I recently registered for an exciting training that covers an area of therapy that I’ve been wanting to gain experience in. As part of the application process, I was asked to submit my resume. While the nerd in me was very excited to list and organize my experience, the inner critic in me was less enthused. Having been out of the workforce for a few years, my immediate response to seeing the resume requirement was to have thoughts about how I needed to prove myself, how I had nothing recent to show in my career, and that the people in charge of admissions would think that my resume and experience are unimpressive. I found myself feeling really intimidated and inadequate. One self-critical thought led to another. As I was lying in bed trying (and failing) to fall asleep that night, I started reflecting on past trainings I have done to see if I could put any of the tools from them to good use.

One that came to mind was a training I did in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). A core focus of ACT is to teach tools for accepting our thoughts, feelings, and life circumstances, so that we can unhook from our unproductive thoughts and the problematic stories we create in our heads. I say “problematic” because, if we get too tangled up in them, our thoughts and inner dialogue can create further problems and cause us suffering. And in the personal scenario I am describing, my thoughts were causing me emotional distress and suffering as I could not fall asleep or focus on the excitement I had for this training in the first place. 

It was then that I remembered one of my favorite exercises I learned in a previous ACT training called “leaves on a stream.” Essentially, you imagine sitting by the side of a stream and watching leaves in the water floating by. Then you begin to imagine that each of your thoughts is floating on a leaf that is drifting down the river. If you try this exercise you may notice that you get so distracted in your thoughts that you are following the thoughts down the stream, instead of allowing them to pass on by. This is not unexpected and happens to everyone, but as soon as you notice you are distracted or caught up in the thought or story, bring yourself back to the visualization. Take slow, deep breaths, and imagine you are just watching and noticing the drifting leaves. Any thought, feeling, or body sensation can be another thing you notice happening and can be placed on a leaf to observe and allow to pass by. 

When I pictured this scenario, I did find myself getting into the trap of chasing after the leaves and then before I knew it, I was floating downstream along with them. Upon noticing this and refocusing, however, I was able to let the thoughts pass and became an observer to those thoughts, rather than becoming entangled in them, which also allowed me to finally fall asleep! 

In doing this exercise, I was reminded of how much I got out of my past trainings and I became excited all over again about learning another therapeutic approach that will come with new ways to learn to help heal the mind and body. And, once I actually got my experience down on the page, I noticed that those self critical thoughts were far less prominent. Sometimes it takes a little distance from your thoughts to really gain some perspective on them.