You are actually suffering

I want to teach you to observe and understand your emotional patterns, so that you can see it for what it is when it occurs and get out of it yourself. You learn a way of relating to yourself that doesn’t prevent emotion from occurring, but alleviates the suffering you have about the experience of painful emotion over time. Because it is an entirely different way of thinking about your mind, it will take some time for you to practice enough and work out the details enough to be out in front of the pattern on a regular basis.

Two major challenges about learning to relate effectively to your emotion is that you are actually suffering and your new relationship with emotion changes in the context of your life.

You are actually suffering. If, rather than an emotion coach, I was a basketball coach, it would be easier to teach you how to play the game. Knowing how to play basketball can make your life better, but you don’t suffer if you don’t know how to play. Approaching anxiety and other painful feelings feels like it has urgency because you will suffer until you understand how to play its game better. I know this. I will try to get you some quick wins. That is, I’ll teach you some techniques that can immediately decrease your painful emotions in the moment. I do this just to keep you motivated, not because I actually believe that the techniques will completely eliminate your suffering. I am really hoping that I can reduce your urgency enough for you to be patient with your own process.

I have the best results with people who are able to think about their experience of emotion like a basketball game, even while they are actually suffering from it. If you are able to get distance from what you feel and really get curious about what is happening, you will be in the best position to figure out how to execute on an effective strategy.

Good teams lose games, but focus on their strategy. When you are at the point where you think, “I had anxiety, but my strategy was great,” you are winning. Eventually you will feel very little anxiety and decreased intensity of other feelings.

Your new relationship with emotion happens in the context of your life. While I’m teaching you a more effective way to relate to the experience of anxiety, I also have the reality that life doesn’t stop just because you’ve committed to this process. Sometimes you should actually work to manage your anxiety, rather than surrender to it, so that it doesn’t cause impairment in your life. Examples of anxiety management techniques include taking anxiety medication, getting reassurance in a limited way about certain topics, or avoiding a very anxiety-provoking experience in favor of a more manageable activity. This might seem like a double message, but it is not. In the long-term, I want you to relate to the experience of emotion with friendliness and humor, and while you’re learning to relax into that attitude, I don’t want anything to happen to you that will make a friendly relationship with emotion even harder.

We’ll do a lot of work together, but I hope you remember that learning to relate to anxiety effectively requires a paradoxical effort.

If you must work hard, ideally you will work hard to observe what’s happening, work hard to attend to what you’re doing well, and work hard to bring up an attitude of humor and humility when you notice your limitations.

In any given anxious moment, try your best to stop working effortfully to alleviate it and instead get curious about it and watch it.