Today I’ll be sharing my favorite exercise for coping with difficult emotions and chronic illness.
Have you ever gotten exhausted from trying to fight against thoughts and emotions you’ve labelled as “negative?”
When you live with a chronic illness, there can be pressure to control your thoughts in an effort to feel better. Unfortunately though, the more we try to control and fight our thoughts, the stronger they seem to get!
Fortunately, there’s a better way. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I learned a powerful mental exercise called “passengers on the bus,” which you can try in just 60 seconds!
1. Imagine your Thoughts & Feelings are Passengers on a Bus, and you are the driver
- Fear or anxiety, which might say, “”What am I going to do? I’m so scared! Slow down the bus!”
- Sadness, depression or hopelessness, which might say, “No one will ever love me now. I’m so sad. I should stop driving + give up.”
- Forced positivity, which might say: “It’s going to be OK. I just have to keep being positive. Let’s go faster!”-
- Overwhelm, which might say, “”Ahhhhh I’m so overwhelmed, we have to pull over and take a break!””
2. Don’t Fight Them; Acknowledge and Allow *all* Your Thoughts
Often times we want to only accept and allow “happy” or comfortable thoughts, and we want to eliminate thoughts we’ve labelled as “negative” or “bad.” However, attempting to control your thoughts is a short term strategy that many people find does not work in the long term.
In ACT, you learn to simply allow and acknowledge those thoughts (this might sound familiar if you’re familiar with mindfulness). It’s also called being the “observing self,” the self that is able to look at your thoughts – just acknowledging that they *are* thoughts helps you defuse from them, or become less desperately attached to them!
You can approach your thoughts with curiosity and compassion, like you would a friend, and you can even have gratitude to your brain for producing thoughts thoughts.
You can say something like, “Hello thoughts! You sure like to tell lots of stories. I see there’s the story that I’m a failure, that I can’t handle this, and that I need to just think positive. Thank you, brain, for always trying to protect me.”
3. Remind Yourself of Your Values and Where You are Going
When we give our thoughts less power, it’s called letting go of the “struggle switch,” or the struggle to control our mental experience.
We are then free to put energy to what’s possible NOW in the present moment, despite whatever challenges we’re facing health-wise. Connecting to your values can take longer than a minute, but for me it usually ends up with something like this:
“I value time with my family, meaningful activities and living life to the fullest extent possible. I can keep driving in the direction of these values despite these passengers (strong thoughts and feelings) that are yelling at me to take the exit, slow down or turn around!”
Conclusion
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is: You don’t have to like your thoughts and feelings about your condition, but you can give them less power over you by first allowing them, then redirecting your focus to your values and what’s important in your life!
Does this resonate at all? Let me know!
