Willingness- The Surprising Antidote to Anxiety - Anxiety Course 5/30

imagine that you're engaged in a tug of war with your difficult thoughts and emotions the more anxious you feel the more you struggle to not feel anxious and you're afraid if you drop that struggle that you'll get pulled up into a cliff or something right an acceptance of commitment therapy they use the metaphor of saying like if I strapped you in a chair over a tank of sharks and I said to you if you get anxious I'll drop you in don't get anxious would you be able to control your anxiety by just trying to force

it to go away no like that's just not how anxiety works it's not how emotions work or if we go back to the relationship example have you ever tried to change someone else like a spouse or a child for example like how well did that go usually not so hot in the last video we learned that avoidance doesn't work trying to force our feelings to change doesn't work but neither does giving in to them like just letting anxiety run the show or make your decisions for you right so what the heck do we do with

anxiety the fundamental vehicle antidote to problematic anxiety is willingness learning how to feel anxiety how to make space for it how to listen to it but not be bothered or controlled by it so willingness is learning how to drop the struggle with your feelings so you can free your hands so you can free your life to do what you really care about the willingness is the most powerful tool for managing anxiety because when you have willingness anxiety can't control you anymore so in this video you'll learn what willingness is how to develop it and you'll

get to practice it to see what it feels like thank you this episode is sponsored by betterhelp better help is an online therapy provider they match you to a licensed therapist in your area who can help you with depression anxiety trauma grief and other concerns really easy to just sign up and try therapy from the comfort of your own home and one of the best parts is you can use their service to message your therapist anytime from anywhere therapy starts at about 65 a week so check out the link in the description for 10 off

your first month so what is willingness okay I'm going to tell you a few things about willingness and then we're going to jump in and just try it so first it's present moment awareness we're gonna direct our attention to the Here and Now second it's exploring we're letting go of judgment about emotions and we're describing them instead third it's using a beginner's mind it's it's having a fresh experience with our emotions let me just give you a quick example you have spent your entire life with your tongue in the roof of your mouth but do

you really know what it feels like so go ahead and take take your tongue and feel the roof of your mouth for a minute and see if you can find something about the roof of your mouth that you've never noticed before like have you ever noticed the boundary where where your palette shifts from being kind of rough and ridged to being smooth like what does that transition feel like or how many ridges are in the front of your palette or what does it feel like where it gets soft in the back your soft palate we've

spent our entire life with our palette and our tone but we maybe don't even know what the experience of having that is like that's what we're gonna do with emotions okay next is allowing it's dropping the struggle with emotions it's accepting that they exist and they are here it's not necessarily liking wanting or enjoying feeling something it's just acknowledging the reality that I am feeling this and allowing that feeling to be there we also with willingness we use curiosity so we just get really curious about them instead of trying to stuff them down and resist

them and we expand we replace like a version with openness with leaning in making space this is like being flexible instead of being rigid and trying to control something that you can't control so why would we do this why would we want to feel our feelings because resisting feeling is what's messing up your life trying not to feel anxious forces you into avoiding things you care about it hardens your heart and it cuts off your possibilities let me give you an example let's say you're afraid of public speaking but you're asked to give a speech

at your best friend's wedding you know you'll feel anxious you know that you'll maybe worry about it or you might lose sleep or your stomach might feel queasy or your hands might sweat but your alternative your options are to either not give the speech which isn't really being the friend you want to be or some other options like using a lot of substances like cannabis or alcohol to numb those feelings so that you don't feel anxious but that's also going to impact your ability to be the friend you want to be so on the other

hand willingness says okay I don't enjoy public speaking the anxiety is really uncomfortable but I care so much about my friend that I'm I'm willing to feel that anxiety because I want to be a good friend because I care so you allow yourself to feel a little anxious and you remind yourself that it's okay that anxiety just means that you care about your friend and the other people in the wedding and you want to do a good job and after you do it after the speech you realize it wasn't that bad and you got to

be the friend that you wanted to be and you're proud of yourself for doing it so in essence willingness isn't about like liking or wanting an unpleasant experience or even forcing that anxiety to go away and changing it right it's just about being open to them to those feelings and those experiences when they occur and this is part of the human experience and and just not engaging in a struggle with them that stops you from living a life that's meaningful to you Okay so we've talked about it that's what willingness is let's practice we're going

to start with a clever example from art and then we're going to practice with some physical Sensations and then we'll practice willingness with some emotions so here we go okay so this first exercise comes from a painting by the Flemish artist Quentin masses and he painted this around 1513. take a look at this painting what are your first impressions what do you feel when you look at it what do you think about this woman take a minute and write this down in your workbook is this a comfortable painting to look at is it enjoyable or

Pleasant for most people it's probably not initially it's been titled the ugly Duchess or the grotesque old woman most people initially feel revulsion judgment and they maybe seek to look away or laugh to avoid their feelings now let's watch a video from the National Gallery I'm gonna try and embed this I'm going to try and get permission to embed this video on YouTube and if I don't get permission you're gonna have to pause the video click the link I'm gonna put it right up here in one of these Corners as a tag and I'm going

to put down in the description as well willingness is about sitting with your feelings sitting with Comfort or discomfort making space and being curious this opens us up to a lot of options okay now let's do it again with a physical sensation let's practice some more willingness I want you to do a wall sit so go ahead get up find a wall press your legs on it press your back on it and try to put your legs at like a 90 degree angle like this right and just hold it if you don't have a wall

you can just do a squat like a deep squat now you didn't think that we were just gonna intellectualize about this right you didn't think we were just going to talk about our feelings your body holds your feelings your body is the receptacle of your emotions your physical Sensations are key to understanding what you're feeling so here's how we practice close your eyes and get into your body what sensation are you feeling in your legs what does it feel like pretend like you're a curious scientist who has never felt that feeling before how would you

describe it hot cold stabbing throbbing pulsing comfortable notice where you feel tight in your body and see if you can expand your awareness and feel something that's loose find an area that's relaxed maybe it's your face now we're not going to use judging words here not good or bad not wonderful or terrible instead we're just describing notice any resistance or urge to avoid that discomfort and practicing present with that physical sensation observe the sensations as they rise and as they fall away this is getting quite uncomfortable for me like I would like to sit down

so that you don't hear my voice straining as I Breathe hard right and I'm going to allow this to be here this is painful what's going on with your breathing just notice it you don't need to try to change it just notice it what's going on with your hands with your face just notice it now if you can keep going keep going and if not take a break just listen to your body for a minute if you notice your mind wandering come on back to the present moment when you're ready to be done come on

back now getting out of your head and into your body is essential to willingness feelings are fundamentally physical and we can use physical practices to help us learn how to get better at feeling so we just try to make space for those physical Sensations when we're doing the wall sit or you're doing something else physically uncomfortable can you allow yourself to feel that discomfort and just let it be there okay if you're still doing a wall sit go ahead and sit back down take some time in your workbook to write about what this experience was

like for you so our body is the anchor for our emotions and when we run from our body we never feel at home Dr Becky from good inside says at the core anxiety is the state of being uncomfortable in your body not feeling at home in yourself and wanting to be anywhere else it's the fear of a feeling and it's only a problem when your rules say you can't have it okay now let's try this with an emotion let's go back to that video where those guys are doing dumb stuff up on skyscrapers right as

you watch these guys what emotions come up can you notice them what thoughts come up can you make space for them what happens if you allow yourself to feel a little bit scared can you handle that feeling the opposite of willingness is believing I can't handle that and we're not talking about a situation we're talking about a feeling or a thought that seems unbearable it's when people believe that they can't handle feeling something because they're afraid that they might cry or lose control they just don't know what to do to make the feeling go away

all of these forms of resistance make people do anything to suppress their feelings they might use drugs or alcohol they might avoid people or places they care about right the desperate desire to avoid feelings shrinks down our life it makes us rigid and fragile willingness on the other hand opens us up it makes us resilient flexible and actually quite capable I like to use a little Mantra here you can pick one that works for you but something like I can feel this feeling and still be okay or I can allow myself to feel what I'm

feeling now in the full course I'm going to give you a few more exercises to practice willingness specifically with painful thoughts or uncomfortable emotions and I'm also going to help you build up the skills to face your fears and to face situations or triggers that you'd normally avoid when we're going to start with just like baby steps and then gradually move up now remember practicing willingness is an ongoing process we're just going to start with these small exercises and then just gradually challenge yourself to expand your willingness in other aspects of your life willingness is

a muscle you can grow it's a skill you can develop and if you watch life is going to give you a gazillion opportunities to practice this so when you make space for your feelings you're gonna improve your life and you're gonna get so much better at knowing what to do with anxiety you're going to break the anxiety cycle so in the rest of this course you'll learn a bunch more skills that can help you influence or decrease your anxiety but they can backfire if you're still stuck in resistance when your default setting is willingness it

makes space to learn and try new things when your default setting is resistance you limit your options and you can get stuck in this endless tug of war with your emotions so throughout the rest of the course we're going to practice willingness as our default setting if you find yourself using any of the other skills I teach as an attempt to suppress control or resist your feelings it's not going to work it's going to backfire so revert back to opening up making space and let willingness be your default setting when it comes to anxiety okay

this video is day five from my break the anxiety cycle in 30 days if you haven't bought the full course we've got all the exercises workbooks live q and A's and extra videos on my website therapy at a nutshell.com check that out and thanks for being here let's get better at feeling thank you