Do you MUSTurbate a lot? + ACT Urge Surfing Exercise to surf the Musturbations !

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Thought it was about time I contributed something to the group. Hope you find

this article I wrote for my ACT meetup group in London helpful. It's one way to

defuse from strong rules like " I must.. " " I should .. " etc. I know when I had

my panic attacks I had a lot of very strong urges to battle with my feelings ( I

MUST STOP THIS FEELING ) and thoughts ( I MUST NOT HAVE THIS THOUGHT .) and the

ACT based urge surfing exercise would have been very helpful had I know about

it. I use the same " Urge surfing " exercise now when I feel " I MUST quit " or " I

can't go on " or " I must get all my work done NOW etc. " or " I must express how

angry I am .. " .

___________________________________________________

Albert Ellis a psychologist founded a school of therapy called REBT – Rational

Emotive Behavioural Therapy. When I was doing my research into therapies that

might help explain how my panic attacks started I was impressed by some of the

thoughts Ellis had about human suffering.

One of his key teachings about why we get so unhappy and miserable was because

we fuse with too much MUSTurbating ..he concluded that humans had three core

MUSTurbations which contributed to their psychological distress:

1) We believe we MUST feel a certain way or MUST think in a certain way

2) Our significant others MUST behave in a certain way

3) The world we in live in MUST operate in the way we want it to.

If you pause for a minute and reflect on the last time you got stressed and ask

yourself which of the MUSTurbations were taking place. Were you expecting

yourself to feel a certain way or think in certain way? Were you expecting the

people around you to behave in a certain way? Were you expecting the equipment

or something in the environment around you to be a certain way?….If you actually

do this right now It would be helpful to get an understanding why this topic is

so fascinating.

Now if you did the above exercise I hope you may have spotted at least a few

MUST's taking place in your mind – you may not actually use the word MUST but at

some level there is a type of MUST (or should ) taking place.

I know when I get stressed there is a lot of fusion with a MUST or a SHOULD type

thought.

Now you might start thinking well if MUSTurbating is the cause of my distress

then surely the answer is to stop it ! That's how all minds think ! But can you

actually stop It? Have a go right now and go back to the situation that last

caused you distress could you just stop having the MUST or SHOULD thought ?

Unfortunately minds don't work that way. Just because you have the thought that

something is causing you distress you cant just stop it . In fact if you look at

this a bit more closely you might see you get caught in another trap …….can you

see what it is ?

I hope you may have spotted that by trying to get rid of the " I must " thought

you end up with another " I MUST stop MUSTurbating …! " Then guess what you get ?

even MORE stressed and frustrated because not only do you see you cant get rid

of the first must you now have another must to battle with !

So what is the solution? Well this is where ACT Defusion skills training and

Mindfulness are really helpful . Defusion is a process of stepping out of the

world of thoughts and just noticing them with a mindful presence. A higher level

of defusion training is to defuse from rules like " I must " " I should " etc.When

we train ourselves to do this and we then spot a " I must try to stop this

anxiety feeling. " we can just observer the thought and leave the anxiety alone.

We don't need to have another thought " I must not have these Must's " In a

Mindful/diffused space you can just CHOOSE to act or not act on a thought

without struggling to get rid of the thought or changing the thought. Please

reflect on this as this new kind of thinking could really change you whole

relationship with stressful thoughts.

A simple exercise you can try right now is to say " I must stand up..I must stand

up.. " (I'm assuming you are sitting down !).Now repeat this thought till it

really feels like you MUST stand up and then just remain seated ! ..Hope you see

the point …the important thing is to catch the thought and not get fused with

it. If we do this correctly then we really don't need to get TOO stressed by

life events AND we don't need to struggle so much with the belief we need to get

rid of a thought before we can do something useful with our life. We can just

choose to act on useful thoughts and let unhelpful thughts (like I must…) just

come and go.

In relation to Valued Living then the main reason we don't get a sense of

vitality and fulfilment from the things we do is because they are either not in

line with our core values OR our VALUES have now become " MUST's " .. " I MUST be

helpful.. " " I must go to the gym.. " . Values in ACT are FREELY chosen life

directions they are about how you what to be towards yourself and others and

what you want to DO that is personally meaningful to you. When we start living

our life by our values we do get a lot more sense of purpose and viatlity but we

do need to watch out for the MUSTurbation trap – when a value becomes a MUST

then it is no longer being FREELY CHOSEN and the vitality gets sucked out of the

things we used to enjoy doing. I realised recently that the FREEDOM to CHOOSE is

probably an important VALUE for a lot of us and we need to take active steps to

reclaim our psychological freedom.

A really useful exercise you can try one day is to just get a notebook and just

divide it into three columns :

Internal Musts

Musts about People

Must's about the world

Then just go about your day and see how many musts you spot and write them down

– it could be quite a fun little exercise. Aim to put at least 10 musts in each

column. When you have done this for a day the next day do the same exercise but

this time just say " Aha…there I go Musturbating again..thank you mind for that

thought. " Then label the specific type of Must then just CHOOSE to do something

different or act or not act on the must. This will not get rid of the Musts but

it might help to loosen the grip of these MUSTurbating thoughts on your life.

Again with all ACT stuff you only get the benefits with committed action don't

expect miracles in a week.

When I did the above exercise I noticed how useful it was to know about the ACT

" Urge Surfing " exercise ..it helps to combine this exercise when you spot a

really unhelpful MUST and the urge is very strong to act on it. I have made a

recording of the exercise on my website - it's free

(http://artofmindfulliving.org/mindfulness-exercises-2)

Hope you find this helpful.

Best wishes

Mervyn D'souza

Mindfulness Coach (London)

http://artofmindfulliving.org/

Four people are walking in a desert after six hours in the hot sun:

The Italian says, " I'm tired and thirsty. I must have wine. "

The Frenchman says, " I'm tired and thirsty. I must have cognac. "

The Russian says, " I'm tired and thirsty. I must have vodka. "

The hypochondric says, " I'm tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes. "