Does Fear Of Anxiety Hold You Back As A Psychologist/Therapist?

Do you ever wonder why some people seem to find opportunities at every turn? Are they born lucky? Or can they see things you can't? I have noticed that anxiety is holding lots of us back as psychologists and therapists without us even realising it. Here is how ACT can help with that.

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As psychologists and therapists we are well used to helping people whose anxiety gets in the way of them living the lives they want to live. 

You probably also recognise that anxiety has held you back at some moments in your life too. Whether you’ve had your own therapy or just reflected on it personally most of us have key moments in life when it has become especially clear to us that we have a lot in common with our clients. There have been lots of those for me, like when my son was poorly as a newborn and I found myself experiencing panic anytime I went into the hospital for an appointment for over a year afterwards. I could barely think when talking to his consultant, let alone ask the questions I wanted to ask. At these times we know that we share the human condition with our clients.

But I have noticed that many of us don’t recognise the impact our completely natural anxiety is having on our ability to help people in new ways. 

I’ve talked on this podcast before about how ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) and CFT (compassion focussed therapy) are my “go to” models in the therapy room and how they also help me personally too. One of the ways I have found using ACT helpful is to help me notice when I am avoiding unpleasant feelings of anxiety by staying in my comfort zone when my values are actually telling me I need to do something different. 

What worries me slightly is that I think I was avoiding scary things in some really subtle ways without having any idea that I was doing it. We don’t often talk about this unconscious avoidance when doing ACT with clients as there is usually a lot of conscious avoidance to deal with first but it strikes me that this is likely to be a big issue for many people who are generally doing OK in life but feel something is holding them back. 

Here are some of the ways I was unconsciously avoiding my natural anxiety:

Never having the idea/not entertaining it – I never used to see opportunities for press coverage

Forgetting to follow up – I would get really exciting emails or calls from people, even the BBC once, and totally forget to respond.

Procrastinating – it may surprise people who know me that this is on my list as I am not much of a procrastinator. I tend to rush things when I am scared rather than putting them off but certain things, like legally forming my CIC, I knew I wanted to do for AGES but just kept putting them to the bottom of my list because I was SCARED. 

Studying – Maybe this is controversial but I think many of us do extra courses on top of our core training, not because we genuinely think we need them, but because it buys us more time before we have to start offering the scary new therapy or because it alleviates our anxiety slightly to have an extra certificate. I’ve done this so many times but I recently decided it had to stop, that is one of the reasons I added the CPD planner to the psychologists business plan, as I realised I needed to be more intentional. For example, I seriously contemplated whether I needed to get a £4000 coaching qualification before I even recorded this episode for you. So great was my imposter syndrome. But when I sat down with a few books and a big note pad and mapped out which ACT principles I thought would help you the most I realised I already had what I needed to give some value. In the past I would have been so scared of the feeling of vulnerability that I am getting right now I would have spent 4k of the profits from my business to try and get rid of it. That is money that could be far better spent being reinvested into low cost therapy or innovative mental health projects. 

Not Looking for mentors/partnerships – there are lots of people I have wanted to work with that I have not even reached out to because I thought they wouldn’t want to talk to me and I couldn’t stand the thought of putting myself out there like a teenage girl sitting in the school canteen on her own. So I just never did… Ironically since I have been putting myself out there with this podcast some of those people have actually contacted ME. It does frustrate me what I could have achieved if I had just allowed that anxiety to be there BUT my mind so completely could not tolerate the feeling of anxiety that I didn’t even realise I was avoiding it.

Getting to know the people in the Do More Than Therapy community I have realised that I am not on my own with this and that many of us, if not ALL of us, struggle in the exact same way. 

So what can we do about it?

First off we need to get better at recognising when anxiety is present for us. I have found that with my clients who are generally able to live a full life already it is the unconscious avoidance of unpleasant experiences that is a bigger issue that explicit avoidance of anxiety. In my ACT training we never talked much about this as when we are working with people who meet the threshold for clinical intervention there is usually a lot of explicit avoidance to deal with but many people, myself included, might have become quite good a dealing with the anxiety they know about but there is still this unconscious avoidance that they don’t even know if happening. 

Connection to our bodies and minds is crucial. I did an 8 week mindfulness course with Bangor University and the body scan they taught me is pretty perfect for this. For anyone who doesn’t have a “go to” mindfulness to the body exercise I will link to one I adapted for my clients in the show notes but there are loads out there from Headsapce, Calm, Insight Timer and Youtube. The basic principle is to notice each part of your body in sequence, and return your attention to it whenever it wanders. Mindful breathing exercises can also work really well for connecting us up with our bodies and minds.

Making room for anxiety

Once we notice that anxiety is showing up and we suspect it may be making it harder for us to live our values ACT challenges us to try and make room for it rather than distracting ourselves from it or fighting with it. 

If we can get good at making room for it then we won’t feel the need to avoid it unconsciously or consciously. Personally I have found since I started practicing acceptance regularly this has made a huge difference to my ability to notice opportunities. I think I used to be so avoidant of feeling anxious that I actually didn’t see opportunities that were staring me in the face but now I spot them a lot more easily.

So how can we do this? I actually believe that the most powerful intervention is just having the intention to be accepting of your discomfort and to recognise the impact that living a life of avoidance has had on you. However, an exercise I use when I am struggling comes from Russ Harris’ ACT made simple.

Russ tells us to imagine the feeling we are trying to make room for as an object inside our bodies. To imagine it in minute detail, everything about it from the texture, colour, weight, size, movement. Then once we have that firmly in our heads we can breathe in to it, imagine ourselves expanding around it, literally making room for it. I use this all the time with my clients and in my own life and usually find we start off doing it formally, almost like a meditation, but quickly transition to just bringing the image of the object to mind when we need to make space for something uncomfortable. 

I hope this helps you to send your mind the message that you are OK with a bit of discomfort because making a big impact in mental health will never be comfortable. 

Finally, I would love some feedback on how you are finding these episodes. I think that ACT is incredibly useful for coaching people who are already successful to live their values more fully, perhaps to live more “wholeheartedly” as Brene Brown puts it. I have found myself using ACT in this way with some of my insurance company clients who start therapy because they are dealing with work related stressors but by the end are basically looking for more fulfilment in life. It feels vulnerable to use ACT in a “non clinical” way but the more I think about it the more I don’t really believe in the clinical/non-clinical distinction so I’m giving it a go. I’d love to hear if you found this useful so please do send me a message either in the Do More Than Therapy group on FB or as a private message. It helps me to make this podcast what you need it to be.