Trying to suppress my intrusive thoughts, feelings, and urges—or distract myself from them altogether—had the opposite effect. It fueled their fire.

If we truly embraced the notion that our thoughts produce tangible effects in our lives, wouldn’t we strive to never let one thought slip by us that we didn’t want to experience? And wouldn’t we focus our attention on what we want, instead of continually obsessing about our problems?

Many people we meet in our social lives and at work still believe that the answer to an emotional problem is to ‘understand where it comes from’. This idea is based on the assumption that there is clearly identifiable past event to which a person’s problem can be traced, and that once the sufferer recalls this, the magic of ‘insight’ will lead to a

How can we stop negative, unwanted thoughts from entering our heads? We can’t.

But beyond that, the more you deliberately direct your attention to other topics when you notice you’re focused on anxiety-igniting thoughts, the more you increase activity in new circuits and reduce activity in circuits focused on anxiety-producing topics or images.

when those with low self-esteem were told it is OK to experience negative thoughts, their mood improved.

But suppose that STRUGGLE against your “bad” thoughts and feelings is actually making your life worse? In ACT we have a saying for this: “The solution is the problem!”