How to ACCEPT Difficult Emotions. Story of the Unwelcome Guest at the Party
/Today I’m going to be sharing with you a story which could be quite useful for helping you deal with difficult emotions - in particular difficult sensations and thoughts. It's also useful for any clients that you may have. This is the story of the unwelcome guest at the party.
Imagine that you've organised a party - let's say a barbecue.
It's the summer, you've invited all your friends, they've all come over and you're all set to have a really good time. They all come over and you're outside - maybe you're in the garden, laughing, the music's on. But then someone rings the bell so you naturally you go off to the front door and open up. It's a really annoying friend. It's a friend of yours that you really don't like. Not really a friend. You certainly didn't invite him. And for this metaphor they are also stinky and smelly and rude. And so you notice them there and you don't answer the doorbell. But they keep ringing it - again and again and again.
So what do you do?
You go back to your party and try to ignore it. But all the time that you're talking to your guests you can just keep hearing this ringing in the background. You do all your different strategies to try and ignore and avoid and not hear that sound. But it keeps getting louder and louder. So in the end you go up to the door and you see if there's anything that you can do. Somehow when you're letting somebody else in, he kind of gets his foot through the door and starts pushing the door. And you are not able to shut that door so you just decide to stand there and put your foot by the door to stop this unwelcome, annoying, rude and frustrating person from getting in.
You're pushing the door closed and trying to hold that door closed as much as possible. But he keeps pushing back. And somehow the stronger that you push that door to try and keep this guest out, the more he seems to push back.
Meanwhile all your other friends are having a great time. They are outside in the garden having a barbecue - they're laughing and chatting with each other. But this guest is just by the door so you have to stand by the door and keep it closed.
You do this for a while and it's one way of keeping him out. But the problem is you're actually missing out on your own party! You know all the fun's happening outside and the whole point of the barbecue is to see your other friends. So you make a decision - you're gonna start opening that door and just see what happens. You open the door and the guest comes rushing in and it's just like you expected. It's frustrating - he's rude, he's smelly, he is yucky and hangs out with your other guests and some of them are a little shocked. At first it's so difficult - you don't know what to do with yourself. But over time you start to notice that some people kind of quite like him and there's something quirky about him. Actually there's some things you can actually learn from him, which you wouldn't have realised otherwise.
This guest - although he was someone that you thought would be just a negative experience and very frustrating and you were scared of him - actually when you let him in and started to interact with him in a nice way, you started to get some positive experiences. The great thing is you were not stuck by your front door while everyone's in the garden having a great time. You are able to notice him but notice all the other people too. And as you started to welcome him more (and not really think about him too much, worried about whether he's there or not, what he's up to) you actually start to have a really good time. And eventually you just can't believe you even forgot about him because you're so engaged in the party and having such a good time.
This is the metaphor of the unwelcome guest at the party.
This guest, as you may have guessed, is representing your difficult feelings like anxiety or sadness or depression or frustration or urges that you're trying to overcome. Or really judgmental thoughts about yourself, other people or about the world. These are the unwelcome guests that we have and usually we don't try and let them in - we try and push them out so we avoid them, we deny them, we fight with them, we do anything but allow them into our awareness. But perhaps we can just let them come in. So our focus is not on keeping that door closed all the time and keeping it pushed but just having an attitude of "hey come in, we got other guests here too". And you may not want them to be there, that is true - but there's something to learn from them when you can open up to them.
That's the metaphor of the unwelcome guest of the party. Feel free to recall this story anytime you're going through a tricky time and are constantly avoid difficult thoughts, feelings or sensations. Perhaps you could try a different strategy - let the difficult experience come in and see what happens.
This story comes from an approach called ACT - acceptance and commitment training. I first discovered this story when I watched this video.
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