Brains A

As a university lecturer I was responsible for the personal guidance of a large number of students.  Many of them would come to talk to me about their hopes and fears, and as I mentioned at the beginning of the book, quite a few of them shared their personal struggles with anxiety with me. However, there was always one type of task that seemed to strike fear into nearly all students, even the most capable and seemingly confident ones – the dreaded class presentation. Any task or assessment that involved standing up in front of the class and presenting, be it as individual or as part of a group, caused high levels of panic amongst many in the class. I’m Just Not a Confident Person A phrase I would often hear when students talked to me individually was ‘I’m just not a very confident person.’ Many people tend to say this when faced with a situation or task they are uncomfortable about, but people forget there are many things they are very confident at doing, ...

We tend to use the terms ‘anxiety’ and ‘fear’ interchangeably, but while anxiety is normally to do with worrying about possible events before they occur, fear can be defined as our psychological reaction to events that are happening. So anxiety is concerned with the future, often causing us to avoid situations, or stopping us from starting tasks or activities. Fear, on the other hand, is a reaction to what is happening in the present, and can cause us to stop what we’re doing or to underperform. Fear is important and appropriate in many situations and is there for our protection; if a car is hurtling towards us at high speed, it’s appropriate to feel fear and get out of the way as quickly as possible. However, we can also feel fear in situations when it isn’t helpful, and it can stop us from stepping outside of our comfort zone. When we are experiencing an event that causes fear to rise within us, we find it unpleasant and often try to withdraw, block, or dis...

So far in this section we’ve talked about defusion: accepting unhelpful thoughts but reducing or eliminating their impact on us; followed by expansion: accepting uncomfortable feelings, letting them come and go, but not allowing them to influence us. The next step is engaging with experiences, tasks, and situations, despite unhelpful thoughts and uncomfortable feelings — staying present and engaging with life. Engagement is the ability to be present instead of caught up in our thoughts. It is about being fully in the moment; being open to, curious about, and actively involved in our here and now experience. Being able to be engaged and present is essential if we need to perform well in challenging situations or if we want to find satisfaction and fulfilment in whatever we are doing. If we want to do anything well; learn a difficult skill, play a musical instrument, perform well at an interview, or talk to strangers; we need to be engaged in what is happening....

When we experience painful or uncomfortable feelings, emotions, or sensations, we normally do our best to avoid them, distract ourselves from them, or try to get rid of them. When we do this we can often find relief in the short-term, but make our lives more difficult in the long-term. We can learn to deal with these feelings effectively by learning a skill called ‘expansion’.  In ACT the term ‘expansion’ is really another name for acceptance . We’re using the term expansion as most people misunderstand acceptance to mean wanting, tolerating, liking, or putting up with. In the context of ACT, this is not the case. Expansion can be described as the ability to open up and make room for emotions, sensations, and feelings. Allowing them to come and go without letting them drag us down, push us around, or hold us back. It’s a powerful way to handle difficult emotions such as fear, anger and anxiety. So rather than trying to get rid of unpleasant feelings,...

We discussed the ACT mindfulness skills of defusion, expansion, and engagement, earlier on in Chapter 3, explaining they can help us to manage our anxious thinking. This section of the book includes three short chapters, one on each of these ACT skills. The best way to understand, and learn these skills is to try them out for yourself. While they may seem a little contrived at first, after some practice they become easy to implement, and after a short while you will find you are able to do them intuitively and with very little effort. In Chapter 3 we also discussed the pathways to anxiety, and said our cortex can initiate anxiety in one of two ways: by interpreting neutral sensory information as dangerous, and sending this information to the amygdala to produce anxiety; or by independently creating anxious thoughts and feelings, without sensory information, and again, sending this information to the amygdala to produce anxiety. With practice, we can learn to...

This chapter is the start of the practical journey this book will take you on. It’s about considering and understanding who you are, assessing how balanced your life is, and preparing you to make changes. Although you may be keen to start tackling anxious thoughts and feelings immediately, it’s important you first build a foundation that will hold you steady when faced with the challenge of changing your relationship with your anxiety and taking action. The exercises in this chapter are about taking a step back and assessing who you really are, how you live your life, and considering if you could change it for the better. Who Are You? Research suggests when we affirm our most deeply held values — the best parts of our authentic selves – before entering into a potentially threatening or challenging situation, we can reduce our anxiety, become less defensive, and more open and authentic in our behaviour. By spending a little time reflecting on, and perhaps writi...