As human beings we all experience emotions, we all experience thoughts and we all experience physical sensations.
We have emotions such as sadness, anger, shame, fear, disgust and happiness.
Sometimes we have thoughts such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not safe’, ‘I’m a bad parent, partner or friend’, ‘I’m going to screw this up’, ‘I’m going to lose my job’, ‘I’m never going to find a job’, ‘nobody likes me’, ‘I’m worthless’.
And sometimes we have physical sensations like feeling your heart beat faster, feeling your breathing rate increase, becoming sweaty, needing to rush to the toilet, or perhaps the other way perhaps you feel like everything has slowed down, things don’t seem real, and you aren’t motivated to do anything.
All of those things can really get in the way of you living the life that you want to.
And because they get in the way, a really natural response is to try and get rid of them, we try to get rid of thoughts that are unwanted. We try and get rid of physical sensations that are uncomfortable and we try and avoid emotions that we don’t want to have.
Sometimes we might use distraction techniques, or we might avoid certain places or people, or we might find ourselves using thinking strategies such as being overly self critical or asking loads of what if questions, or perhaps turning to alcohol or other substances.
But where I think these strategies might work in the short term, I don’t think they are effective long term strategies. And if you find yourself in this position, where what you have tried in the past hasn’t led to long lasting change, then this video series is going to look at doing things a little differently.
My name is Stuart I’m a BABCP accredited cognitive and behavioural psychotherapist here in the UK, and I want to tell you more about this series of videos that I have coming up that will be available completely free on my YouTube channel.
It’s going to be called Managing Your Emotions - the ACT Way.
And I am calling it that as it’s heavily influenced by something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT) which is a type of Cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT. But if you have tried CBT before and it hasn’t helped then that doesn’t mean that this won’t. You see, CBT is really an umbrella term, and what that means is that there are loads of different types of therapy that sit beneath that umbrella. For example, a lot of people have tried a style of CBT where we try and dispute our thoughts, we look for evidence that we have for the thought, and we look at evidence we have against the thought and we try and restructure them in someway.
I don’t know about you, but for me personally, I really struggle with this. I have thoughts that I don’t really want to have that are true. And I can provide far more evidence to you, that they are true than evidence that they aren’t true. So what do we do? Well, we need to try something different, and that is what we are going to look at in this series.
As you listen to me, notice what your mind is saying to you right now. It might be saying I've tried everything, this isn’t going to work, these sort of things have always failed in the past. And if you have tried therapy before, or self help video series like this before and they haven’t worked - well that's evidence that you are going to use to say that they don't work! And that is evidence you and I cannot dispute.
So that leaves us 3 options
Option 1. Continue to try and challenge your thoughts. You say something, I try and help you find some evidence against that, you tell me evidence for it. And we go round and round circles, back and forth and don’t really end up anywhere apart from perhaps more frustrated. And I bet that is probably the same thing that happens in your own head anyway.
Option 2. Your mind might be continuing to say, this is pointless, this is never going to work, this is another thing that is going to end up in failure. And if you want to go along with that, if you want to listen to what your mind is saying there and do what it says, then I get that, that is really understandable as its trying to protect you from being hurt, from feeling failure and the pain that comes with it. Then you don’t have to go any further, you can end this video now, and that is absolutely fine.
Or Option 3. Is you let your mind say this isn’t going to work and this is pointless, but despite your mind saying that, you continue with this series anyway. It might not feel like it right now, and we are going to do a whole ton of work on this skill, but you don’t always have to act or behave in the way your mind tells you to do.
So are you going to choose option 1, 2 or 3?
If you have chosen option 3 and you are still with us then let me tell you a little bit more about what is to come.
Although I have called this The ACT way, I am going to be quite flexible about what is included in the series. We are going to draw upon other areas such compassion focussed therapy, some mindfulness practices, some bits from trauma therapy (although this isn’t a specific trauma series) and some ideas from neuroscience and what we know about how the brain works.
And I want this to be practical, I want this to have an impact on your life. We aren’t going to focus heavily on theory or research, and I am going to try and talk to you how I talk to my clients in actual therapy sessions. I’m hoping this isn’t something which you watch and go ‘well that was interesting’ now back to my life, I want this to be about actually making change to your life.
The series is going to be split up into different sections. There is going to be a main video playlist which you can follow either as I upload them, or if you are accessing this once they are all uploaded then you can work through them at whatever pace that you want. There are then going to be separate playlists for skills and exercises for you to do which relate to that main playlist. That way you have access to the skills and exercises to practice without having to look through the main videos each time.
I am also well aware that there is a massive difference between accessing therapy and watching some videos online.
And I can’t tailor this to your individual and specific needs. I really wish there was some way that I could.
However, through my experience there are some common things that come up for the majority of people I have worked with, and there are common things that have helped them. I am going to share those tools, skills, exercises, metaphors and stories that I have seen work for a wide range for people experiencing a wide range of problems, so I am hoping that every one will get something out of it.
So please join me for this free to access series. To make sure you don't miss out then please consider subscribing to the channel.
If you found me due to the Music video reactions I am doing on my channel - then please don't worry I will be continuing to do them. I’ve had great feedback about them, people find them a more accessible way to start thinking about things without having to jump in to a full on mental health or psychology video. This is the other side of my channel - where I want to do more than talk in general terms around these topics and I instead I want to try to give you practical things you can do to make some positive changes to your life.
If you have any questions then please leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them when I can.
Take care everyone. Make life meaningful and goodbye.
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