As I was attending a virtual gathering, I got introduced over zoom to another person. In response, I naturally said “nice to meet you.” 

Oh boy with the virtual gatherings, and yet, that’s the time we’re living in these days!

There are many variations to say welcome to someone. Google suggests: please to meet you; a pleasure to meet you; lovely to meet you; how do you do? 

What’s your greeting when meeting a new person? 

We say “nice to meet you” even though we don’t know how the conversation is going to go, whether we may enjoy this person’s company or not, but we do it to be polite at the moment.

Yet, is that what we tell ourselves when feeling uncomfortable, anxious, or panicky?

Seriously, what do you tell yourself when experiencing discomfort?

Quite unlikely we say “nice to meet you to that annoying feeling, right? 

It’s hard to remember that “any uncomfortable experience you have, is not your enemy or the assassin of your day.”

It’s hard to remember that “the more you pretend not to have a feeling, the more that the feeling stays present with you, and the less you do with your life in those moments.”

It’s hard to remember that “tolerating discomfort” is no different than frowning firmly until your wrinkles hurt (at least in my case).

It’s hard to remember that “those uncomfortable experiences can be watched, observed, and noticed without becoming a puppet of them.

It’s hard to remember that “those yucky experiences” don’t need to be the recipients of your energy, efforts, and enthusiasm of the day.

So, if you don’t want to sink along with those unbearable experiences, you may want to consider:

• To intentionally choose to have an uncomfortable experience – accepting it for as it is without rushing into solving it, fixing it, or replacing it.
  
• To intentionally accept those annoying experiences without necessarily liking them.
• To intentionally make room for that discomfort without judging it.
• To intentionally lean into those experiences as they are, without rushing there – action land. 
• To intentionally say yes – willingness – to those experiences and then allowing them to be there. 

This may sound like nice words, as it did for one of my former students when he asked me: “Patricia, is it really going to help to just notice uncomfortable experiences and do nothing?” In case your mind pops up with a thought along these lines, here is what we know so far about acceptance and willingness:

Let’s go back in time to 2003, when a pioneering study conducted by Georg Eifert and Michelle Heffner was looking at the effects of acceptance versus control for people prone to anxiety. In this study, participants were asked to breathe air with slightly elevated levels of carbon dioxide, and were then randomly assigned to two groups: one group was instructed to practice breathing techniques and the second was instructed to practice acceptance exercises.

Keep in mind that participants in both groups were basically breathing carbon dioxide enriched air, which will naturally evoke involuntary, uncontrollable, and uncomfortable physiological sensations.

The results of this study were quite interesting. To start, all participants reported physiological reactions like sweating, accelerated heartbeat, heavy breathing, and so on, just like when having a panic attack. Nearly half of the participants that relied on breathing techniques dropped the study and lost control. However, participants who didn’t fight their physiological reactions, and instead accepted them, reported less fear of their physiological sensations and less catastrophic thoughts about their effects.

As the research on acceptance-based processes continued to move forward, there was another variable added to these studies: the frame in which these skills are introduced to a person. Over the years, many studies showed the impact of practicing acceptance.

The construct of acceptance was initially very provocative because it countered all the previous research on control-based responses. These days, however, talking about acceptance-based processes is the norm. In fact, this is maybe one of the most common processes across third wave therapies (more on it in another post).

• Acceptance is a core skill when you’re struggling with an emotional switch that goes on and off anytime, anywhere, and you act too soon on it (emotion regulation).
• Acceptance is also the core process within exposure-based interventions, whether you’re dealing with a phobic reaction, chronic worry, pesky obsessions, or any other related fear-based struggle because it helps you to be curious about your experiences as they happen.

Going back to my former student’s question: Is it really helpful to sit with yucky experiences that come our way? My answer is yes, it does help. Research has continually shown us that. 

But you cannot sit with those troublesome feelings and say “nice to meet you” without saying “yes” to them.