You Are Not a Rock

1. You Are Not a Rock: Embrace Being Human and Feeling

You are not a rock. You feel things.

Embrace human experience. Unlike rocks, humans feel a wide range of emotions, thoughts, and sensations. Trying to avoid difficult feelings like anxiety, guilt, or fear is an attempt to be like a rock, which is fundamentally impossible and leads to suffering. True mental health involves developing the capacity to experience these feelings fully.

Paradoxical practice. Just as physical fitness is built by pushing through discomfort (lifting heavy things to get stronger, running through aches to build endurance), emotional fitness is built by leaning into difficult emotions. Avoiding anxiety makes you more anxious; avoiding sadness makes you less capable of experiencing joy. Growth happens on the other side of discomfort.

Redefine goals. Don't set goals that rocks can do better than you, such as feeling less anxiety, obsessing less, or making fewer mistakes. Rocks are already perfect at these things. Instead, set creative human goals focused on building, creating, and doing things you value, even while experiencing difficult emotions.

2. Focus on Problems, Not Just Symptoms

Pain is a symptom.

Look beyond the pain. Mental health challenges often manifest as painful symptoms like anxiety, depression, or intrusive thoughts. Focusing solely on relieving these symptoms without addressing their underlying causes is like treating knee pain with painkillers while a monster is chewing on your leg – it provides temporary relief but allows the real problem to worsen.

Identify the monster. The underlying problems are often patterns of thinking and behaving that interfere with your ability to live a values-aligned life. These aren't always external factors; frequently, the problem is something you are doing, such as engaging in compulsions. Recognizing these patterns is crucial for lasting change.

Compulsions are the problem. Compulsions are actions taken to cope with, check on, or control uncertainty, anxiety, and other unwanted feelings. While they offer immediate relief, they inevitably cause more pain and reinforce the very experiences you're trying to avoid. Identifying and eliminating these compulsive patterns is key to tackling the root cause.

3. Practice Mindfulness and Meditation to Accept Experience

mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment—non-judgmentally.

Be present. Mindfulness is the fundamental skill for accepting the "stuff in your head" without judgment. It involves intentionally paying attention to the present moment, including thoughts, feelings, and sensations, without getting lost in the past or future. This practice is essential for building emotional fitness.

Mindlessness is a practice. Just as mindfulness is cultivated, mindlessness is also practiced daily through distraction, rumination, and constant judgment. If you struggle to pay attention or manage your thoughts, it's likely a result of consistent mindlessness, not a disorder. Your brain is simply doing what you've trained it to do.

Meditation builds capacity. Meditation is the focused practice of mindfulness skills. It's like a drill for your emotional instrument, building the strength and endurance needed to apply mindfulness in daily life. It's not a quick fix for calm, but a challenging practice that helps you sit with discomfort and bring your awareness back to the present, strengthening your ability to handle difficult internal experiences.

4. Fuel Your Life with Values, Not Fear

Values are the directions we want to move in with each step we take in our lives.

Values as a compass. Values are the "why" behind your goals, providing direction when faced with uncertainty. They guide you toward actions that contribute to long-term health and happiness, rather than short-term relief from fear. Living a values-aligned life is the opposite of being driven by fear and anxiety.

Fear-fueled life. When fear is in charge, actions are reactive, aimed at avoiding unwanted feelings or outcomes. This leads to spending time and energy on things that don't truly matter, resulting in anxiety, depression, and a sense of being someone you don't want to be.

Switching the fuel. Transforming your life involves consciously choosing actions aligned with your values, even when fear is present. This means accepting difficult feelings while still moving in a direction that matters to you. This shift is challenging because you lose the familiar, albeit painful, purpose that fear provided.

5. Stop Compulsions: Coping, Checking, and Controlling

Your "solutions" are part of the problem.

Compulsions worsen problems. Compulsions are the core behaviors that fuel mental health challenges. They fall into three patterns:

• Coping: Trying to replace unwanted feelings with desired ones (e.g., using substances, excessive entertainment, even "healthy" activities done solely to escape).
• Checking: Trying to eliminate uncertainty (e.g., re-reading emails, checking locks, seeking reassurance).
• Controlling: Trying to prevent unwanted experiences (e.g., avoiding situations, manipulating others, excessive cleaning).

Addiction to relief. Engaging in compulsions creates a feedback loop where your brain learns that unwanted feelings are prerequisites for relief or reward. This reinforces the pattern, leading to increased frequency and intensity of both the unwanted feelings and the compulsive behaviors.

Break the pattern. Eliminating compulsions is crucial because they are the actions that maintain the cycle of suffering. This requires accepting the discomfort that arises when you stop, recognizing that the discomfort is the withdrawal from the compulsion, not the original problem itself. Start with easier compulsions and work your way up using a hierarchy.

6. Break the IF X THEN Y Thinking Pattern

IF I leave the stove on, THEN my building will burn down.

Magical thinking. Many compulsions are driven by an IF X THEN Y pattern, where a feared outcome (Y) is believed to be caused or prevented by a specific action or state (X). This creates a rigid, often irrational, link between an experience and a consequence, fueling anxiety and compulsive behavior.

The trap of certainty. Believing that performing a compulsion (X) prevents a feared outcome (Y) logically sets up the belief that not performing the compulsion will cause Y to happen. This makes stopping compulsions terrifying, as it feels equivalent to making your worst fears come true.

The alternative: IF X THEN X. The antidote is mindfulness and acceptance. When you experience X (a thought, feeling, or uncertainty), you simply experience X. You don't automatically jump to Y. You learn to have the experience without attaching a rigid, fear-driven consequence to it, creating space to choose a values-aligned action instead.

7. Understand and Accept Your Deepest Fears

There is, however, incredible power in showing your brain it doesn’t need to be afraid of those experiences any longer.

Dig beneath the symptoms. Specific anxieties and compulsions often stem from a few core, underlying fears (e.g., fear of death, being alone, being judged, losing control). Trying to address each symptom individually is inefficient; understanding the root fear allows you to tackle the source of many problems.

Your brain is trying to help. Your brain, in its attempt to protect you from these core fears, constantly generates uncertainties and worries related to them. Reacting to these worries with compulsions reinforces the brain's belief that the feared outcome is dangerous and must be avoided, leading to more worries.

Accept the consequences. A powerful technique is to practice accepting the feared consequences. Instead of trying to prove your fears won't come true, imagine they already have. By sitting with the discomfort of the worst-case scenario, you show your brain that the feared outcome is survivable, reducing its power to trigger anxiety and compulsions.

8. Tame the Monster Through Cognitive Defusion

You are not your farts.

Thoughts aren't you. Cognitive fusion is the experience of being completely entangled with your thoughts, believing they are absolute truth or define who you are. This gives immense power to unwanted thoughts, urges, and fears, allowing them to control your actions and limit your life.

Create space. Cognitive defusion is the skill of recognizing that thoughts, feelings, and urges are simply internal experiences, separate from your core self. Like clouds in the sky or annoying kids in a car, they are present, but they don't define you and you don't have to react to them.

Practice detachment. Regular mindfulness and meditation help build this skill. Exercises like "Annoying Kids in a Car" or "Practicing Possibility" (imagining fantastical outcomes) help demonstrate the disconnect between thoughts and reality, weakening their power to dictate your behavior and allowing you to choose actions aligned with your values.

9. Make Change Visible, Tangible, and Consequential

The act of externalizing thoughts—putting things into symbols that are understandable—forces a clarifying function.

Externalize your thinking. Making internal struggles visible and tangible helps clarify complex challenges and identify opportunities for change. Tools like the "Inventory," "Ideal Inventory," "Hierarchy," and "Compulsion Journey" get thoughts and patterns out of your head and onto paper, making them easier to understand and work with.

Make change actionable. To implement change, make it visible (write it down), tangible (use physical reminders or objects), and consequential (link it to values, create accountability, make it harder to avoid). This reduces reliance on fleeting motivation and builds consistent action.

Keep success close. Instead of focusing on distant outcomes, define success by the immediate, values-aligned actions you take each day. Practicing mindfulness with each breath, completing a small task from your hierarchy, or doing an activity from your Awesome Schedule are all successes. This builds momentum and reinforces positive behavior.

10. Practice Nonjudgment to Free Yourself

Judgment is the first compulsion.

Judgment fuels suffering. Judging internal experiences (thoughts, feelings, sensations) or external events as "bad" or "wrong" is often the initial spark that triggers the cycle of anxiety, fear, and compulsions. We don't judge everything (like ugly paint or random leaves); our judgments are selective and tied to our beliefs.

Develop choice. Practicing nonjudgment is about developing the capacity to observe experiences without automatically labeling them or attaching rigid meanings. This creates space between the experience and your reaction, allowing you to choose a response aligned with your values rather than being dictated by automatic judgments.

Nonjudgment isn't passive. Nonjudgment doesn't mean condoning harmful behavior or abandoning values. It means freeing yourself from the internal machinery of judgment that traps you in suffering. It allows you to engage with the world and yourself from a place of clarity and choice, enabling you to build a life based on what truly matters, not on reacting to perceived threats.

11. Make Happiness a Practice, Not a Destination

The absence of fear is not the presence of happiness.

Happiness is built. Happiness is not merely the absence of negative feelings or the result of defeating internal "enemies." It is a distinct practice cultivated through intentional actions aligned with your values. Relying on overcoming fear for happiness creates a dependency on fear itself.

End the war. Stop fighting the monster of unwanted feelings. You don't need to defeat anxiety or eliminate intrusive thoughts to be happy. You can practice happiness while experiencing these things. Trying to escape suffering often leads to Stockholm Syndrome with your compulsions, where the familiar pain feels safer than the uncertainty of freedom.

Cultivate positive emotions. Just as you've built endurance for negative emotions through practice, you can build capacity for positive emotions like happiness, love, and gratitude. Incorporate practices like Loving-Kindness Meditation and daily gratitude into your life, not as coping mechanisms, but as intentional ways to experience and express positive feelings.

12. Embrace Uncertainty as the Path Forward

The only thing that is certain is uncertainty, and that’s okay!

Uncertainty is inevitable. Life is inherently uncertain. Trying to eliminate uncertainty through checking or controlling compulsions is a futile effort that shrinks your world and prevents you from moving forward. Embracing uncertainty is essential for growth and living a full life.

Seek out uncertainty. Don't just wait for uncertainty to happen; actively seek out opportunities to practice sitting with it. Take on new challenges, try new things, and resist the urge to constantly check or seek reassurance. Each time you do, you build your capacity to handle the bigger uncertainties that matter.

Values guide the way. Embracing uncertainty doesn't mean acting recklessly (like jumping into a tiger enclosure). It means accepting the inherent unknowability of outcomes while making decisions and taking steps aligned with your values. Your values provide the direction, allowing you to navigate the wilderness of life even when you don't know exactly what's around the next bend.

Last updated: May 5, 2025