Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Making Peace with Anxiety
By Lynne Gots, posted on January 4th, 2023.
Anxiety is highly unpleasant. It causes physical discomfort—shortness of breath, muscle tightness, dizziness, queasiness—and mental anguish. In all my years of clinical practice, seeing thousands of people with anxiety, I have never encountered anyone who has not desperately wanted to get rid of it.
Earlier in my career, I was a dedicated advocate of techniques aimed to reduce, if not entirely eliminate, anxiety. I taught progressive muscle relaxation for tension- and pain-reduction, deep breathing to manage panic attacks, and thought-challenging to address catastrophic thinking. But in recent years, these approaches are no longer regular staples of my clinical repertoire. Like many of my cognitive-behavioral colleagues, I have changed the focus of treatment from reducing anxiety to learning to accept and manage emotions, even negative ones like anxiety, while embracing uncertainty with the aim of living a richer life.
Practicing acceptance requires a major shift in attitude. For most people with anxiety, avoidance is the most common coping strategy. But avoiding anxiety-provoking situations and triggers comes with a steep cost: a flat, joyless existence.
Think about anxiety as a wave in the ocean. If you try to outrun it, you may end up crashing into the shore with skinned knees and a mouthful of sand. But if you dive into the middle of the wave, it will wash over you and lose its momentum as it reaches the beach.
Why is it worth it for you to dive into the wave? If you can answer this question − hint: consider what values are important to you − you will finally be able to stop avoiding discomfort and start living a more fulfilling life, anxiety and all.
Tags: acceptance, anxiety management, mindfulness
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Anxiety |
New Year’s Resolutions: To Resolve or Not?
By Lynne Gots, posted on January 6th, 2019.
People have strong opinions about New Year’s resolutions, as I’ve been learning over the past week. In the one camp are the Resolution Deniers, who say that resolutions are stupid, pointless, and scientifically proven to fail. In the other are the diehard Resolution Proponents, who embrace the idea of wiping the slate clean and use the start of another year as a motivation to change their undisciplined ways.
Most Resolution Proponents choose two or three popular areas for improvement: diet, exercise, organization and time management. My own vaguely considered goals for the year—all of which I’ve already failed to meet—include:
- Start a yoga practice. (Nope, not yet.)
- Meditate in the morning. (Nope, still putting it off until too late at night to get the full benefits.)
- Write a blog post at the start of each month. (Nope. It’s already January 6. Or does that count?)
But my modest attempts at self-betterment pale alongside those of a couple I met at a New Year’s Eve party last week. Together they had made 310 resolutions for 2019. How is it even possible to find so many personal habits in need of improvement?
They started off the year—and it wasn’t even midnight yet—quarrelling about how to fulfill one of the items on their list (which they had written down lest they forget any). The host, a potter, invited her guests to choose an item from her studio to take home with them so she could start making progress on one of her own resolutions for the year: to declutter. But despite the generous offer, the super-resolution couple couldn’t decide if they should take her up on it because it conflicted with their own decluttering goal. They finally reached an agreement: they would accept a vase but wouldn’t allow themselves to bring it into their house until they first got rid of something else.
I wholeheartedly endorse efforts to change. Modifying behavior is, after all, my stock in trade. But in the therapy I do, I also stress the importance of acceptance. Accepting yourself at any given point in time—new year or not—means acknowledging the reality of what is and using that as the starting point.
So if you haven’t exercised in the last six months, say, deciding to go to the gym for an hour a day would be a recipe for failure. When reality collides with unrealistic expectations, people who don’t allow for acceptance often just give up instead of modifying their goals to make them more realistic.
So go ahead and make those resolutions. Just try to work on them imperfectly. You know you’ll mess up. But you can start again, January 1st or not. If you practice acceptance, you’ll be giving yourself a better chance at achieving those three—or 310—resolutions you made for 2019.
Tags: acceptance, New Year's resolutions
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Behavior Change, General, Goals |
A Loss Brings a New Perspective
By Lynne Gots, posted on September 23rd, 2018.
My dog Freddie died last month very suddenly and unexpectedly at the too-young age of 10. Chronically anxious and high-strung, he wasn’t an easy dog to live with. But he was intensely loyal, affectionate, fiercely devoted to the family, and so smart he seemed almost human at times. In spite of–or maybe because of–his issues, we loved him dearly.
One of his most annoying habits was barking at the TV. We tried to train him to watch quietly–and watch he did, eyes fixed on the screen and head moving back and forth, taking in the action–but eventually we gave up, endured his loud objections during scenes containing sex and violence, and got used to relying on closed caption to fill us in on the dialogue he drowned out.
Over the years, as I wrote in a previous post, I longed to be able to relax in front of the TV with my dogs curled up quietly at my side. But as long as Freddie was with us, it never happened.
The night after Freddie died my husband and I sat down on the couch in the family room to catch up on the show we’d been following. We didn’t get past the credits before we had to turn it off. The quiet was deafening.
It was more than a week before we could bring ourselves to watch TV again.
A line from an old Joni Mitchell song comes to mind:
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone”
RIP, dear Freddie.
Tags: acceptance, grief, losing a pet
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Dogs |
