Look what happened to my phone the other day - I wasn't holding it firmly and the cat, being too friendly for his own good, knocked it out of my hand. "So what?" I can hear you say. "Happens to people all the time." Indeed it does and my intent is not to moan about it but to share with you how my response to such an accident has changed since practicing ACT.
In the past this sort of accident would have knocked me for a hell of an emotional loop. I would have spent ages internally screaming at myself for being so stupid and clumsy. I would have called myself an idiot and all other manner of hurtful names. I would have shouted angrily at the cat and probably ignored him for days. I would have felt a burning fury at myself and got caught in a loop of trying to will it not to have happened with a kind of temple popping, breath-holding intensity. It would have brought up intense feelings of worrying and distress about money (regardless of how well or poor our finances are at the time). There would have been a lot of inconsolable crying. This cycle of emotion and hateful self-talk would have continued at varying intensity for several days minimum, if not weeks.
But all that didn't happen on this day and I think it really nicely demonstrates how far I've come and how much emotional resilience I've managed to build up through using ACT techniques. What actually happened is at first there was the inevitable string of expletives and then I could feel a surge of emotion coming my way so I called through to my husband for support (mainly to look after my daughter while I had what I thought would be a little break down). Once my daughter was safely being looked after I allowed myself to feel the feelings of frustration and sadness at breaking my phone and accepted that it was an accident which I can't change. I spoke to my husband about our finances and yes, this came at a really unfortunate time and I'll have to wait a few months until we have enough spare cash for a new phone. This brought up a very old and familiar story for me - the "we have no money" story which always brings along a host of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. I acknowledged it for what it was - just a story my mind was telling me and let it pass in its own time. The amazing thing was that the turnaround from the upsetting event to me getting back on as normal was under half an hour. I was prepared to get further waves of turmultuous thoughts and emotions about the phone later on - I was ready to defuse and accept - but very few even turned up and the ones that did I dealt with almost automatically. Defusion and acceptance can be quite a heavy going conscious effort when you are first practicing and I previously doubted that they could become automatic but it seems that I have actually managed to start retraining my brain in this way.
So I guess the point of this post is to say keep on practicing ACT in your daily life because it really is making a difference in the long term, even if you can't see the immediate effects right now, you may well see how far you've come further down the line.
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