Josh Hillebrand LCSW

Tag: mindfulness

  • 4 A’s of Acceptance for Difficult Emotions

    4 A’s of Acceptance for Difficult Emotions

    So much of the world says that if you’re feeling anxious, guilty, shame, angry, sad, or any other painful emotion, then something is wrong with you. Instead, you’re expected to be one hundred percent happy all of the time just like all the smiling faces you see on social media. But this is completely bogus and please throw it out the window. Every emotion – even the painful ones – is there for a reason and trying to give us important information. And going even further, the struggle to not experience these emotions often makes them even more intense and can drive our suffering up. So, the next time you’re feeling an emotion you’d rather avoid, try using the 4 A’s of Acceptance instead:

    A close-up photo of a woman who is crying.
    • Acknowledge the feeling: name it, label it, notice how this particular emotions makes your body feel, say “hello and how are you doing?” to it
    • Allow: give that emotion permission to be there, such as “Okay, anxiety and that corresponding racing heart I will let you be here right now”
    • Accommodate: pretend that painful, distressing emotion is a house guest and try to greet and host the emotion with a sense of hospitality. In practice, you can do this by imagining that you’re opening up space around the emotion as it is showing up in your body. So, if a sense of guilt is giving you a pit in your stomach, close your eyes and bring that pit to mind and then open up around the pit.
    • Appreciate: this can be one of the most difficult and also powerful steps of accepting difficult emotions. Try to connect with even a sliver of gratitude for what the painful emotion is trying to do for you. If it’s anxiety or fear, their likely trying to protect you from or prepare you for something. If guilt or shame, they may be trying to get you to connect with your personal values and to repair meaningful relationships. If it’s anger, it’s also likely trying to protect you, your loved ones, or something else important. If it’s sadness, it could be your body’s way of acknowledging and grieving the loss of something that mattered to you a lot.

    Acceptance can be a radically powerful way of being in the world and you can start practicing it today with your own private feelings. Imagine if we lived in a world where everyone was actively practicing acceptance of painful emotions on a daily basis: I sincerely believe there would be far less war, hate, injustice, poverty, climate change.

  • Cognitive Defusion

    Cognitive Defusion

    Let’s say you’re stuck on a difficult thought like “I’m a terrible person,” “Nobody likes me,” or “I’m going to sound like an idiot during my presentation tomorrow.” Traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) might have you look at the evidence for and against these thoughts, and then identify a more adaptive thought. This can be a helpful approach for some people. But, if that doesn’t work for you, try out one of my favorite concepts and skills from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): cognitive defusion.

    Cognitive defusion says we don’t need to spend time challenging thoughts. After all, sometimes this can just get us caught up in a back-and-forth with our own mind and result in more and more spiraling and rumination. The idea behind cognitive defusion is that we can use mindfulness to remind ourselves that our thoughts are basically just strings of words in our heads. Further, the skill can help us take a step back from the thoughts, noticing them with curiosity, and this can give us the space we need from these troublesome words. Once we have that space, we can choose something more productive to do with our time, which might look like enjoying another episode of The Pitt or Alien: Earth.

    A man is sitting crosslegged and is meditating.

    Here are some ways to practice cognitive defusion (some of these are more on the silly side but can be effective but use your own intuition for which ones to try out):

    • Repeat the thought out loud as fast as you possibly can for 60 seconds
    • Say the thought as slowly as possible (pretend to be the sloth character from Zootopia)
    • Sing the thought to the tune of your favorite song or the Happy Birthday song
    • If the thought is “I’m a bad person,” try saying “I’m having the thought that I’m a bad person” and notice if that shifts anything for you. Next, try saying “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that I’m a bad person” and see if that shifts anything further. You could also try writing the thought out and follow the same pattern.

    Remember the goal is not necessarily to banish the thought from your consciousness forever. Rather, it’s to help you take a step back when you’re hooked on a thought so you can have more psychological flexibility in a sticky moment. If you have more of this type of flexibility, you could spend more of your time doing the things you actually care about rather than letting that thought distract you for the rest of the day.

  • How to Cope with a Crisis: The TIPP Skill

    How to Cope with a Crisis: The TIPP Skill

    When you experience a crisis – something sudden, unexpected, and immediately threatening, your body will do its job and automatically protect you by sending you into fight, flight, or freeze mode. This can be good and useful if you’re in a situation that demands immediate physical action like jumping out of the way of a car or running out of a burning building. You won’t even have to think, your body will do the work for you.

    However, let’s say you are no longer being immediately threatened and/or you’re having a difficult time calming down even after the crisis has passed. Or, maybe it’s simply no longer helpful to be in crisis mode. You’re going to need a skill to help bring the prefrontal cortex – the most recent part of the brain that evolved and which is responsible for executive functioning, planning, consideration of long-term consequences and benefits – online.

    A woman is yelling and is holding her head with both of her hands.

    To help jumpstart the prefrontal cortex, so to speak (actually, these skills will help down-regulate the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system). I’d recommend one of my favorite skills from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), the TIPP skill. But please note you should consult with a medical doctor before using any of these skills if you have a heart condition, are pregnant, or have another health condition that you’re concerned about:

    • Tip your body temperature by putting an ice pack on your forehead, hold your breath, and bend forward so your head is between your knees for 30 seconds. Repeat for several rounds until you begin to notice your body down-regulating. For a more intense version, you could submerge your face (just up to your ears) in a pot of ice water and hold for 30 seconds.
    • Intense exercise: if you have space, do some sprints, or try some burpees, or even just jump up and down for several minutes. Anything to get your heart rate up like you are doing some serious exercise.
    • Progressive Muscle Relaxation: squeeze both feet and curl your toes in as tightly as you can without causing pain and hold for a few seconds and then release and notice the difference. Repeat at least two more times. Then do the same thing with your calves, your upper leg muscles, your core, squeezing shoulders up to your ears, clench your hands into tight fists, squeezing your face so you’re making a tight facial expression. It’s important to pause and notice the relaxed feeling after every “squeeze” round.
    • Paced Breathing: try Box Breathing where you inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold for four counts, and repeat. Or, try inhaling for about six counts and exhaling for eight counts (you can change the numbers as needed but just make sure the exhale is longer than the inhale). My own opinion is that it’s more helpful to aim for long, quiet inhales and exhales through the nostrils only while keeping the mouth closed.

    Once the body is in a calmer state (even if not totally relaxed), you will be able to think more clearly in order to consider your next steps.