Re: soldiers on parade and thought suppression

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

You're doing a great job with the exercises! And your confusion is a

good thing.

Here's a handy ACT phrase to remember when it comes to working with

thoughts and feelings - you may have run across it already:

" Acceptance of thoughts and feelings as they are, not as they say

they are. "

With thoughts in particular, " as they are " means that we see

thoughts as thoughts, and not necessarily what they say they are

" about. " Not very threatening - no need to run from them. They may

be useful or not. Either way it's OK to have thoughts.

" As they say they are, " on the other hand, means we ARE taking

thoughts to be " what they are about " - that is, we are taking them

literally, without noticing they are actually thoughts. E.g. " I'm

trapped, I have to get out of here " suggests not that you are having

a thought, but that you are physically trapped.

And it is exactly this buying of a thought as literally true that

you are noticing when you do the Soldiers or Leaves exercise and

" feel compelled to follow the thought through. "

In other words, these exercises are not so much about " suppressing

the thought rather than carrying it through " but about noticing the

sense of compulsion and what that feels like.

Seems pretty strong, yes?

And you can also look at this sense of " feeling compelled " from the

context of your own life experience. When you believe a panicky

thought to be literally true rather than seeing it as a thought,

what tends to happen next? How well does this work for you?

- Randy