Addressing Dirty Discomfort: Getting Out of the Quicksand of Emotions

Good morning, everybody, and happy Friday to you as well. Today's presentation is going to kind of squish in several of the things that you asked about yesterday for an introduction, I guess, to some of those topics. So what we're talking about today is called addressing dirty discomfort. Dirty discomfort is a term that was coined by Stephen Hayes when he developed acceptance and commitment therapy, or act, and it refers to additional distress that we experience when we fight our emotions and refuse to accept reality, which can begin to feel like quicksand swallowing us up as we struggle. It's important to remember that emotions are rarely singular. You don't often experience just anger or just depression. There's often a lot of other emotions kind of swirling out there, and it is certainly helpful to acknowledge those feelings. For example, if somebody is feeling depressed, then they wake up in the morning and they feel this oppressive depression. They may start feeling guilty that, you know, they are already anticipating not being able to do all of the things they think they, quote, should be doing. That guilt leads to feelings of anxiety that people are going to reject them or be angry at them for not being able to do all of the things that they, quote, should do. This can lead to irritability, which makes people more likely to get angry and be irritable with others, as well as get angry with other people for not understanding where they're coming from. It can lead, which also can lead to being angry at yourself for being angry at other people. And that all can add up to a. A bunch of hopelessness and helplessness. So it's important to recognize that we can start feeling like we are sinking in quicksand when we start experiencing especially dysphoric emotions. So what can we do about. Well, step one is radical acceptance. When you wake up in the morning, instead of fighting against it and barraging yourself with a litany of shoulds and coulda, shoulda would us, it's important to just radically accept I feel how I feel. I wake up in the morning, I feel happy, I feel depressed, I feel angry. I'm dreading going to work. Whatever you're feeling, it's how you feel. Okay? It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. And that's that radical acceptance that is so hard for a lot of us because we think automatically think, I shouldn't feel this way, or I need to make this feeling go away. Accept it, say it is what it is, and sit with it for a second and just say, okay, this is how I feel. Now, what are my options? Which takes Us to step two, that Hayes proposed a concept called unhooking. Instead of saying, I am depressed, I am worthless, I am unlovable. Unhook from those thoughts and feelings and say, I'm having the thought that I am depressed. I am having the feeling that I am depressed. We can alter those things. Things that we are things. When we say I am, that's part of us, which means it's harder to change things that we are. I am a human. Well, I can't change that. So ex. Unhooking from some of those distressful thoughts and feelings allows us to set them over here and go, okay, what do I do with this now? It's not a rejection of ourselves. It is an acknowledgement that I have this thing over here that's kind of unpleasant. When we are ill, we don't say, I am a cold. You know, we say, I have a cold. We want to separate from that thing. Step three is examining each one of those emotions and asking yourself, is embracing this emotion a good or thought a good use of my energy? And one activity that I do with some of my clients with we will, I get backpacks or bags for all of them. A lot of times if I have a big group, I just use plastic grocery bags that are, like, triple bagged. And I have rocks, you know, actual, you know, landscaping rocks that I've gotten. And we talk about each one of the feelings that they're feeling and each one of the distressful thoughts that they have. And I say, okay, for each one of those, just put a. Put a rock in your bag. And those are the things that they're carrying around with them. And, okay, so this is what we're dealing with right now. Radical acceptance. It is what it is. Step four is living in the and. And that is recognizing that some distress, some pain is inevitable. But sometimes we can ameliorate some of it. We don't have to carry everything with us all the time. So living in the and, okay, I'm depressed. That's where we started out with, what can I do to improve the next moment? Is it helpful to me to hold on to this guilt and beat myself up for how I feel? Probably not. Okay, take that rock out of your bag and going through each one of those thoughts that people are having and having them objectively evaluate them and say, is this helpful for me right now? Which takes us back to charms from yesterday. You didn't think that was going to come back and bite you in the butt, did you? But when people are evaluating their Thoughts and their feelings. It is helpful to examine, okay, what can I do now to improve the next moment? This is how I feel. I'm not going to fight against it. I'm not going to try to pretend it doesn't exist. I, I'm going to say it does exist. Just like when you get the flu or a cold or something, you say, okay, this is unpleasant. What can I do to start improving the next moment to start feeling better? You know, I don't want to stay stuck here. So we go back to charms, cognitive flexibility, looking at and I'll go back here. The activating event, depression. The person woke up, they felt depressed, that was the activating event. Then all of a sudden they had this litany of automatic beliefs that came in that told them that they should feel guilty and they were going to get abandoned and nobody would understand. And you know, you can just keep adding on to that. So then we go back and, and all of those beliefs contributed them to them feeling even worse. So, so we go back and we examine each one of those beliefs for their fact factual basis as well as the probability. Could people abandon you because you are depressed and not able to do things you used to? Well, it's possible. But when we're looking at the people that are important in your life, how likely is it that they are going to abandon you? You know, facts for and against. So it's important to look at those things because ultimately when we are depressed, for example, nurturing all of those other distressful thoughts are just going to compound our depression and make the situation worse. Is that really what you want? So evaluate your situation. Whoops, sorry. Evaluate the situation, evaluate the accurate beliefs and then figure out what is the best use of my energy to help me move toward happiness or a rich and meaningful life. Another thing that we can do, you know, let's just stick with depression for right now, health wise. We know that inadequate sleep, disrupted circadian rhythms, poor nutrition, dehydration and pain and inflammation all increase depression. So once a person recognizes, okay, I feel depressed. So in order to avoid feeling guilty and anxious and angry and all those other things I want to see, how can I improve my depression? How can I improve my life and live with the depression, I may not be able to make that depression completely go away. If you've ever had depression, whether it's clinical or not, you can't just wish it away. But there are things you can do so you don't make it worse. And health is one of those things that you can start focusing on. You can look at it and say, okay, you know, I am experiencing a depressive episode right now. What things can I do to help my body be healthier and not at the very least, not make it worse? You know, what things can I do to move toward happiness? Develop an attitude of optimism. You know, you're depressed, so you're going to notice the depressing things. You're going to notice and, and view the world through potentially a depressive lens. Today I got up this morning, and it is, in my mind, a perfect fall day. There are fluffy gray clouds everywhere. There's a really chilly breeze blowing through the leaves have largely blown off the trees and are tumbling around. I see that and I get excited. I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's the perfect fall day. People who are depressed might see it as a dreary day. It's cold outside, and look, all the leaves are dead and falling on the ground. You see how that connotes a different feeling depending on how you interpret the exact same thing? So an attitude of optimism can be part of a strategy to, as we say in recovery, sometimes fake it till you make. Doesn't mean you look at everything and go, oh, goody, I'm glad I'm depressed. But it means recognizing that there can be positive things and encouraging yourself to see what might be the positive in this re regulation and distress tolerance. Uh, and when people are depressed, a lot of times they're already breathing pretty slowly, so breathing may not be super helpful. Radical acceptance. We've already talked about that. Just saying, okay, I woke up this morning, I'm feeling depressed. It is what it is. After my mom passed away, you know, there were a lot of mornings I woke up and I was just like, I am. I'm. I'm just not there today. And accepting that it is what it is and recognizing that, all right, it is going to take some time for me to process this. What can I do? Recognizing that I'm depressed today? I'm grieving today still. What can I do to make the best of a bad situation? What can I do that is important? How can I use my energy in ways that are meaningful? Sitting in bed, dwelling on it probably is not going to be super helpful. So what. What can I do some days, just motivating myself to say, okay, I need to get out of the bed. I need to get out of the bed. And then we'll see where we go from there. Maybe that was, you know, where we went. Recognizing again that I wasn't going to make it all go away. And that's the important thing to acknowledge when we feel a feeling, when we experience something, sometimes things just suck. If you have rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis of any sort, the cold weather coming in, you start to feel your joint, and it can be frustrating. You wake up in the morning and you feel like a creaky tin man that hasn't been oiled in a while. And you can get frustrated and angry about that and irritable, that you're in pain. Is that going to help the situation? No, it actually could make it worse because if you activate that HPA axis, you may be increasing the amount of inflammatory cytokines circulating in your body, which can make the pain worse and reduce your pain tolerance. Activities. So you wake up. Let's go back to depression. You're feeling depressed. All right, I'm feeling depressed today. What activities can I do in the moment instead of sitting here dwelling on it, thinking about how depressed I am and how life is unfair and feeding into that depression? What can I do? Get up. All right, that's. That's a start. Take a bath or a shower, whatever you do, you know, get into day clothes, start doing things in order to continue to move forward and accept that you also may be depressed. At the same time recognizing, you know, if you're depressed that day, it may not be an a day. You may not be going out and, you know, doing all those things that you had hoped to do. You say, all right, you know, what am I able to do today? Thought stopping is important. You know, when you start telling yourself the hopeless, helpless thoughts, stopping those, and say, you know what? I'm not feeding this right now. I'm not going to feed this depression. I'm going to acknowledge that it exists. It's there, but I'm not going to add to it. Sensations can be helpful to distract or elicit the opposite emotions. When you're feeling depressed, what things can you do? What can you smell, what can you feel, what can you see that might help you have a glimmer of happiness? A glimmer of optimism doesn't make the depression necessarily go away, but it adds some relaxing and some positive neurochemicals kind of to the mix. Mindfulness, you know, again, we talked yesterday about examining warning signs for depression and examining what am I doing right now that might be contributing to me sinking into that quicksand and becoming overwhelmed with this litany of dysphoric emotions? What are my needs in the present context? I feel how I feel. What do I need right now? Not what should I need, but what do I need? And reaching out to social supports, reaching out to people and saying, you know what, hey, I could benefit from, you know, some, some support right now and reaching within yourself. And, and somebody made this, made a statement earlier. I'm trying to find where it is. Baba Yaga indicated that, you know, one of the things that you can do is make a gratitude list. Be your own best friend. What would you want somebody to do for you? Do it for yourself. Make a gratitude list that can help you identify the things that are going well. Even though you have depression, you know, you may identify that your family is being super supportive. The same thing. You can go through these same activities. If you wake up and you've got chronic pain. You know, looking at that activating event, I woke up this morning and I was in agony. You know, if you have Crohn's disease, let's say I woke up and I'm having a huge Crohn's flare up consequence, I get angry and upset and anxious about this pain. Why? Well, let's look at those beliefs. Let's identify which of those beliefs are grounded not only in fact, but also probable. How probable is it that this means the Crohn's disease has gotten exponentially worse or that, you know, you've developed compounding issues or cancer or something? You know, people, when they experience pain, especially intense pain which Crohn's disease can produce, can start feeling very afraid because they feel they don't know exactly what's going on. You can't just look in your gut and go, oh, okay, you know, just a flare up or oh, okay, big deal. So, you know, unfortunately, sometimes people go online and online. One of the things I read the other day that I thought was just priceless. When you go online to research a condition that you have, the things that come up highest in the Google search are the things with the strongest search engine ranking affinity. So the things that people pay the most money to have come to the top of the list are the things that you're going to find. And guess what? The things that really freak people out are, are often the ones that are highest in the search engine rankings because they are the ones that pull people in. It's like, oh my gosh, this could be cancer. So I must read about it and figure out what I can do. Instead of looking at the mundane probabilities that you ate something that you shouldn't have, you had somewhere yesterday, you ate some gluten or your stress levels are you Know, way up or whatever it is that triggers your Crohn's disease. So just recognizing that again, when you search online for things, a lot of times, especially if you're just using a generic search engine, the things that come up highest are the things that people who want to sell you stuff are paying the most money to get to come up highest in order to put you into a fear state, which puts you into a very amenable state to purchase things and. And do that sort of thing. So do pay attention for. Do pay attention for the facts. You know, how that that goes to Probability. What is the probability that whatever's going on with me right now is this metastasized cancer? You know, probability is likely very, very low, Especially, you know, if you hadn't been having any symptoms until this morning when you woke up. Doesn't mean that it's impossible, but it's improbable. And those are all things that we need to pay attention to with our emotions. Remember that emotions are like a smoke alarm. They tell you that there might be be a threat. They cause your body to dump excitatory neurochemicals to give you the energy to get up and examine, evaluate whether there's a threat. It's not necessarily. Those chemicals aren't necessarily being dumped to tell you, you must run, you must fight. It's giving you the energy to evaluate the situation. Walking in nature can be a great activity. You're exactly right. What other questions or issues might I apply this to or might we talk about in terms of examining dirty discomfort? Remember, when we start struggling with these emotions and telling ourselves we shouldn't have them, then think of yourself wrestling with an alligator. And every emotion is yet another alligator. And all of a sudden you're wrestling with eight alligators. That's not helpful. You're using energy to fight against negative feelings instead of fighting against them, accept them and say, okay, well, I may feel kind of guilty about the fact that I'm depressed and I don't have the energy that I want right now. However, what can I do within my capabilities right now while I'm feeling this way to live a rich and meaningful life? I hope you all are able to, you know, try out some of these things as you go through your day, as you go through your weekend, if you have children at home, you know, modeling these for them and talking through these things with them. Recognizing, as Megan points out, that when we are stressed, we tend to carry a lot of stress in our muscles, and that can make pain worse. I did a meditation, acute progressive muscular relaxation meditation script thingy. I don't know what you want to call it. And it is on the you on the YouTube channel. I did a couple of other different meditations, guided imageries that might be helpful for you. But yes, paying attention to where you're holding your negative emotions, if you want to think about it that way, pay attention to where you're holding all that anxiety or anger or stress, whatever you want to call it, and working through that. Because when you have muscle knots, holding a muscle knot, even though you may not be trying to do it, keeping that muscle knotted up, cramped up, kinked up, that is draining energy from you. That's draining energy from you. So pay attention to your stress, pay attention to posture and ergonomics and don't minimize the impact of. Of muscle tension. Alrighty, everybody. Have a great day. Have an awesome weekend. I hope you can go out and do something absolutely amazing or stay in. If you're in one of those places where it's super snowy and icy right now. Be safe, be warm, be happy, and I will see you, or at least content. And I will see you next week. It.