How do you accept terrible thoughts?

Okay, everyone this is gonna be a really quick video about acceptance and upholstery As we all know the way to get over anxiety or any anxiety issue, and this has to do with all sorts of other mental health issues that you're dealing with, is to accept the ideas and the thoughts floating around in your brain, Whatever is going on up there, and just act according to your values. So you accept it, say "fine, That's okay, absolutely, that's true", And then you don't react to that. Instead you act according to your values and you engage in the healthy actions that you want to. People have send me questions about "Okay, okay. I understand that you do it, but how do I accept that I'm a bad person?" "That I may have actually burned the house down?" "That I might have killed somebody?" "How do I accept that I am ugly?" "That I am stupid?" "That I'm not good enough?" "That I don't look big enough?" "That I don't look thin enough?" "That I'm always going to be alone for the rest of my life?" "How do I accept that people hate me?" "That I'm going to go to prison for the rest of my life?" "How do I accept that I might have just contracted a disease that's going to kill me?" "How do I accept that I'm not certain that I'm in love with him or her or them?" "How do I accept that there might have been an accident?" "How do I accept that I might have caused the accident?" "How do I accept that I'm going to screw up?" "How do I accept that I'm going to get fired?" "That I might have just contaminated all the food that all my friends are about to eat "They're all gonna die and it's all gonna be my fault?" and etc and etc. And you know as well as I do that that list goes on forever and ever, and it does not matter what the particular thing is that you're uncertain about they are all the same. And so what I would encourage you to do is see that as really ugly upholstery. Okay, here's what I mean: So the other day I had to take a train trip. It doesn't really matter where I was going I was going from point A to point B. I get on the train car that I'm supposed to ride in, and as soon as I get on I realize that that train car has been upholstered in the most hideous upholstery that this world has ever seen. But I had to sit on that train car in a seat and the seat was actually covered in that upholstery. But what's amazing about this is despite the train car having the most hideous upholstery in human history, the train car and the rest of the train which was presumably also covered in the really hideous upholstery still went from point A to point B. But imagine if I had gotten on that train and said: "Whoa, whoa, we cannot leave the station "until we reupholster the entire car, this train is not leaving this station". My purpose in getting on the train wasn't to sit in beautiful upholstery. That was not my purpose in life. I needed to get from point A to point B That was my purpose in going there that day. think about what your purpose is in life. It's probably NOT to be really okay and 100% certain of the upholstery. The great news here is that you can retrain your brain and reteach it and throw out those old assumptions, you can teach your brain not to have to be constantly reacting to and terrified of the ugly hideous upholstery that's in your life or that's in your brain. But that's gonna take work. The beauty is that when you show your brain: "Hey, You can think all these hideous thoughts and these terrible thoughts and I'm not gonna react to them", Your brain, which loves to save energy, is eventually gonna stop throwing them at you. It's gonna learn: "OK, actually, I can get on the train car, sit in the ugly upholstery and we still go from A to B. "So you know what? I'm gonna start focusing on other things". But you have to show it that. That's going to mean pursuing and seeking out these thoughts that are currently bothering you or worrying you and actually saying: "hey brain, "You know what? I can think these thoughts and still do the healthy things that I want to in life. "Sure, It might be nice if that was really pretty upholstery and you didn't have to worry about it, but it's not, "So focus on what is important when it comes to going from point A to that really great point B".

Channel: Mark Freeman

Views: 39,899

Rating: 4.9734573 out of 5

Keywords: intrusive thoughts, OCD, acceptance, acceptance and commitment therapy, mindfulness, psychology, recovery, anxiety disorder, borderline, BPD, emotions, mental illness, derealization, depersonalization, dissociation, hearing voices, harm OCD, false memories, therapy, cognitive distortions, cognitive defusion, Mark Freeman, everybody has a brain, YOU ARE NOT A ROCK, peer support

Id: 3vhjrn9NCWE

Length: 3min 32sec (212 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 08 2018