Just as Stoicism is the philosophical precursor to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Buddhism is the philosophical precursor to ACT. Unlike Stoicism and CBT which use logic and reason to reframe negative events, ACT uses mindfulness to investigate the nature of the emotions themselves. In short, CBT is more head and ACT is more heart.

Basic premise of ACT: 

Our minds are great for solving external problems in our environment but not so much when it comes to solving internal or emotional problems. In fact, in these cases, our minds make it worse by repeating old negative thoughts patterns, etc. ACT is about not struggling against life but about getting with it. Like quicksand. (Basically what you resist persists) 

I’m naturally a very cerebral person, which is partly the reason why overthinking and anxiety have been problems for me. I think too much and feel too little. I have a tendency to over intellectualize my emotions, which often means I don’t actually process them effectively. ACT/Buddhism seems to be an excellent counterbalance to my temperament.

The baseline condition of life is suffering. Humans are different from other animals in that we not only suffer but we suffer about our suffering. 

Techniques in ACT fall into one of three categories:

• Mindfulness

• Acceptance 

• Value-based living

Meditation and mindfulness train the mind to respond in different, more poised ways to stressors and stimuli 

Useful distinction: observing your pain vs viewing the world through the lens of your pain. 

Useful question:
“What would I do with my life if I didn’t have [particular psychological pain]?

Chapter 2: Why language increases suffering

Humans suffer, at least in part, because we are verbal creatures. We are often either recreating the past or living in an imagined future. 

Basically, our verbal skills—and, in particular, our ability to relate anything to anything else and think symbolically—make anything an entry point into pain. 

I’ve noticed in my own life that as my memory and verbal skills have increased, so has my pain/suffering.

Problem is, these verbal skills that create misery are too useful to human functioning to ever stop operating. They are both the reason for our suffering and the reason we have been able to conquer the world. Everything has a cost.

During this chapter I’m realizing why smarter people are often more anxious/depressed and I also worry that because baby is soooo good at relating words and concepts to each other he is at an even higher risk for psychological pain. I hope not though.

Language creates suffering in part because it leads to experiential avoidance. Of all the psychological processes known to science, experiential avoidance—avoiding unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or events—is one of the worst. 

There are two different categories of problems: External and Internal. When dealing with them, we must play by different rules.

External: If you don’t like something, figure out how to get rid of it and then get rid of it. 

Internal: If you aren’t willing to experience it, you will experience it even more intensely. 

To be willing and accepting means to realize that you are the sky, not the clouds. You are the ocean, not the waves. It means noticing that you are large enough to contain all of your experiences—good and bad.

Willingness and acceptance are states your mind can’t learn how to achieve. 

Unwillingness to experience pain results in more pain. Willingness to experience pain results in less pain. The catch is that you can’t be willing to experience pain in order to not feel pain because that would imply that you don’t want to feel pain. You must instead be genuinely curious about the pain itself and open to experiencing it. This is why, if you think your life should be perfect, you are setting yourself up to suffer. 

When exposed to the same levels of physiological arousal, experiential avoiders are more likely to feel pain than those who willingly accept their anxiety.

If you commit to a particular act, use mindfulness and defusion strategies when your mind starts giving you problems with pursuing that path, and move forward, accepting what your mind offers you, you will be in a better position to live a full and meaningful life with or without unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and sensations. 

Thought: It could be that pain is not really synonymous with suffering. It could be that pain plus unwillingness to feel that pain equals suffering. 

Your brain’s job is to protect you from danger in order to help you survive. It does this by constantly categorizing present events, relating them to analyses of the past and predictions of the future and evaluating what has been or might be obtained by action.

Chronic emotional avoiders do not know what they’re feeling because not knowing is itself a powerful form of avoidance. (Damn, that’s me)

Having a conceptualized idea of yourself is a bad idea because it will be harder for you to accept experiences that do not align with your conceptualization. This is true even if (and perhaps especially if) your conceptualization of yourself is positive.  Essentially, it is a barrier to you excepting reality as it is. If you have no conceptualization of yourself, then you’re free to accept each moment as it is and you are free to accept whatever emotions arise in you as they are and let them go.

This is consistent with Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow, which consists of all the aspects of yourself you have disowned. It also is consistent with Eastern philosophies that teach the Self as being one with everything.

This is why it’s useful to conceptualize yourself as the thing that “mediates between chaos and order.” The thing that is constant through transformations. (Jordan Peterson)

Defusion and acceptance naturally support the development of the self as an ongoing process of awareness.