Anxiety Files

Simple and powerful techniques for coping with anxiety and worry.

by Robert L. Leahy

Having a New Relationship to Your Obsessions: Welcome to the Guest House

By Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D. on July 10, 2009 in Anxiety Files

Imagine that your mind is a house in the woods, you are all alone and there is a guest that shows up uninvited. In the past you have been irritable with guests, angry that anyone would disturb your well-earned solitude. You have yelled at visitors to "GO AWAY" so that you can be alone. But visitors seem to pass on the road where you live. They ignore your no-trespassing sign.

This method causes an observer mindset

Submitted by Todd Snyder on July 16, 2009 - 3:12pm.

The active ingredient in Dr. Leahy's poem is what Steven Hayes has capitalized on with the ACT method of preventing thoughts from taking over the entire mind. He talks about watching thoughts go by like train-cars going by on a track. To fight with the thought or experience it as your world is different than observing it as a phenomenon ocurring in the present moment. It's interesting to see how this metaphor draws the listener into a possition of observation of the thought as a phenomenon of the present moment rather than some evil thing that needs to be resisted.

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This is so beautiful, it made

Submitted by Anonymous on April 23, 2011 - 5:56pm.

This is so beautiful, it made me cry a little. You are right, my thoughts are very afraid things, and I was so horrible to them! Never let them stay, shouted at them and pushed them away. I will try inviting them in. They are part of me, and I should love them as much as I should love myself.

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Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D., is the author of Anxiety Free,The Worry Cure and Beat the Blues. He is Clinical Professor of Psychology at Weill-Cornell Medical School and Director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy.

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