Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has evolved and changed significantly over the years. CBT is a category of therapies that include cognitive and behavioral components. It’s a category in the same way that “cardio” is a category of exercise. What a person…
Feeling the panic ebb and flow
A reader shared this awesome adventure he took his brain on recently: I can experience anxiety and panic attacks pretty regularly. They used to control my life. Any work meeting, restaurant, confrontation, exercise, bodily sensation would send me into an…
Scott’s story so far…
I think back to when I was a pre teen and there was so much happening, not only physically but also mentally… That’s when I first recall OCD happening to me–I was around 12 years old and I began to…
Beliefs, judgments, desires, compulsions…
When we’re struggling with mental illness, it’s often the compulsions that get all of the focus, both when we’re trying to figure out what’s going on and when we’re getting treatment. Many disorders are defined only by the superficial characteristics…
How to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts (video)
When it comes to dealing with horrible, weird, upsetting, terrifying intrusive thoughts or whatever else your brain is throwing up when you’re struggling with mental illness, learning to practice accepting the stuff in your head and shifting your focus to…
Training your Subconscious Puppy
Here’s the beautiful paradox of Acceptance: If you accept all of your worries and intrusive thoughts instead of trying to fight them or be certain about them, you’ll gradually get rid of them. This is not the goal of Acceptance…
Accepting Errors: Giving a presentation at work.
This post looks at how you can practice Acceptance after making an error while doing a presentation at work. This is an experience that many people often go to intense, life-limiting lengths to avoid: Step 1: I’m giving a presentation…
Overcoming the Myth of You
Your perception of your self can be a barrier to practicing Acceptance. We conflate our fears with our identity. It’s known as “cognitive fusion”. We say things like, “I’m not good with people,” or “I don’t like people,” when it’s…
One Breath Meditation Exercise
Meditation is to your brain what running is to your heart. Until very recently, meditation was treated as something spiritual. It was mostly confined to religion, hippies, and yoga classes. But that’s quickly changing as neuroscience research uncovers the very…
Give up on judgment.
I mean the term “judgement” in its broadest sense—judging things as good or bad, as right or wrong. Judgement is the opposite of Acceptance. Removing judgement from your life, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative judgement, will help you…