I’m excited to share a recent conversation I had with UK therapist John-Paul Davies — now available as a podcast episode — where we dive deep into what makes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) so helpful for anxiety. John-Paul is a therapist in the UK who has started a YouTube channel focused on general therapy issues for the lay audience.

Why Talk About Anxiety?

Let’s start with a little perspective. Anxiety is part of our common humanity.

The World Health Organization estimates that over 300 million people worldwide live with an anxiety disorder (WHO, 2017). In the United States, nearly 1 in 5 adults experience an anxiety disorder each year (NIMH, 2023). And in the UK, recent data shows that 37.1% of women and 29.9% of men reported high levels of anxiety in 2022–23 (ONS, 2023). If you’re struggling, you’re far from alone.

Yet, despite how common anxiety is, only about 1 in 4 people with anxiety seek help (NIMH, 2023).

In this conversation, I did my best to convey what’s unique about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for anxiety-based struggles, the importance of psychological flexibility in our everyday life, the difference between fear-based reactions and values-based actions, how to lean into anxiety, and basically how to live towards our values while feeling anxious.

Living According to Your Values

One of the most empowering processes of the ACT model is its focus on values-based living. Instead of letting anxiety dictate your choices, ACT invites you to ask:

• What kind of person do I want to be?
• What do I care about, deep down?
• What small step can I take today that’s in line with my values?

Living according to your values doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious. It means you’re choosing actions that matter to you, while being anxious.

What You’ll Hear in This Podcast Interview

00:00 Overview of Anxiety
02:57 Understanding Anxiety vs. Fear
05:58 The Role of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
10:54 The Importance of Psychological Flexibility
16:13 Values-Based Actions and Personal Growth
21:13 Real-Life Applications and Examples
29:21 Exploring Values and Inspiration
29:43 Balancing Ease and Effort in ACT
30:15 The Process of Becoming
31:08 The Bus Metaphor for Anxiety
32:19 Living Towards Values Despite Anxiety
33:39 Fear-Based Responses and Their Impact
36:18 Reflecting on Fear vs. Values-Based Actions
38:32 Psychological Flexibility and Mindfulness
44:36 Experiential Exercises for Identifying Values
47:51 Advice for Aspiring Therapists

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You’re staring at the email draft about the job promotion, your cursor hovering over the “Send” button. The simple act of applying for the senior position has become a complex landscape of doubt.

What if the wording isn’t perfect? You’ve rewritten the first paragraph seventeen times. Each version feels simultaneously too confident and not confident enough. 

Imagine your manager reading your email, picking apart every comma, and analyzing each carefully constructed sentence as if it were forensic evidence.

If you use the word “innovative,” will it sound genuine or desperate?

That descriptor you used in the third paragraph — does it truly capture your professional essence?

You’ve spent three hours selecting synonyms, weighing the nuanced implications of “strategic” versus “forward-thinking.”

Is your smile in the professional headshot you’ve attached too wide? Too forced? Does it communicate confidence or does it seem like you’re trying too hard?

You’ve cycled through fifteen different photos, each subjected to microscopic scrutiny.

What if they ask about your weaknesses?

An hour has passed by, and you haven’t sent that email.

Ayayay…

Has your life become a carefully curated fortress of safety?

Think of your career life for a moment. Have you been in the same position for seven years, despite consistently receiving performance reviews that suggest you’re overqualified?

Perhaps, the thought of applying for a senior role triggers an avalanche of defensive reasoning.

“I’m comfortable here,” you tell yourself.

Your mind has come up with various justifications for staying put. The current job offers predictability: same commute, same colleagues, same tasks. You know precisely how many steps it takes to walk from your desk to the break room, how the coffee machine works, and the exact rhythm of office small talk.

Any deviation feels like a potential catastrophe.

When opportunities for promotion arise, your mind becomes a sophisticated risk-assessment machine. You imagine every possible failure scenario with cinematic detail:

• What if you apply and don’t get the job? You imagine all the paralyzing embarrassment you may feel. 
• What if you get the job and can’t perform? You construct images of how professional humiliation looks and sounds.
• What if your current colleagues resent you? You imagine your colleagues staring at you with angry eyes.

Think about your search for an authentic, loving, and caring romantic relationship. Has dating become an exercise to play-it-safe and minimize commitment? You appear interested while maintaining emotional distance from the person in front of you. Your first dates rarely progress to second dates because you hold quickly onto reasons why that person is not a good fit for you without knowing much about them.

What about your hobbies?

Are you choosing your hobbies as a crafted selection that minimizes the possibility of making a fool of yourself? Do you take classes where your performance and success is guaranteed? Are you joining groups with low expectations so you don’t feel embarrassed? 

Your friends tell you, “You could do so much more,” they say. But “more” represents uncertainty, unpredictability, and unknowns. And those are the yucky experiences you’re constantly minimizing.

Understanding Your Mind’s Protection Mode

Your mind generates an estimated 12,000-60,000 thoughts daily. Buddhist psychology teaches us that the mind’s constant activity — what the Buddha called “monkey mind” — is the natural state of your mind.

Thinking — in all forms — comes and goes.

Your mind is supposed to do three things: come up with stuff, connect stuff, and protect you from potential negative stuff.

Playing-It-Safe Feels So Compelling

You’re wired to play-it-safe by design. Your mind is wired to scan for threats, avoid risks, minimize hurt, and keep you alive, no matter what. That’s one of its jobs!

Your mind wants to keep you safe, at all costs.

You might recognize your mind’s proneness to search for safety when you think about “playing it safe” and when you make a playing-it-safe move:

• Declining a new job opportunity because it feels unfamiliar
• Avoiding social events to prevent discomfort
• Sticking to routines that feel secure but stifling
• Editing emails multiple times before sending them
• Mentally rehearsing conversations before social events
• Postponing decisions until feeling 100% certain
• Criticizing yourself as a form of preparation
• Worrying about terrible future scenarios
• Dwelling on your past mistakes
• Putting others’ needs first most of the time

This protective function of your mind is essential for your survival, isn’t a flaw, and it can be adaptive at times, but it can also get in the way of your well-being and life if you don’t check how often you’re playing-it-safe, why you do it, and how it works.

Finding Your “Middle Way”

Life often feels like a balancing act, doesn’t it?

On one side, there’s your desire for psychological safety, predictability, security, and an anxiety-free life. On the other, there’s your yearning for growth and new experiences. When you lean too far toward caution, when you play-it-safe too often, life can feel stagnant, even small. But when you rush headlong into risk, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, stressed, or burned out.

So, how do you find that sweet spot — a place where you feel safe enough to take risks that fosters your well-being?

The Middle Way and the Window of Tolerance

 
Buddhist psychology offers a timeless answer: the “Middle Way.” Modern psychology mirrors this idea with concepts like the Window of Tolerance (Siegel, 1999) and the Approach-Avoidance Balance (Elliot, 2006).

The Middle Way teaches you to find equilibrium between clinging to safety and chasing new experiences outside your comfort zone. Unlike binary thinking that pushes toward extreme responses, it advocates for a nuanced, balanced path. Imagine a tightrope walker — maintaining equilibrium requires constant, subtle adjustments rather than dramatic overcorrections. It invites you to stay present with discomfort, neither avoiding it nor rushing past it.

Imagine a sailboat crossing an ocean. The skilled navigator doesn’t fight the wind or completely surrender to its force, but skillfully adjusts the sails, finding the precise angle that harnesses the wind’s power while maintaining course. Similarly, the Middle Way is about navigating life’s emotional currents with subtle, intentional adjustments rather than dramatic struggles.

Siegel’s concept of the Window of Tolerance (1999) describes the optimal zone where you’re neither overwhelmed nor under-stimulated. In this zone, you can stay grounded while exploring new challenges. This window of tolerance represents your optimal psychological and physiological state where you can effectively respond to stress without getting lost on it. Outside this window, you experience hyperarousal or hypoarousal.

Think of your nervous system as a home’s thermostat. A perfect thermostat doesn’t blast heat when it’s slightly cold or freeze the house when it’s mildly warm. Instead, it maintains a carefully calibrated range, making minor, continuous adjustments to keep the environment comfortable and stable. Your psychological Window of Tolerance functions identically — maintaining an optimal internal climate of emotional and cognitive balance.

Elliot’s Approach-Avoidance Motivation model (2006) explores the dynamic tension between pursuing goals and protecting oneself from potential threats. Managing your well-being requires that you move toward meaningful goals (approach motivation), but it also involves that you maintain safety boundaries (avoidance motivation).

Envision for a moment a shoreline where the ocean meets the land. Waves approach — exploring new territories — but then retreat, maintaining safe boundaries.

Neither the ocean completely consumes the land nor does the land permanently block the ocean. This dynamic interaction represents an approach-avoidance mindset, where both forces are necessary and complementary.

Psychological Agility

The “Middle Way,” the Window of Tolerance, and the Approach-Avoidance Balance are not competing, but complementary approaches to psychological resilience, flexibility, and agility.

They all suggest that your well-being emerges from:

• Awareness of your internal states, comfortable and uncomfortable ones
• Willingness to experience discomfort
• Values-based risk-taking
• Flexible response to challenges
• Self-compassionate to navigate uncertainty, unpredictability, and unknowns.

The ultimate goal is developing psychological agility to move fluidly between safety and exploration when it matters and maintain inner stability while remaining open to new experiences when it’s worth it to you.

Navigating Your Mind’s Proneness to Overthink and Play-It-Safe

Here are three essential skills to help you navigate your mind’s protective patterns:

• Watch your mind
  Think of your mind as an advisory board that’s constantly generating opinions and suggestions. Instead of automatically accepting every thought as truth, practice stepping back and observing your thoughts like you’re watching a movie.

• Accept the protection mode of your mind
  Understand that your mind will always try to push you toward playing it safe. When you notice these protective thoughts arising, simply acknowledge them: “I see you’re trying to keep me safe again, mind.”

• Check the long-term impact of your actions
  When your mind urges you to play it safe, ask yourself: “If I follow this thought, will I become the person I want to be? Will these actions help me show up as the friend, partner, or professional I aspire to be?”

Reflective Questions to Explore:

1. What areas of your life feel too safe? Where might you be “playing it safe?”
2. What’s one small, meaningful risk you could take this week?
3. How can you create a sense of safety while still stepping outside of your comfort zone?

Final Words

Remember, the goal isn’t to stop playing-it-safe entirely — it’s to prevent your safety behaviors from stopping you from living.

TEDx Talk: Stop Playing-it-Safe and Start Living

A 14-min talk with over 264K views summarizes this article!

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During my visit to my friends, their 4-year-old, Mary, couldn’t wait to show me her treasures. She proudly paraded her scooter, magician’s hat, and a seemingly endless collection of toys that appeared and disappeared from her tiny hands faster than I could register them. “And this! And that!”

Then, she twirled across the white rug creating perfect pirouettes with her tiny feet.

And, out the blue, she launched into a playful pillow assault, sending fluffy projectiles flying toward my face.

“Mary, sweetheart, please be gentle when playing with Patricia. No throwing pillows at her face,” said her mom.

Little 4-year old Mary, bent forward, fixing me with those huge brown eyes that sparkled with mischief, and whispered her solution to all of life’s problems: “Patricia, just say no!

Playing It Safe: The Hidden Cost of Saying “Yes” Too Often

A common way we “play it safe” is by postponing our needs, prioritizing others, and downplaying what truly matters to us. Sound familiar?

Many of us struggle to say no, fearing we’ll upset someone, seem selfish, come across as too needy, or rock the boat too much.

But here’s the thing: saying yes to everyone else often means saying no to yourself.

What’s Holding You Back?

Take a moment to ask yourself:

• What am I afraid of happening if I say no?
• What would it feel like to trust that my boundaries are valid and worth respecting?

Don’t take me wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with putting others’ needs first at times; in fact, it’s a key part of parenting, meaningful friendships, and loving partnerships.

But when saying yes becomes your default, your go-to response — especially because of fear or anxiety — it can take a toll. Constantly sidelining your needs to avoid conflict or please others doesn’t strengthen relationships; it strains them.

The Hidden Costs of Chronic Self-Sacrifice

Research by Dr. Julie Gottman shows that partners who consistently suppress their needs report 35% lower relationship satisfaction over time (Gottman & Silver, 2015).

A meta-analysis of relationship studies reveals that chronic self-suppression correlates with increased anxiety and depression symptoms (Johnson & Greenman, 2021).

Who likes to become smaller for a relationship to survive?

No one thrives by making themselves smaller just to keep a relationship afloat.

The Balance

Authentic relationships require give-and-take. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson calls this balance “positivity resonance” — a shared sense of connection that grows when both people feel seen, respected, and valued. Saying no, when needed, is part of that balance.

Skills to Stop Playing-It-Safe by Chronically Denying Your Values and Needs

Here are some science-based skills for you to try:

The Pause Technique

Pause for 3 seconds before responding. Research shows this pause reduces impulsive agreement by 40% (Chen, 2021).

The Sandwich Method

Structure your “no” like this: Appreciation + No + Alternative

Example
“Thanks for thinking of me (appreciation). I can’t take this on right now (no). Perhaps we could revisit this next quarter (alternative).”

Values-Based Decision Making

Before saying yes or no, ask yourself:

• • Does this align with my values?
  • Will this support my wellbeing?
  • Is this a genuine obligation?

    
    Mindful Boundary Setting
    Notice the urge to accommodate:

• • Pause for three breaths
  • Check in with your values
  • Respond authentically

    
    Use Right Speech (Samma Vaca)
    Buddhist teachings emphasize speaking truthfully and kindly.

Example
“Despite my deep wish to help, I must decline.”

The Long Game

As Dr. Sue Johnson reminds us, “The most stable relationships are not those where partners never rock the boat, but those where partners feel secure enough to navigate waves together.”

Taking action in line with your values not only improves your relationships with others, but strengthens your relationship with yourself.

So, where might you need to say no today?