You might like “Get out of your mind and into your life” by Steve Hayes, and or “The happiness Trap” by Russ Harris. They walk you through ACT (pronounced as one word, act), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. You might check out contextualpsychology.org and join one of the ACT listservs. In essence, ACT is about getting present, in the moment, here and now, fully accepting what is occurring, holding yourself and everything else lightly, and figuring out where to steer your life. Its about not running from the things that you fear, but embracing them, and embracing the part of you that fears them. For the heck of it, here is a brief story from Kelly Wilson, one of the founders of ACT and professor at ol miss…
Even slower than baby steps, the best I can do some days is to sit on my hands. If I am sitting on my hands, it is very hard to make much mess to clean up later.
Let’s say I started down this road something like 24 years ago. There was a a time, in the winter of 1985, when I would be up in the night, lying on the bathroom floor, heartsick, the house quiet all around me, alone. Lying on that floor, between bouts of retching, I could feel the cool of the linoleum on my cheek and it was good. There in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, tortured, I found a moment’s rest, my cheek pressed to the cool floor. My whole world was reduced to six square inches of cool linoleum. I could not leave that room without the terrors welling up around me. Even trying to rise from the floor filled me with awareness of all that I had done and regretted, and not done and regretted more.
It was a starting point. People taught me about acceptance. By inches, I made my way up off the floor and out of that bathroom.
When I look where acceptance has taken me over the years, I have to pinch myself. I have fallen in love with people all over the world. I have become intimate with people and places and ideas that I could not have imagined. I have found souls all along the way who saw possibilities in me that I could not see in myself. And, I have in turn had the privilege of seeing in others strength and beauty and possibility that they could not see.
And, and, I can count a lot of days, a lot, between that barren winter of '85 and this day, this morning, this moment, a lot of days, when the best I could do was sit on my hands. And, today, I count those days sitting on my hands as good days. All in a row they brought me right here together with you. Welcome. Welcome.
Rest a while. There will be time. Perhaps we can sit together on our hands today. And tomorrow, there won’t be much mess to clean up. And, we will rise together and sweep up and go about our day as best we are able.
So if today is a day of hand sitting, think of it as practice. The day will surely come when someone in need calls out. We are not likely to be able to reach out and reverse time in their world – bring parents back from the dead, retrieve a lost opportunity, a lost love – any more than we can turn back the clock in our own world. But perhaps if we have practiced, we can sit with them, on our hands if it is that kind of day, but together. And, perhaps we will find a way in this world, just as it is, to fall in love, and see beauty and strength and possibility together.
peace to all,
kelly
