Always Comparing? This Therapy May Free You From Anxiety & Toxic Thoughts

As someone who's had anxious tendencies most of my life, I love to ask basically everyone I interview about their go-to tips, tricks, and exercises to alleviate those racing, toxic, worry-laden thoughts. And most people have something to share—after all, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults. Often, it's a breathing exercise, a supplement, or a dietary strategy, but recently, someone recommended a strategy I'd never heard of: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

When I was interviewing former reality star and current wellness entrepreneur Lo Bosworth about her go-to wellness habits, she cited ACT as her go-to approach for keeping anxious thoughts in check and keeping things in perspective—she prefers it to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is often considered the go-to treatment strategy for anxiety disorders.

"With CBT, it's about replacing your anxious thoughts with a different thought, but through my experience, I find that you're really just suppressing whatever it is that you feel uncomfortable about," Bosworth told mbg. "I'm more of a subscriber to ACT therapy, which is acceptance therapy. So when you're feeling uncomfortable, you really have to go back to the place of 'this is who I am' and 'this is normal.' It's been really helpful for me, more than anything else, because I'm not trying to force these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings out of my body. I'm just accepting them and living with them, and when you do that, it becomes a lot easier."

Bosworth told me she personally uses this ACT Therapy Workbook to practice these strategies, but loads of therapists are trained in this approach as well. 

The theory behind ACT is that it's often ineffective and counterproductive to try to control painful emotions and psychological experiences—because this suppression often leads to more distress.

"ACT is a mindfulness-based form of therapy that emphasizes building acceptance to cope with life challenges, as well as anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues," says Ellie Cobb, Ph.D., holistic psychologist. "Through the lens of acceptance, one can learn to stop denying, fighting, or criticizing their own difficulties and can choose new adaptive actions and develop new positive self-talk."

With ACT, a practitioner will teach you to start being aware of your thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations that may have been previously stuffed down or avoided. Then, they will help you reframe them so they can be accepted and let go of (to the extent that they can be). The conversation would then most likely move on to your behavior patterns to ensure they're in line with your values.

Here, Wright shares an example of what this might look like:

"So let's say a person is suffering from serious anxiety due to comparisonitis. They're always comparing themselves to other people at work and on social media and just feeling down. The first thing we would do is dig up and acknowledge all of the thoughts and feelings surrounding this. So, what comes to mind when you're scrolling Instagram? What thoughts and feelings pop up when you see your co-worker get a promotion that you don't? Are there any memories from childhood or the past in general that contribute to these thoughts or feelings?

"Once we are able to bring those to light, we could reframe them. So, if the thought is, 'I suck and my co-worker Jen is so much better than me because she got the promotion,' then we would reframe it as, 'I am having a thought that I suck,' or 'I am feeling inadequate compared to Jen because she got a promotion.'

While you can go the DIY route like Bosworth and use an ACT therapy workbook, nothing can truly replicate the experience you'd get with a mental health professional. There's no official ACT certification, but you can find practitioners who have received additional training in ACT. Wright recommends starting your search at ABCT.org, and ask the practitioner directly if they are trained in this form of therapy.