Chad LeJeune - The Worry Trap: How to Free Yourself from Worry & Anxiety using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Pragmatic, straightforward help from an astute and expert clinician; the author draws on cutting-edge research findings to help those who suffer from the age-old problem of worry.

Jacqueline B. Persons, Ph.D., director of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy and associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

This should be a welcome and helpful book for anyone whose life is disrupted by worry. LeJeune offers a practical and informative approach for dealing with worry that places it squarely in the larger and wondrous context of ones whole life! The easy-to-follow mindfulness methods and acceptance practices open the door for real transformation to any reader who actually does them.

Jeffrey Brantley, MD, director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at Duke Universitys Center for Integrative Medicine and author of Calming Your Anxious Mind

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2007 by Chad LeJeune New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

Cover design by Amy Shoup; Acquired by Catharine Sutker; Edited by Carole Honeychurch

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

New Harbinger Publications Web site address: www.newharbinger.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

LeJeune, Chad.

The worry trap : how to free yourself from worry & anxiety using acceptance and commitment therapy / Chad LeJeune.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-57224-480-1

ISBN-10: 1-57224-480-1

1. AnxietyTreatment. 2. WorryTreatment. 3. Acceptance and commitment therapy. I. Title.

RC531L4543 2007

616.852206dc22

2006039640

To all of the clients who have honored me by sharing their worries and their triumphs. You have been my greatest teachers.

Contents

Foreword

The human mind evolved to prevent harm, not to promote subjective feelings of well-being, happiness, or wholeness. Fifty thousand years ago early humans were clinging precariously to a rough existence, seemingly with almost no tools to survive. They did not have big teeth like the lion or fast legs like the cheetah. They were neither as strong as the gorilla nor as well protected as the tortoise. But they had a human mind, and that made all the difference.

Using your mind to avoid harm requires the ability to do three things: to categorize, predict, and evaluate. To use our minds to solve problems we need to treat our symbols for events and their features as if they and the images they evoke are the events themselves. We can imagine difficult situations almost as if we are there, seeing the features of the situation in great detail. Then we can imagine what we might do and the results that might be produced. And finally, we can consider these results in comparison to other results that might be produced by other actions. All this through the use of symbolswe can do it all without ever leaving our chairs.

It is an amazing feat. And it gave us the edge as a species. As a result of these abilities we were able to imagine what might happen to us if we went out on the savannah. We were able to categorize the conditions in which the lion might attack or the cheetah might run us down. We were able to develop weapons, formulate plans, and test approaches that gradually put human beings in a position of relative safety. We did not have to do it simply by trial and error or by instinct. We could reason it all through.

Our basic research laboratories (those doing the work that forms a foundation for the clinical approach described in this book) are learning that these abilities are established in human children very early and that they are central to their intellectual abilities and behavioral success. But they have a dark side. These abilities, so central to our individual and collective success, evolved to prevent harm, not to promote subjective feelings of well-being. The same abilities that allow us to visualize and solve real problems can create misery if they are turned loose on every situation. The mind can exaggerate threats, construct endless problems, or harass us into constant vigilance. In effect, this powerful weapon can turn on its owner. Even worse, it sometimes seems to have become the owner.

Worry originally meant to kill or strangle, and when our minds turn back on us in this way it is as if we are being strangled by reason itself. We can easily enter into a mental world that is so dominant that it seems as though all of life is a mental event. In this state, the mind has become the master.

Fortunately, we are untangling how this happens and are learning what to do about it. This book brings together the processes our research laboratories say are most helpful in bringing the mind to heel, so that we can use it instead of being used by it.

In the past we thought that the mind had to be controlled in the sense that we had to get the content of our minds properly arranged. It turns out that this is not true. In fact, this notion often only feeds the overextension of the mind because that very process is intensely predictive and evaluative. It is like trying to diet successfully by eating constantly so that the food in the house will go away. It cannot work because if the process is the problem, the process will not produce a solution. Now we are learning that getting in control of our minds is more a matter of learning how to let go of the illusion that symbols and the images they evoke are the events themselves. If you want peace of mind you have to learn how to peacefully step out of the noisy maelstrom of prediction and evaluation.

The Worry Trap shows you how to do that. It is very creative in combining traditional tools such as relaxation and newer tools of acceptance, mindfulness, and values. This combination works because all of these methods are harnessed to a common mission under a single, coherent model: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

ACT is not so much a specific technique as an approach. ACT teaches you how to step out of your mind and start to really live. Dr. LeJeune has presented this model in a simple, easy to follow, and comprehensive way. He gives you things to do, not just things to think about. He anticipates the objections and gently guides you through them.

This book is not about eliminating your worries so much as transforming your life. Its about putting you back in control of your life by learning how to let go of trying needlessly to control the content of that verbal organ between your ears. Its about giving up control of the uncontrollable and instead starting to really live. Now.

Steven C. Hayes

Acknowledgments

The ideas and suggestions collected here reflect the efforts of many researchers and clinicians who have worked to better understand worry, anxiety, and the other ins and outs of the human condition. This book owes its conceptual heart to Steven Hayes, who, along with Kirk Strosahl, Kelly Wilson, and others, has so openly shared his work and ideas with all of us. It is the nonproprietary and generous nature of the founders of ACT that has allowed it to help so many. My understanding of anxiety and worry also owes much to the work of David Barlow, Richard Heimberg, Susan Orsillo, and Lizabeth Roemer.