfulness practice is maintaining focus and not being swept away in our rivers of thoughts that naturally, continuously flow. No one is really able to focus very easily, it’s normal for many thoughts to wander around in your mind and all of us have great trouble unhooking from them.

A helpful exercise (if you are good at visualizing) is the ACT classic leaves on a stream: Visualize a gently flowing stream with leaves on the surface of the water, and you place your thoughts onto the leaves and allow them to float on by. Let these thoughts come, and stay, and go – and come again. While most thoughts me come and go pretty quickly, sometimes, thoughts hang around for quite a while. Let your thoughts come and stay and go, in their own good time, as they please. The aim of the exercise is to learn how to step back and watch the flow of your thoughts, not to make them go away. It’s okay if the leaves hang around and pile up, or the river stops flowing; just keep watching. The skill we’re learning is how to observe the stream of our thoughts without getting pulled into it, how to watch them come and go without holding onto them. So if a positive or happy thought shows up and you go, ‘Oh, I’m not going to put that one on a leaf; I don’t want it to float away,’ then you’re not truly learning the skill of simply watching your thoughts.

A little goes a long way

Making time for regular mindfulness practice is tricky but even five to ten minutes of meditation has been shown to have demonstrable benefits. Sometimes people may expect to focus perfectly first try, but this is really never the case. Mindfulness practice, while helpful, naturally allows the presence of various difficult thoughts and feelings. If you find yourself noticing a very busy mind, don’t beat yourself up, this is a totally normal experience. When a thought arises, thank it for its presence and let it come, go, and come again. Good on you for giving it a go – doing any amount of any new health practice is an achievement!

Apps to Guide your Journey

ACT Companion – the Happiness Trap app – full features US $10 guided mindfulness, written and experiential exercises – from none other than Russ Harris, author of the best-selling book The Happiness Trap. Simple defusion and acceptance techniques, easy values-clarification and goal-setting tools, powerful ‘observing self’ and self-compassion exercises – you’ll find it all here.

buddhify – “the most convenient, best value and most beautiful meditation app available today. Helping people around the world reduce stress, sleep better & be present in the midst of it all.” Certainly the best looking and easy to use mindfulness app!

Insight Timer

Insight Timer has 19000 free meditations by different guides available. Easy to use and has a wide variety of meditations to choose from. Insight Timer is free & community driven with a rating system to help you find the meditations that best suit your needs.

Headspace

Headspace is a very popular guided meditation app that tracks how often you meditate and rewards continued use. It has more structure than Insight Timer, and requires a subscription past the free courses. The graphic design is also excellent! If you prefer a structured, consistent course, this is the app for you.

The Sleep School App helps you practice The Sleep School sleep tools & techniques until you have mastered them for life. The app delivers The Sleep School approach across its 5 core areas in a highly interactive audio-visual format.

Mindfulness is like any skill, it takes practice. It’s normal to find it difficult at the start so don’t beat yourself up. There’s a wealth of research demonstrating benefits for performance, wellbeing and sleep – even a small amount of focusing practice can go a long way. Try the brain dump exercise, letting your thoughts flow freely without judgement and go easy on yourself for your first experiences of mindfulness. There are some great apps available to aid you on your journey.

Our Brisbane ACT Centre psychologists are trained in the latest cognitive behavioural therapies, and are all keen mindfulness skills coaches. If you’d like further coaching or input, get in touch with our friendly staff today. Remember to be gentle with yourself, mindfulness practice is tricky and you should be proud that you’re trying. Be persistent and it will get easier, but forever challenging – in a good way!

Feeling Shame in Parenting: Share Your Experience

By Julia Caldwell

“Are you sure she’s hungry again? Didn’t you just feed her?”

“Don’t you think your baby is wearing too many clothes? Won’t he be too hot?”

“You should put the baby down, otherwise she will never be independent”.

“You know, if you don’t teach her to share/sleep/have manners/eat healthy foods, he will never learn”

Being a parent is hard. Really hard. Nothing can prepare you for the intense joy and the equal degree of exhaustion that comes with having a baby. Advice on how to be a “good mum”, whether solicited or not, is everywhere. Look up a mums’ forum online and enter at your own peril. In the shame-filled pressure cooker of the early postnatal period, even well-intentioned advice (like the suggestions given above) can feel like personal attacks and criticism.

Shame, in Gilbert’s model of compassion-focussed therapy, is defined as the negative evaluation of one’s self as bad, unworthy, inferior, or undesirable, and underpins a wide range of psychological symptoms. This is like a critical relationship that mums can have with themselves (internal shame), seeing themselves as a bad or not good enough mother. Perhaps, more painfully, we can also feel shamed by others (external shame), where we believe we are viewed as such in the eyes of other people – especially those we look up to, such as other mums who seem to have it “altogether”. Although mums can have internal and external shame, this isn’t the case for everyone. Although most mums can relate to an experience of being externally shamed by others, this does not necessarily mean they will develop an internal sense of shame as a mum.

The use of mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion is shown to powerfully counteract the poisonous effects of shame. Mindfulness and acceptance helps us to build present moment awareness, and attend to what is happening in the “here and now”, rather than getting “fused” with, or “hooked” by, shameful and self-critical thoughts about one’s capacity as a mum. Compassion allows mums to rest in kindness in the present moment, facilitating greater acceptance of shame-based thoughts and actions that might keep us stuck in a relentless struggle with our experience as a mum. From this standpoint of compassion and kindness, we can find it in ourselves to turn towards, rather than away from, the pain and shame that comes with caring deeply for others. We can then move towards compassionate, and effective, values-guided action on how we want to be as a mum, enriching our relationships with a sense of connection, warmth, and inclusiveness.

We are currently investigating the experience of shame, and the benefits of compassion, in Australian mothers. If you are pregnant (third trimester), and would like to be involved with our research project, please click here to find out more and to participate in our survey: https://survey.app.uq.edu.au/CompassionateMums.survey. We also encourage you to share the survey with anyone you know who is pregnant (third trimester).

If you are feeling depressed – ACT can help

By Peter Gillogley

In this article you will find answers to some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about Depression based on some recent research. Questions address by this article include:

How common is depression?

What evidence-based treatments are there for depression?

Will my depression ever get better?

How does rumination cause depression?

Treatment for rumination

Where can I get help for depression?

How can I get help for depression?

How common is depression?

You are not alone, actually depression is pretty common. According to the National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, around half of Australians experience a psychological problem in their lifetime, with about one-in-five people experiencing a common psychological problem in the last 12 months. More than one-in-twenty Australians experienced a clinically significant disturbance in emotions or feelings, such as depression in the previous 12 months. That’s a lot of people, some of which may be experiencing trouble sleeping, appetite changes, libido changes, or difficult feelings such as despair, melancholy, misery, sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, unmotivated, and low energy.

What evidence-based treatments are there for depression?

Fortunately, recent research is telling us that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy might help. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a modern form of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), that teaches specific, structured evidence-based skills to help you better manage difficult thoughts and feelings, so they are less an obstacle to you living a life that is guided by who and what is important to you.

ACT is an evidence-based approach for psychological problems, with an impressive research base of over 200 Randomised Control Trials supporting the effectiveness of ACT. ACT helps depressed people, as effectively or better than other established psychological treatments.

Will my depression ever get better?

It is common for people experiencing depression to feel like things will never change, or that any gains made during therapy in managing difficult thoughts and feelings will “wear off”. Recent research is much more optimistic. In one Finnish study, over two-thirds of depressed participants who received ACT treatment, no longer met diagnostic criteria for depression. And the gains made during ACT therapy are still detectible 3 years later. A similar study found gains made during ACT treatment were still detectible 5 years later.

How does rumination increase depression?

Sometimes, reflecting on past experiences can be a useful way of learning and becoming wiser. However, if there is a gap between what we have and what we want, our problem-solving minds can try to be helpful by trying to figure out what went wrong, or what we need to do next. This might work more often, if figuring out what to do with difficult thoughts and feelings was as easy as every-day challenges in the physical world, like finding your missing socks. When our problem-solving minds don’t achieve immediate success, they often turn the intensity dial even higher, screen out distracting experiences from the outside world (that might hold useful information), so your mind can focus on what is happening inside your head. So, despite your mind trying to be helpful, this pattern of thinking can turn into unhelpful brooding. A consistent finding of resent research is that repetitive negative thinking (rumination) prolongs and deepens sad and depressed mood.

Treatment for rumination

ACT is sensitive to the rumination behaviour and provides a vantage point to notice what is happening and provide more flexible ways of responding when difficult thoughts and feelings arise and you find yourself brooding or ruminating over and over again. Notice that ACT is not trying to change your negative thoughts (although your thoughts might change) or make them go away. When you notice yourself hooked by a particular thought, ACT teaches you how to unhook from that thought and focus more of your energy on living a meaningful life, rather than struggling with your thoughts. One recent study showed that even a brief two-session ACT intervention can help unhook from difficult thoughts and increase valued living.

In summary, depression is common, and ACT can help you live a more vital life.

Where can I get help for depression?

Therapists at the Brisbane ACT Centre are trained in evidence-based treatments for depression, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for depression.

How can I get help for depression?

You are welcome to make an appointment with me today (Book an Appointment with Peter Gillogley) or one of my fellow ACT therapists at the Brisbane ACT Centre.

Work Stress and Burnout – Finding a better Work-Life Balance

By Peter Gillogley

I enjoy my work as a psychologist, using ACT psychotherapy skills to help clients struggling with anxiety, depression, PTSD along with other common and often highly distressing psychological problems. Yet, some days at the workplace seem full of vitality and purpose, and other days leave me feeling emotionally and physically drained. I know I am not alone.

The other day, I showed up at the workplace with plans to be super productive in helping my clients, by using mindfulness and other ACT psychological flexibility skills, to better handle their thoughts and feelings, and live their lives more fully. I had a manageable number of appointments and a few letters and administrative tasks that needed finishing. However, I spent much of the day struggling with what seemed at the time, unexpected detours and distractions. My mind kept saying that it shouldn’t be like this and there must be something wrong with me if I can’t get organised. Instead of productively focusing on the next most important thing, I found my mind wandering off topic, ruminating and worrying that I couldn’t get everything done.

When things don’t happen in the workplace how I expected, I can find myself investing lots of energy into playing the same events over and over in my mind, but not really making any progress. Worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, can rob me of being really present and tuned into the people around me. It’s all too easy to take my work issues home in my head, and so miss out on precious moments with my family and friends. Unchecked, this pattern of struggling with my thoughts and feelings about work, can leave me feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, detached and questioning my career, and less effective in my professional and personal life. What was work-life balance can turn into the feeling of pressure and being overwhelmed. Being human, the path of burnout can easily take a heavy toll on my physical and mental health.

Fortunately, ACT skills can help. When I notice myself struggling at work, I can use mindfulness to take time to take a step back to cultivate a sense of kind, compassionate curiosity, simply observing my thoughts and feelings. In doing so, I find that I am a little less consumed with my thoughts, and have more energy to focus on what is actually going on around me and focus more effectively on what needs doing next. Increased work productivity leads to less workplace pressure, enabling me to spend more time at home and reclaim a sense of work-life balance. By gently making space for stress, frustrations and irritations, I find I might even get a buzz about getting things done. By being more present in each moment, I can become more connected with those around me. And by connecting with my values and purpose in each moment – in this context “why I became a psychologist” – I am more willing to do what’s needed even in the presence of difficult emotions.

Many of us spend a third or more of our waking hours at the workplace for much of our lives. ACT gives us effective psychological tools and the ability to flexibly shift perspective, enabling us to feel engaged while at work and connected with friends and family when the work day is over. ACT can help you live a more vital working life. You are welcome to make an appointment with me today (Book an Appointment with Peter Gillogley) or one of my fellow ACT therapists at the Brisbane ACT Centre.

3 More of Our Favourite Self Help Psychology Books

How to Learn to Accept Tough Thoughts and Feelings, and be the Person you Want to be

Our last post on 3 of our favourite self help books focused on books that explored popular myths, how those myths can hold us back and where to go from there. This week we’re recommending three books about managing difficult thoughts and feelings.

An important part of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Psychological Flexibility model is learning to recognize that no amount of positive thinking makes difficult thoughts go away, and that often the harder we push against those thoughts the more troublesome they can become. You might notice that ACT therapists rarely even refer to thoughts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and instead, we talk about ‘difficult’ thoughts. That kind of language attempts to loosen us up from the unhelpful idea that we shouldn’t have “bad thoughts”.

These three books are about learning to get better at skillfully handling difficult thoughts and feelings so that we can get on with being our most authentic selves, living in line with our values, noticing when we’re hooked away, forgiving ourselves and gently returning.

1. Anxiety Happens, John P. Forsyth PhD, Georg H. Eifert PhD

A portable small guide to “cultivate calm and radically transform your life”, from the book’s description. Anxiety Happens presents 52 simple strategies to enhance calm and soothe feelings of anxiety. Anxiety Happens explores the underlying causes of anxiety, why pushing anxiety away and avoiding things that make you anxious just doesn’t work, and how to move past anxious thoughts and feelings to live a full, meaningful life.

If you read only one of these three books, Anxiety Happens would be our pick. It’s practical, engaging and results focused. The authors are well known in the ACT community for their clinical and academic work, workshops and trainings. Anxiety Happens can help you to develop willingness, self-compassion, and wisdom.

Available on Amazon, Book Depository and others.

2. Users Guide to the Human Mind, Shawn T. Smith, PsyD.

Users Guide to the Human Mind is a charming and super helpful look into the challenging thoughts and feelings that we all feel, quite a lot of the time! Shawn’s book is funny, sweet and thought provoking. Coming from an ACT perspective, Users Guide to the Human Mind teaches us simple strategies to consciously observe our thoughts, and learn also to notice by gentle practice that we don’t need to be so governed by them.

From the synopsis:

“The inner workings of the human brain may be a great mystery, but the mind’s true purpose has been verified time and time again: your brain is secretly conspiring against you to make you crazy. How else can we account for the needless fears, dramas, tizzies, and rages that affect us on a minute-by-minute basis?”

The Users Guide to the Human Mind explores these questions with stories, exercises and relevant academic studies to teach cognitive strategies to help us unlearn some of the bad habits our mind has picked up over time.

Available for purchase from Amazon, Book depository and also on Audible!. Also available digitally from Brisbane City Council Library via Borrow box or Overdrive smartphone apps.

3. Stuff That Sucks: Accepting what You Can’t Change and Committing to what You Can, Ben Sedley.

Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-MwelUgx-I

Written with young people in mind, Stuff That Sucks is a validating, normalising and compassionate book that encourages readers to accept difficult emotions rather than struggling against them. Ben has written a terrific book that superbly adapts the ACT model for young people, or those working & living with young people. This is a very special book that helps young people move past difficult thoughts and hone in on their values, and be more of the kind of person that they choose to be, discovering themselves along the way.

An important part of Stuff That Sucks is its strong focus on validating feelings. No one wants to have their feelings minimised, be told that they’ll grow out of them or that it’s just a phase. The author, Ben, has a wealth of background working with children, adolescents and families, and has adapted that experience into this beautiful book.

Stuff That Sucks is fast paced, practical and fun, drawing upon solid scientific evidence to help us all deal more effectively with the kind of thoughts and feelings that often simply suck!

Amazon, Kindle version, FB page

So those are three more of our favourite self books that we regularly recommend to clients. We love good, actionable and evidence based psychology books and all of our therapists read tons of them to stay sharp. Working with a trained professional can be a terrific complement to a good self help book to get the best possible results for you. Get in touch with our friendly team and we can match you up with the therapist that is best suited to help you be your best self. Get in touch Today!

My GP recommended yoga…Now what?!

By Davina Tapper

ACT Aligned Yoga: Committed Action 6 Week Workshop
Saturdays, 9:15am – 10-:30am, 25 August – 29 September 2018
At the Brisbane ACT Centre

When we have been through something that causes us discomfort or pain, whether it’s a stressful work environment, or a serious life change or loss, it’s healthy to find support to get through it. Recovery is an active process and it’s supported both from seeking help from others, and also engaging your own skills and self-care. Everyday more research is showing the multi-faceted benefits of yoga, leading to more GPs and health professionals recommending it. Incorporating a deliberate yoga practice into your weekly routine, can help you practice the tools to increased awareness at other times when life throws “reality” at you. Before you can start gaining the common benefits of yoga like better posture, improved focus, a more relaxed parasympathetic nervous system, reduced muscle tension and increased self-awareness, you need to find out where to start.

As a seasoned yoga student, I’ve moved across countries and then across an ocean and between states, and know all too well the difficulty in finding the right class. I’ve also had the experience of coming to yoga young and supple, and returning stiff and disheartened post traumatic-injury. I often felt yoga was inaccessible, too hard, or even competitive. That starting point with a new class, like any new skill or recovery process, can feel awkward and full of anxiety and questions for many reasons. Why not just do something different? If it feels so hard to get started, is it even worth trying? Will it really add much to my life?

Ideally yoga helps you work on connecting your body and mind to increase both physical and psychological flexibility. When you find the right class, yoga can be a safe place to explore how nutritious movement (and often breath work) can help fuel your brain as well as your body. Before we even start something new, we are already going into it with our beliefs and experiences from the past and expectations for the future. Thinking about what you want and your expectations can be a helpful start to dealing with the anxiety and take action to find a good class.

Once you have an idea of what you are after, ask questions and talk to the teachers. Some great questions include asking about the level of the class and experience required, what type of yoga the class works with (and what that means), and sometimes the class size can be something to consider, especially if you are newer to yoga. Giving yourself the time to understand and explain what you want will usually help you be more confident in finding the right class. If you still have questions, it might be time to ask yourself what’s holding you back or if you are letting your mind give you an excuse. Otherwise, it might just be time to give it a go and see for yourself!

ACT-inspired yoga allows you to provide a deliberate practice in self-compassion, mindfulness, letting go of pain and be OK with uncomfortable feelings through using movement and breath. We have one body, one mind, and countless thoughts. Awaken your body and senses while increasing compassion and vitality through ACT-inspired yoga.

Three of Our Favourite Science-Based Self-Help Books

Live a More Meaningful Life – Right Here, Right Now

The right book at the right time can completely change your life. A science based self-help book can be a fantastic aide to therapy with a skilled professional psychologist, and can help grow the skills learned in sessions of ACT therapy. Research shows specific ACT self-help actually helps, and even more so with the aid of a skilled coach.

Our psychologists, being passionate about helping others, have examined dozens of psychology and self-help books so as to give the best possible care to their clients. We present three of the best which explore popular myths, and examine these myths can constrain and limit us. Here’s three of our favourite ACT oriented self-help books.

1. The Happiness Trap by Russ Harriss

The simplest, bestselling and most practical ACT self-help book from Australia’s foremost ACT trainer Dr Russ Harris. A famous book in the ACT community, the Happiness Trap debunks popular myths around happiness and coaches you in useful skills based on sound scientific evidence. If you read only one book on this list, it should be this one!

Russ has created an 8 week online program based on the Happiness Trap.

From the book’s website “The Happiness Trap is a unique and empowering self-help book – now published in 30 countries and 22 languages – that will enrich your life and fundamentally transform the way you handle difficult thoughts and painful feelings. The title reflects a key theme in the book: popular ideas about happiness are misleading or inaccurate, and will make you miserable in the long term, if you believe them.”

As the founder of ACT Steve Hayes says: “The Happiness Trap carefully and creatively presents techniques that anyone can use to undermine struggle, avoidance, and loss of the moment. Russ systematically explores how we get into the ‘Happiness Trap’ and then shines a powerful beacon showing us another way forward.”

2 Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong, by Kelly G. Wilson & Troy DuFrene

A superb, touching book exploring anxiety. Using ACT theory and practical exercises, Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong approaches anxiety very differently to traditional self-help. Instead of pushing away our difficult thoughts and feelings, Things Might go Terribly, Horribly Wrong suggests we learn to gently, kindly touch (and learn from) our difficult thoughts and feelings, to make space for them and maybe even in doing so find ourselves within them!

Awarded the “Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit”, this book is one of our favourites to share with our friends, clients & colleagues.

3. Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown

A charming, inspiring book by research professor, Brene Brown, Daring Greatly is an exceptionally well-reviewed book on the importance and power of vulnerability. There’s a common myth that showing vulnerability is a weakness, while in contrast should project a perfect exterior at all times. Taking normal risks in life naturally make us feel vulnerable, and we equally naturally push back those feelings. In this book Brene challenges this tendency and shows us that being able to embrace and show our vulnerability can prove to be a great strength.

Brene Brown’s 2010 TEDx talk “The Power of Vulnerability” is a charming and funny introduction to her work.

Please check out these 3 wonderful books, the links above and let us know what you think! In comments, on FB, or with your Brisbane ACT Centre skills coach.

Fear of Heights – Taking the Leap

By Jeremy Villanueva

Having a fear of heights (or anything!) can be terrifying. Regardless of your particular fear or anxiety, we all have similar experiences to some extent. In my life it has been heights in particular.

For example, if I were standing on a tall and narrow walk-bridge, or even just standing inside a tall building, my heart would start to pound, I would breathe faster, my stomach would sink into itself, my fingers would tingle, my body would freeze, and my mind would race and tell me to get the heck out of here. Do any of these experiences sound familiar?

At first I thought my experience was typical, but I realised that not everyone shared the same responses as me! I was told that my feelings would eventually disappear, but they simply didn’t go away. While I still froze with a pounding heart, other people seemed to be just fine standing on balconies, leaning over edges, or just being anywhere on high ground.

To be honest, I didn’t worry about it too much because I was happy to keep clear from heights if it meant that I wouldn’t experience those unwanted feelings in my body.

However, by avoiding heights, I started to miss out on things that I thought would be fun. For example, I enjoy being active and outdoors, but I avoided things like hiking, rock climbing or other high-exposed activities. Even more so, it meant that I missed out on spending fun times with friends or family.

I don’t remember the exact moment, but one day I decided to try to expose myself to heights, if it meant that my feelings would go away. It was a slow process, but eventually I started to go on a few hikes and climbs, but I still had those unwanted feelings. Good grief!

After 10 years of actively trying to get rid of my fear of heights, I realised that perhaps I can’t necessarily get rid of my fear, but just maybe I could learn to be at ease with it. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) skills to help us do just that.

What I started to do is learn to make more room for these unwanted feelings (even though they’re still there), and still do the things that are important to me. ACT skills have taught me how to manage my fear more effectively, so I’m nowhere near as restricted as I once was a short few years ago.

In fact, just last year, I was able to do something on my bucket list that’s caused me anxiety for a while – bungee jumping!

Remember those feelings that I mentioned earlier?

They were still there from the day I booked my bungee jump to the moment I was standing on the edge of that bridge. My heart pounded, I breathed faster, my stomach sunk into itself, my fingers tingled, my body would freeze, and my mind raced and tried to convince me not to jump…

But I still took the leap, and it was amazing! I’ve always wanted to tick bungee jumping off my list, and I didn’t let my fear take that away.

If you have a fear of heights (or anything!) or you want to learn more about ACT, and quickly learn effective ACT skills please feel free to call us on 07 3193 1072.

If you want to take the leap, I’ll be more than happy to help you on your journey.

Jeremy Villanueva

Can you do Great Things, Even When you Don't Feel Great?

By Tomas Tapper

Have you ever seen a toddler throw a tantrum? I have. Just last night in fact. And again this morning. Our home is entering “the terrific twos” (a phrase my wife uses).In these last two tantrums, I noticed something pretty awesome.

Imagine an exhausted almost-2-year-old, clearly needing to go to sleep, but not wanting to miss out on more play time. As the emotions get stronger and the tiredness (and stubbornness) overtakes, the stomping feet, the rubbing eyes, it all gets louder, and then the tears start. I’ve worked extensively with parents and children, and I’ll readily admit it’s quite a bit harder when it’s happening in your own home!

Here’s where ACT comes in. A bit of grounding work for myself, and then a gentle touch of compassion and an explanation “You need to get your pjs on so you can give yourself some rest” brings an interesting realisation. No, the crying doesn’t stop, the screaming doesn’t subside – but the arms go in the sleeves and the feet miraculously walk towards the bed. It’s an amazing thing to witness. Despite everything likely going on in my toddler’s mind, the anger, the sadness, the raw emotions, there’s still the ability to physically do what’s needed to complete the bedtime routine. Even at just 2 years old we can already practice taking action towards what we want, even though our emotions are seemingly getting the better of us.

Somewhere along the way in our “growing up”, we start to see our emotions as things we shouldn’t express as much, and in turn, often things we should control. We have “adult tantrums”, usually within ourselves and sometimes towards others. We express our anger, frustration, and disappointment through self-criticism, arguments with loved ones, disengaging from work, etc. The result:

We start to tell ourselves, and even believe, we need to feel better to do better.

Then we take it a step further, and we stop doing the things that help us get what we want from life like self-care, engaging with others and performing our best. I see it everyday, and I’m guilty of it sometimes myself, after all, we are only human. Luckily, our emotions don’t actually decide our actions, even if we sometimes let them. On the contrary – if emotions always dictated our actions, imagine the road rage we would see!

So what makes us sometimes take action, and sometimes be dictated by our emotional state of mind and body? Well, just like a 2-year-old’s temper tantrum, it may be circumstances we don’t like, or things happening that feel too hard to cope with. Either way, when we do work in ACT, we build stronger skills and increase our psychological flexibility so we don’t get caught up in our own inner tantrums. Working on getting untangled from the mess of emotions, and regaining control of our actions so we can be free to engage with a life that we want to live. So even though we might feel like throwing our arms in the air and crying because life is pretty cruel to us sometimes, we can put one foot in front of the other and walk towards something that will help make things better.

You don’t need to feel good to run good. You don’t need to feel great to do great parenting. And guess what, you don’t need to feel happy to engage in something that can bring happiness or meaning to your day.

You can still do great things, even when you don’t feel great.

My extensive work with parents is actually not too far off from my work with elite athletes. It comes down to doing what matters most and performing at your best. The tough part is – You need to perform on a given day, whether you want to or not.