Recently, I heard a conversation about living life to the fullest. Usually this phrase implies embracing life, finding our passions—travel, creative pursuits, savoring experiences. However, professionally as a therapist and personally as a human, I have learned living also means losing, suffering, doubting, experiencing confusion and uncertainty.
The full range of emotions are part of life.
So far, no therapy style or modality has been able to solve how to eradicate the dark sides and experiences of life. I like to remind clients of all ages that we will not eradicate negative emotions in our time together in treatment—that it’s not a realistic goal to never feel sad, anxious, or confused.
Learn to sit with your emotions – truly feel them – and also make choices based on your values.
We can work with these emotions, learn to think about them differently, and/or engage with them differently to create different stories about what our negative experiences and traumas mean.
One way to approach this way of living is through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT, developed by Dr. Steven Hayes out of the university of Nevada, attempts to increase our psychological flexibility to tolerate being present to our experiences – happy or sad, easy or difficult – while still making day-to-day choices according to our values.
Connecting with our values can ground us in who we are and what we deeply care about – and motivate us to make choices that help us to live our lives to the fullest.
When we are disappointed and tired, we can still put our running shoes on and put in a training run for the 5K we signed up for because we value our health, the cause the race supports, and/or our commitment to friends with whom we agreed to participate in the event. When we are feeling overwhelmed and have a pounding headache, we can still make dinner for our children because we value them, and remain committed to feeding them, supporting them, and nurturing them.
Although these experiences may require different ways of working with our difficult emotional and physical states, we can remain dedicated and connected to our underlying values – who we are, who we strive to be, what we believe, what we care about.
When we live life from a values-directed center of being, we can experience more focus and improved choices rather than moving with the ever-changing tides of our emotional states.
We can put down anchor, a metaphorical theme in ACT, stake our claim, and stand our ground in the present knowing that we can accept our emotions and our experiences – be they ecstatic or excruciating – and truly live.
Hilary Deckard Healy, M.A. Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT 101252)
