One of the things that make ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) so useful is the fact that I think it can be a kind of ‘validation’ for your thoughts and feelings. If you are feeling bad about something, and it is bothering you and you don’t know what to do about the feeling, one thing that can help is to try and acknowledge that feeling directly. It is a simple technique to validate your own feelings. Try it and find out for yourself!

Try to validate your own feelings this way

By acknowledging your feeling, I am talking about experiencing them directly. So, looking into your body or scanning your body to find out where this difficult feeling sits within your body and then really exploring what the feeling looks like, what shape it is, what colour is it? Does it move? Is it big or little? Is it changing? Look at all the aspects of the feeling in your body.

Doing this for a few minutes might help to shift the negative feeling out of your body (but don’t get ‘hooked’ on the idea that it will get rid of your feeling). It will probably just change your relationship with the feeling so that it is a little easier to manage.

Validate yourself!

I believe that this exercise helps you to validate your own feelings because it acknowledges their character in specific detail. And acknowledges the properties of the feeling. Not doing so might be stopping you from moving past them in the first place.

It may not make the feeling go away (that’s not the point), but it can sometimes shift the power of your feeling so that you get some relief, and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Image credit:

“Feeling Sad.” by Vi Kay is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.