"Physicalizing" exercise from "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life"

“Physicalizing” exercise from “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life”

May 12th, 2008

There are several neat exercises in Chapter 10 of Get Out of Your Mind and into Your Lifeмебели, the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy workbook, for increasing our ability to be present with uncomfortable (or even downright crazy-making) thoughts and feelings.

One technique in particular is borrowed from Gestalt psychology - it’s called “physicalizing,” and involves imagining that a scary thought or feeling or sensation is an object that we’re looking at - an object complete with all kinds of imaginary attributes, such as shape, color, weight, and so on. It’s a way of defusing the scariness of whatever it is by putting it into the same category as other external objects, like chairs, trees, used Chinese food cartons, and so on.

Once you learn this technique you can use it in combination with other ACT work, such as values and commitments. Values & commitments often raise scary barriers, and by having a tool handy such as physicalizing, you can work on accepting these barriers, then moving back to the values and commitment part of it again. You can go back and forth as need be, in other words.

This is something I want to try more of myself. So as I’ve done before, I’ve made a recording of the exercise, based on the written exercise in the workbook. I mean to play this to myself & try it out a few times. If you’re interested you can try it too, via the link below - if you find it helpful let me know. Or you can just check out the exercise right in the workbook - it’s on page 137.