My Best Self 101 Blog
Experiential avoidance is an unwillingness to remain in contact with distressing internal experiences and attempting to control or avoid these distressing internal experiences (Hayes-Skelton & Eustis, 2020). Essentially, it’s avoiding specific memories, thoughts, or feelings, because we don’t want to face the potential pain that comes with them. It’s something that we are all tempted to do at some point.
Our bodies are a precious gift that we only get one of. With this knowledge, why is it so difficult to be satisfied with our bodies? Body satisfaction through weight loss is the motivation for many people when they begin an exercise routine. If we head to the gym daily simply to fit into our favorite jeans or be ready for the beach this summer, will we have the same positive effects of body appreciation and happiness?
“Do what you love.” seems to be a piece of advice regularly given to college student decision makers—you know what I’m talking about. I’m sure your Uncle John was just telling you this at the annual family reunion. However, such advice is usually paired with the expectation that “what you love” is something prestigious, lucrative, and exciting. This counsel, rather than being helpful, might lead further questions to emerge in students’ minds: “What do I love?” “Is what I love going to make me a lot of money?” “Will what I enjoy be flexible enough to manage with my family?” The stress and indecisiveness remains. “What should I do?” continues to be the ever-prevalent question.
Remember how your values are like a compass? Just like how a compass has a north and south, some actions will direct you towards your values, and others will direct you away from your values. According to ACT made simple (Harris, 2019), “towards moves” are anything that brings you in the direction that aligns with your values. “Away moves” are any action that leads you away from your values. Away moves are going to be the biggest challenge of living a value-based lifestyle. The Engagement Module addresses toward and away moves really well, so I will only give a brief description of away moves here.
Adventurous living leads us to cope with adversity, take healthy risks, embrace uncertainty, cultivate optimism for positive outcomes, meet disappointments with resilience, and live every experience with increased openness and vitality while deliberately seeking further experiences. Both those who learn to be more adventurous and those who are naturally adventurous experience greater psychological well-being in various areas. Most importantly, adventurous living can be fostered by anyone, at any time, without extreme measures.
There is a strong relationship between forgiveness and compassion. We all have had experiences where we have felt hurt by the wrongdoings of others. How will we react? Will we try our best to just forget it? Will we suppress the feeling until “it goes away”? Will our pride get in the way of accepting that we need to forgive? These are just a few examples of what some of our thoughts might look like before beginning the process of forgiveness. It can be really hurtful and painful to feel that you have been wronged, but at the end of the day, it’s our choice to decide what we will do next. This is when compassion comes in.
Do you like to draw, dance, or play an instrument? Did you know that when you engage in creative activities such as those that it can help your mood, emotion, and physical health? Amazing, right? Our lives are full of stress, worries, and so many other things. When we take the time to focus on a creative activity that we like, it can help our overall well-being
When I asked Tara what she loved about ballet, she told me, “I was good. I wasn’t as good as Gelsey Kirkland, but I was good. It was something I was able to have confidence that I could do and I knew I was good at it. I’ve never put that much effort into anything in my life.” Her relationship with ballet was clearly a very emotional and fulfilling one: one that gave her confidence in herself. She described ballet as an art that grounds you and connects you so deeply through your body that you can’t focus on anything else. In other words, Tara experienced flow through ballet.
Chronic stress, anxiety, burnout—these have been buzzwords the past couple years and much of the advice out there focuses on how to get rid of them. Personally, the past few years of grad school and starting a counseling career on top of the rest of my life have felt like a hurricane . . . I’ve tried avoiding, resisting, escaping, distracting, procrastinating—these don’t work for long, and often make it worse. And now I’m down to the last resort, this radical approach of not trying to make it go away—befriending the anxiety.
