In this exercise, we explore anxiety. However, it can equally be used with other experiences, e.g. stress, fear, and more.
- Bring to mind a situation that makes you anxious. For the sake of the exercise, pick a small or medium example. Save the large ones for later when you have more experience.
- Notice the sensations that come in your body when you bring this to mind.
- Now ask yourself: out of ten (where ten is really, really bad), give a score for how unpleasant the thought (or the image you brought to mind) is.
- Now ask, out of ten, same scale, how unpleasant are the sensations in your body?
- Given these, scores, ask yourself, which of the two would you rather spend time with?
Not always, but often, the sensations that go with anxiety are actually less unpleasant than the thoughts. This can be surprising. The reason for this is that much of the displeasure is because we are trying hard not to have the sensations (because we perceive them as bad). When we stop doing that, and just have them, we’ve actually stopped doing the thing that was causing us the most pain - trying not to have an experience.