An exercise to disentangle from unhelpful thoughts and overwhelming feelings
Russ Harris, one of the representatives in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has devolved a useful tool to be used when we are caught up by thoughts or flood by overwhelming feelings.
This exercise is called Dropping the Anchor (Harris, 2019) and its goal is to offer a way to step back from those overwhelming feelings, get out of that downward spiral of critical, self-defeating, catastrophic or judgmental thoughts, return to the present moment and be able to refocus on the things you want to be engaged with (such as your job, your loved ones, that movie, etc.) instead of being stuck in your inner world.
Dropping anchor (Harris, 2019) is a simple exercise that can be applied by anyone, in any situation (no matter if you are at home, on the street or at work) within a couple of minutes depending how much time you have or want to spend on it. It consists of 3 steps represented in the acronym A.C.E:
A. The A stands for acknowledging what is going on inside you: what your mind is telling you, or what you are feeling and in what part of your body. You can level this experience as “here in my chest I am noticing a feeling of anxiety” or “I notice a thought that I am going to be rejected” or “my mind is telling me that I am not good enough.” Just notice and label that experience.
C. C goes like coming back to your body. Use your body as a channel to come back to the present moment and detach from that cloud of thoughts or feelings. Coming back to the body means connecting with your experiential self rather than your thinking self. So do free movements... straighten your back, move your neck from side to side, stretch your legs, press your feet into the floor, move your hands in circles, etc. You can even jump rope or do burpees if you're home alone!
E. E represents engaging the outside world. To do this, use any (or all) of your 5 senses as channels to reconnect with where you are and the activity you were doing before you got caught up in your mind or feelings. This is one way Harris (2019) offers to do this, but feel free to choose any other that works for you. This way, you can silently name:
5 things that you can see,
And/or 4 things that you can hear,
And/or 3 things that you can touch,
And/or 2 things that you can smell,
And/or 1 thing that you can taste.
I invite you to try this exercise as an experiment and see what happens. I hope this helps you in some way to disentangle yourself from unhelpful thoughts or feelings, but I can't guarantee that this will work for you. So try to put it into practice with curiosity and compassion, being open to any outcome.
Source: Harris, R. (2019). ACT made simple (2a ed.). New Harbinger Publications.
