I want you to think about any troubling thoughts you have as high school bullies.
Imagine they are following you home after school. They are shouting at you, calling you names, throwing stones in your direction. “You’re useless”. “You’re embarrassing”. “Nobody likes you”. “You’re going to fail”. The usual repertoire of horrible self defeating thoughts.
Now imagine - and this is very important - that you are far enough ahead of them that, if you simply keep walking, you will make it home safely before they ever catch you.
You don’t even need to increase your walking pace. You just need to keep walking at your leisure, and you’ll make it home, regardless of what the bullies do.
But… every single time you stop and turn around to argue with them, or to check if they’re closing in. You slow yourself down, and you allow them to get closer. When you engage, they close the gap. If you try to disprove every insult or struggle with them, or defend yourself in any way, the bullies get closer.
That is what struggling with thoughts is like.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, this is called “struggle mode”. The more we wrestle with thoughts, try to eliminate them, neutralise them, or prove them wrong with absolute certainty, the more psychologically entangled we become with them.
Acceptance is not agreeing with the bully. It is not saying the insults are true. It is simply recognising that you do not have to stop walking every time a thought shouts something unpleasant at you. You don’t have to engage with thoughts as though they are true or even meaningful.
The thoughts can still be there.
You can still hear them.
But you keep moving towards home anyway.
So, think of distressing thoughts like a bunch of bullies - every time you struggle with them, you give them your power. You give them exactly what they want - attention, legitimacy, control.
Just keep on walking…
