The Ostrich Effect

Have you ever found yourself putting off something important? Something that you knew you needed to do but found reasons to avoid. Maybe you avoided checking your email for fear of what was inside, maybe not checking a debt balance or a bill or maybe you avoided going to the doctor for fear of unpleasant news.

Ostriches are famous for burying their heads in the sand to avoid predators, although this is a fictitious belief – ostriches don’t really do this. Like the apocryphal story of the ostrich, many of us will commonly bury our heads in the sand to avoid unpleasant experiences, even if those experiences are vital to leading a full, rich life.

The ostrich effect is a tendency to ignore important information when we feel overwhelmed, stressed or worried. In particular, people may delay acquiring information, even when doing so may improve their situation. One study even found that investors check their portfolios growth more frequently in a growth market than one that’s receding. It may be easier to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist than to deal with it, especially if we don’t feel like we have the cognitive resources or emotional capacity to be able to cope with the challenge ahead. We may be in a job that doesn’t fulfil or satisfy us, we may feel that we’re in a relationship with the wrong person, we may regret living in the city we move to, or maybe we’re questioning our sexuality or whether we are studying the right degree? Maybe we’re lacking meaning or purpose in our lives but we don’t know what to do so it’s easier to power on and “just get on with it” and pretend that we’re just doing “fine”.

These types of “problems” we have in life are difficult to talk about and finding the right person to have a discussion with can sometimes be challenging. We all fear people’s judgments, and we prefer to show the version of ourselves that is our “best selves” rather than admitting that things aren’t the way we expected.

In our society today, we are taught to think that we have “control” over our lives. When things go “wrong” or when we have “problems” we have a tendency to overestimate how much influence we have over outcomes. People who are self-critical believe that they got themselves into the mess that they are in, and therefore has the responsibility to get themselves out. When we feel like we are the problem it is more likely that we are going to bury our heads in the sand, to save “face” for as long as possible. However, what if we don’t actually have as much control over our lives than we think we do? What if sometimes stuff just happens and what we need to do is talk about it so that we can overcome our challenge?

If we think about it, businesses are run with groups of people, each person has a different task to do, people have meetings to talk about how each member is going on their particular task and each person is able to get help and feedback from other team members if they are struggling with their project. What if we were to have regular meetings with ourselves and the people we have in our lives? To check in and ask “what’s currently working for you?”, “what do you think you need to improve on?” “what are you finding most challenging”, “Is there anything you’re finding difficult to approach right now?”, “are you missing some important information”, “how can we get through this together?”. Checking in with others and getting and receiving feedback about our personal problems with the right people, can open up new doors to feel differently about our situation. Doing this regularly will decrease stress and prevent problems from getting worse.

When it’s an external problem that has guidelines to follow, objectives to meet and outcome to measure, it’s much easier to talk about because the problem is “out there” rather than something “inside” of us. But when it’s an internal problem, personal situations, difficult thoughts and feelings about life, work, relationships and our future, it’s much harder to articulate and express the issue in words, especially when we haven’t taken the time to process what’s going on for ourselves.

People have a tendency to “avoid” problems. Therefore use different types of methods to help them get rid of them. Some methods include:

-Over productivity: taking on too many new projects, excessively cleaning or exercising, having a regimented routine.

-Suppression: pushing difficult thoughts away, pretending that everything is okay.

-Numbing or Withdrawing: drinking more alcohol than usual, taking drugs, over eating, restrictive dieting, sleeping too much or too little.

The first step to change is to identify what avoidance strategy you are using. Once we admit that something is not working out we usually feel much better about ourselves and our situation because most of the time it’s not half as bad as we think it is. When we open up and talk to a trusted friend, colleague or professional a huge weight is lifted off our shoulders because we are actually dealing with the problem instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist. We all have problems, but most of us don’t like to admit or talk about. If we can stop burying our heads in the sand, open up and be honest to ourselves and others then maybe our lives will be filled with less stress, and only then we can truly experience a life filled with meaning and purpose.

It’s very common to ignore information to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings, but by burying our heads in the sand we do ourselves no favours, in fact we only deny ourselves the chance to grow, to be brave, and to be vulnerable with ourselves and others. Talk to those around you about the things you’re avoiding, and do your best to open up and accept that it might be unpleasant, but it’s in service to living your values – and being the kind of person you’d like to be.

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.   

How to Reduce Your Work Stress & Burnout Risk Using ACT

By Dr. Rob Purssey

Nursing is often a high stress profession, with difficult hours, systems, patients, colleagues, bureaucracy – you name it! These challenges mean that nurses and other health workers are more susceptible to burnout than other low stress professions, but is there anything we can do to help health workers lower their stress?

One of the key parts of burnout for health workers are the psychological effects of working with difficult clients. In particular “stigmatising attitudes” are particularly difficult for drug abuse counsellors. If we could decrease these psychological effects for health workers we could also decrease their stress, and degrees of burnout.

An interesting study compared the impact of ACT, multicultural, and educational training on professional burnout and stigmatizing attitudes amongst drug abuse counselors.

The ACT intervention significantly reduced stigma at follow-up and burnout at post-intervention and follow-up. In addition, reductions in burnout at follow-up significantly exceeded those attained through multicultural training. Changes in the ACT condition were mediated by changes in the believability of stigmatizing attitudes.

A study with social workers showed, amongst those significantly stressed, ACT significantly decreased levels of stress and burnout, and increased general mental health compared to a waiting list control.

The specific ACT intervention the study used was six 2-hour group sessions. The intervention included information about stress and relevant lifestyle factors (e.g. work-life balance, sleep, and exercise), behavior change strategies, communication and assertiveness skills, and training in ACT techniques for managing stressful thoughts and feelings, values clarification, and mindfulness practice.

To shorten that up, the just 12 total hours of intervention covered:

-information about stress, sleep, exercise

behaviour change strategies in communication and assertiveness

ACT skills defusion, acceptance, values focus and mindfulness

This recent study is very important for our frontline healthcare workers –the intervention resulted in increased mindful awareness and decreased experiential avoidance, as well as decreased perceived stress and burnout. Levels of mindful awareness and perceived stress were sustained at follow-up.

Learning ACT skills can help to significantly reduce stress for frontline health workers, and could be an effective tool to decrease stress for many other proffessions. Learning ACT skills can be easy, get started with our ACT Fundamentals resources page.

Check out the study here.