Originally Posted by
Citydeer
My therapist gave me this advice too, for me it was to deal with my panic attacks. What would usually happen is that I would be feeling okay, but then a sense of dread and discomfort would come over me. As this starts to happen, I would usually start to get worked up and my thoughts would go something like "oh no, not this feeling again, why am I feeling this, how do I stop it, this is awful, why can't I just feel normal, what if I am mentally ill forever"
The acceptance strategy she told me to try is rather than feeding into the panic as I did with the thoughts above, I should think accepting thoughts like "Okay, I feel uncomfortable right now, and that is fine. I can accept being uncomfortable. It doesn't mean anything bad will happen. It will pass." I guess the point is that sometimes by trying to fight panic or anxiety, we simply feed into it more and scare ourselves with our own emotions, and then they spiral.