There have been many beautiful acts of kindness during this virus outbreak, to rise up against the huge amounts of suffering. And I’ve been contacted by a range of organisations to support in different ways. Our response has been our Managing Anxiety Summit we gifted.

But this week, I was contacted by an unusual organisation.

It’s no new fact that people are spending pretty much ALL their time at home. And when they’re not working, they are surfing the net. When you’re online, do you know what the second most popular site is in the world, after Google? 

It’s YouTube. And do you know what’s the most popular videos to watch on YouTube? 

Cat Videos.

Apparently watching cat videos is HIGHLY addictive. I’m talking about Class A drug addictive. Done in moderation, it’s fine, like anything else. But some people are spending up to 23.5 HOURS A DAY watching cat videos. They are then literally hallucinating, not eating properly, avoiding exercise and thereby impacting their immune function. Some of them are even starting to behave like cats, jumping from sofa to sofa and getting injured. It’s not funny!

So I got contacted by the National Organisation for Cat-Video Addiction Treatment (NO-CAT), to help them with the huge surge in cases coming through. They are developing a 6 week program combining our insights in Acceptance and Commitment Training and Mindfulness, to offer a way for people to be literally weened off. It helps people who have ‘purrr-fectionist attitudes too, which strangely seemed to be correlated with this addiction.

Here’s a ‘purr’-view of the program called: 

Your First Aid Cat: An ACT approach to CAT (sponsored by NOCAT)

1. Stating your addiction. Helping people to accept their addiction. Saying, for example, My name is Felix and I’m totally addicted to Cat Videos. Circle of sharing online.

2. Finding your Cat-Free Values - What would you do if cat videos didn’t exist? If you feel there is nothing more in your life than cat videos, seeing how other people watch mouse videos and find happiness there. So cat videos are not everything.

3. Stepping Back from Your Cat Food - Watching Videos from a distance, watching mice videos and short clips of Tom and Jerry. Learning to breathe through the inner pain of less cat videos in your life….it’s okay, you can do it, step by step.

4. Opening Your Inner Cat Flap - Opening up to your underlying feelings of guilt, shame and anger, and noticing how excessive Cat vids are ultimately an illicit drug for you

5. Clawing Back Your Life - Practising waking up in the morning, and watching a selection of cat videos where cats are just sleeping.

6. Balancing On Your Paws - Finding the middle way. Watching just a few hours of cat videos per day (less than 10 hours) and have some fully ‘no cat’ time in your day for a full hour minimum.

The final word

Remember, we love cats. And we love cat videos. But we also need to make sure we find time to eat and sleep to keep ourselves healthy and well.

If you’re interested in doing this program, or our other generic ACT program, get in touch with us today. We have a full cat-alog of options for you.

Check out our next course on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which will include this and many other metaphors - it's an interactive video course. You can chat and get to know the other participants, you create a sense of community. We try and make it in a creative way too, so you learn different techniques and it's also evolving all the time. I think you'll enjoy it so come along and join us!