Posted by alexandra_k on May 14, 2005, at 19:54:32
In reply to Re: acceptance » alexandra_k, posted by badhaircut on May 14, 2005, at 11:40:17
>I found a really neat book about that: "White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts" by Daniel Wegner. It's not a therapy book, but it has applications to therapy. He suggests you "invite the thought back in" as the only way to deal with it.
Mmm.
Books.
I might have to interloan that.> Yes, ACT is in that ballpark. The authors put out a book with other mindfulness-type therapists like Marsha Linehan (DBT guru) and Zindel Segal and others. They're calling themselves the "third wave" of behavior therapy.
Ah. I had heard of Segal but didn't know anything more about him. This is verrrrrrry interesting to me :-)
>First there was mean old behavior therapy,
(LOL!!! shocking dogs to learn about 'learned helplessness')
>then thought-attacking CBT,
(LOL!!!)
>now various mindfulness techniques.
("Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition")
Hmm. I might just have to buy that one...
> My usual thought "I'M A JACKASS!!" came up. I observed it sorta like a cloud, as you say, but it didn't float past, it just enveloped me like a mist — and stayed.Yup. But lots of processes are going on in you at the same time. Thoughts, feelings, sensations from your different sense modalities. I think I only become aware of things 'floating past' when I am attempting to focus all my attention on something different. I'm only aware of my thoughts floating past when I'm trying to concentrate on how my breathing feels. If I try to focus all my attention on my thoughts then they don't seem to 'float past' - but my breathing does.
>But I saw it as separate from me, from observer-me. I thought something like, "I see myself and I may be a jackass. I see I have jackass-feelings. I can watch myself leave the house and 'be' a jackass outside..." So I did, I went outside and observed myself feeling and –sorta– being a jackass. I was not quite indifferent to it: 'being' a jackass did not feel good. But better feelings were no longer my target. I was outside.
Shot.
Well done :-)
You got yourself outside YAY!!!!!Though...
There what you seemed to be doing was accepting that you are in fact a jackass. And if you are a jackass inside then you may as well go be one outside. You brought into the belief that you were one and tried to accept that it was true and realised that it being true didn't mean that you had to stay inside. Thats a kind of 'worst case scenario thing'. It is like the belief (though I prefer to think of it as a thought) 'Everybody hates me'. You could try to accept it as fact - but come to realise that it doesn't matter because you don't HAVE to be loved by everyone. You don't NEED that. But IMO that strategy is limited. It buys into the truth of the thought where it need not do so. So the CBT alternative is to try and challenge the thought so that you don't have to believe it is true. But that doesn't seem to get rid of the sense of conviction that one has that they are true when the thought occurs to one.
> Logically, I know I'm not a jackass (well, not very often one).But you seemed to accept the fact that you were above.
>But my heartfelt belief is that I am the braying Jackass King. Doing this mindfulness tactic Thursday, I was surprised to see how much I struggle against this belief — I try to avoid it over & over all day long. So much energy goes into this.
> "Do THIS and you won't be a jackass!"
> "Do THAT and you won't care if you're a jackass!"
> "Oh god! You did that one wrong! YOU JACKASS!!"Yup.
Hmm.
It is an undeniable fact that you do have those thoughts. They are about the only thing that is certain, actually. But where room for doubt creeps in is when you jump from the fact that you have the thought (that you do have the thought is necessarily true) to whether the thought is an accurate representation of reality (that you actually are a jackass).You have to accept having the thoughts you have. Because they just occur to you. There isn't squat you can do about whether they occur to you or not. In a sense thoughts are something that happen to you - or in you.
But... What we do seem to have control over is our attention processes. Whether we attend to those thoughts or not. Lots of processes are going on in us at any given point in time. We seem to be able to choose what we attend to.
(Trying hard to avoid paradox here.....)
A feeling of conviction or certainty has become attached to the content of a thought being veridical, where really the sense of conviction or certainty should be attached to the fact that they are having the thought....
I wonder how things would have gone if you were able to try to focus your attention on something like how your breathing feels for a while. A few minutes. You should get better at being able to do this fairly quickly with practice. Then to become aware 'out of the corner of your mind' that you are having thoughts that are coming and going... Whenever it starts to become a big cloud then focus your attention back on your breathing... Maybe... Maybe... You could see it AS a thought. And see that while it is certain that you are having a thoguht - it is just a thought. And what I mean by seeing that it is JUST a thought is seeing that it isn't something that you do believe. It is just a thought. Not even a belief.
Because logically you know that - right?
You don't believe you are a jackass.
But the thought occurs to you and the sense of conviction becomes associated with the thoguhts being true rather than with the fact that you are having the thoguht.Does that make any sense at all???????
> > Good thoughts come too.
> > I used to cling to those.
> > But then I found that I actually learned a whole heap more by resisting the temptation to cling to them
> It's interesting. The good thoughts can loose their "effect" as quickly as the bad ones.Well. Thoughts do come and go. If I try to cling then I get mad / pissed / upset when they go - as they invariably do. That just makes it harder to let the bad ones go. Clinging hurts. Basically. Clinging to the good only results in the bad. Better to remain detached to a degree and just take what comes as it comes...
> > This is all really hard to explain in a coherent way that doesn't run into paradox> Very hard to talk about. I'm glad you take the time to do it.
:-)
Thanks for the book links.
I really should check those out..
:-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:492810
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20050501/msgs/497820.html