Make room

In 1863, Fyodor Dostoevsky set his readers a challenge:

In 1987, the psychologist Daniel Wegner put it to the test. He asked students to talk for five minutes while trying not to think of a white bear, ringing a bell each time it came to mind. They rang it about once a minute. Afterward, when they were allowed to think about it, the bear came back even more. Pushing a thought away, Wegner found, tends to bring it back.

Feelings seem to work in a similar way. Fighting anxiety ("stop it, calm down, this is ridiculous") adds a second layer of struggle on top of the first. ACT calls the alternative expansion, or making room.

Instead of pushing the feeling away, you get curious about it as a physical sensation. Where in your body is it? What size, shape or temperature? Then you breathe into it and let it be there, as if making space around it.

Making room isn't a clever way to make the feeling leave. If you do it hoping the feeling will go, you're still fighting. Sometimes it eases; sometimes it doesn't. Either way, you stop spending energy on the struggle, and that leaves more for whatever you were trying to do.

Tess is in the lobby before a job interview. Her stomach is churning. She keeps telling herself: "Stop it. You're being ridiculous. You have to be calm or you'll blow this." Each time she checks, the churning is still there, and now she's angry at herself as well as nervous.