Acceptance As A Psychological Phenomenon That Helps Reduce Anxiety

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Acceptance as a psychological phenomenon that helps reduce anxiety

Suffering is a psychological state of a person, characterized by deep, long-term and unpleasant emotional experiences such as grief, sadness, anxiety, pain, melancholy. (Psychological dictionary. Nemov R. S.)

Pain and suffering, two different concepts, with a similar form of living, but having fundamental differences. Pain and suffering are like fear and anxiety. Pain has a place to be directly in a situation with an influencing source here and now, similar to fear, which is an instant reaction to the present danger. Suffering, in turn, like anxiety, refers to distant experiences that occurred in the past or expected in the near future.

Accepting pain means taking a step towards getting rid of suffering. To live the fear, to take a step towards getting rid of anxiety.

In suffering, as in anxiety, we experience directional action to avoid pain. Those. in suffering, we look for ways to avoid (… and take action) collision with strong experiences, which conditions the inclusion of the sympathetic autonomic system, which works as long as there is the urge to escape. When the very work of the sympathetic nervous system causes anxiety, this is a secondary anxiety. If the pain does not come, the suffering lasts forever, only the intensity of the experience changes, and life itself remains somewhere on the sidelines

You are probably familiar with the feeling you get before an exam. In this situation, there is the likelihood of failure and, therefore, the likelihood of experiencing emotional pain, and the closer the encounter with the inevitable, i.e. speaking with an answer in front of the examiner, the more unbearable becomes the suffering from possible failure. But what happens after the show? Regardless of the result, we experience a completely different state, be it joy, or pain from an unsatisfactory result. But neither the joy nor the pain lasts long, and in the end, this state passes, and we move on, taking action to solve the problem associated with a failed exam, or enjoy the rest.

Acceptance with regard to thoughts and feelings of anxiety provides an opportunity to come into contact with new experiences, and this promotes the formation of new neural connections.

What does it mean to accept. Acceptance is complete immersion in the situation, feeling, bodily sensations, maximum contact with the source of the threat. And full living of this moment. Acceptance does not mean surrender or passive patience; acceptance means the position of active curiosity, an observer who does not confuse his self with the observed intrapsychic phenomenon. The attention of a person who has accepted fear or some other negative experience is transferred to what he considers important and worthy of exertion. This is psychological flexibility, to do what you think is necessary, with maximum efficiency, without being distracted by the struggle with unpleasant experiences.

Phenomena and Processes Hindering Acceptance:

• Fixation of attention … Attention becomes rigid (not flexible, rigid). For example: if a feeling of helplessness arises in a situation, attention is fixed on this state, if the situation does not find a solution, then the feeling of helplessness rivets attention. In the case of social anxiety, attention may be focused on the "image of oneself in the eyes of others." That. our attention is focused on any subjectively perceived threat, as well as intrusive (intrusive) thoughts and sensations. It becomes "vigilant" for signs of threat. At the same time, the external situation is ignored and the integrity of the picture of the experienced situation is violated, which makes it impossible to refute negative expectations and fears.
• Avoidance - a process during which a person tries to evade his own experience (thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations, behavioral actions). Avoidance is the main source of the "pain of absence"; as a result of avoidance, a person does not acquire the positive results of his actions, and his life becomes more limited. If in the outside world we were faced with danger in the form of a predator, natural disaster or other threat, flight was a necessary condition for survival. And we transfer the experience of avoidance from external sources to internal ones. The avoidance strategy is based on the rule “if you don’t like something, get rid of it”, which is effective in the external world, and up to a certain point in the internal one. But over time, avoidance only strengthens the role of what you are avoiding.
• Coping actions - action direction to relieve anxiety and other unpleasant emotions and sensations. They can be purely psychological, for example - suppression of negative experiences, distraction from thoughts, explanations, etc., or physical - behavioral actions, physical activity, smoking, alcoholism, etc. Coping strategies help to temporarily get rid of negative experiences, but in the long term they only take root and make those experiences more powerful.
• Intrusive thoughts - automatic thoughts of unpleasant content, suddenly invading our consciousness, together with negative sensations, affecting the emotional state. It is much easier to make acceptance by realizing that psychological suffering (in the form of anxiety) is caused by internal sources - thoughts and mental images, memories, predictions, sensations. And we have the opportunity to look away from all the attendant relationships to these thoughts, dissociating from her.
• Goals, Values, Beliefs form a habitual way of thinking and have a rigid focus.

The opposite of anxious avoidant behavior will be exploratory behavior, and acceptance is a kind of toggle switch that switches from anxious numbness to active orientation in space.

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