Bad Hair Days: An Anxiety Acceptance Metaphor

If you’ve ever felt stuck trying to push away unwanted anxious feelings or uncomfortable worry thoughts, you probably know just how difficult it is to actually make that happen. But the idea of “just accepting them” probably sounds just as impossible and, probably, a little confusing. You’re not alone. It’s common for many of the clients I’ve worked with to not be sure exactly what to do with this idea either. Before we can explore whether acceptance might actually help, we first need to understand what it really means and what it involves. Below, I’ll try to shed some light on this with a simple metaphor (who doesn’t like a good metaphor, right?).

Bad Hair Days: A Metaphor

Think of your feelings of anxiety and your worry thoughts like the hair on your head. Maybe some hairs are sticking up at a weird angle, or a few wayward strands have fallen across your forehead in a way that feels slightly bothersome. For most people, this might be a tiny thing. They might absentmindedly push their hair back into place with their fingers while going about their day.

Now imagine you had absolutely no tolerance for even one hair being slightly out of place. This would mean that the moment you noticed any stray strand, you would focus all your attention on fussing with your hair. You wouldn’t be able to stand anything other than perfect, and when you noticed anything other than that, you’d immediately stop what you were doing to set things right.

Imagine walking to work and noticing some hairs out of place that were tickling your forehead. You would stop frantically to pat and smooth your hair out, oftentimes taking your comb—which followed you everywhere—out to help. Of course, you’d be late to work pretty often because every ten steps or so you would have to stop to find the nearest reflective surface (a shop window, a car window, or your phone camera). You’d spend much of your commute rearranging every strand of hair until nothing was out of place. You’d notice that when you weren’t tending to your hair, you’d be tending to the thoughts about your hair. You’d often think about your constant hair struggles and wonder about the various new ways you could come up with to help you fight the good battle.

During work, you'd often excuse yourself from meetings and would often be nowhere to be found because you'd be in the bathroom. Of course, you'd be in there making sure your hair was looking just right. Rather than work materials, your travel bag would include a small towel along with some shampoo and hair products. You would need those because you would often find yourself washing your hair in the bathroom sink for the times you decided that what you really needed was to start your hair routine from scratch.

Going out with friends would be another challenge. Even during beautiful summer days, you’d make your friend dine indoors when meeting up at your local eatery, as you’d know that the chances of the wind messing up your mane would just not be worth it. You’d avoid leisurely walks, bicycle rides, and any situation that might cause your hair to not look its very best. Wearing hats would be definitely out of the question. Beanies, on the other hand, would be considered if it were cold enough to absolutely warrant it. But you’d know that would mean you had your work cut out for you when you arrived wherever you were going. Lucky for you, you’d carry your travel bag pretty much everywhere you went.

Can you picture living like this?

Stepping Back: What This Means for Anxiety

You might complain that these stray hairs are ruining your life and that, if only your hairs could rest in the right place, life would be so much easier. You'd even say to your therapist that, “These damn out-of-place hairs are destroying my life!”

But would that be entirely accurate?

Is it really the stray hairs that are causing all your woes, or would it be your refusal to tolerate less than perfect—even one hair being slightly out of place?

Imagine now what would happen if you were willing to walk around with the occasional strands sticking up or maybe even falling across your forehead. Imagine if sometimes you could tolerate a bad hair day (gasp). Just imagine what your relationship with suffering might be if you were willing to adjust your zero-tolerance rule by being willing to accept your hair woes. You wouldn’t love it, but through your willingness to have this problem be, you’d see that you had much more time and energy to do, well, basically anything other than worry about your hair.

When we identify our uncomfortable thoughts or feelings and decide that we simply cannot have them, we then work hard to push them away. Knowing from our previous experiences that getting rid of them is usually not possible, we find ourselves in a time-draining, energy-sucking fight that can make what we’re going through much worse than it has to be.

Once we become willing to accept these unwanted aspects of ourselves, we can find that our relationship with suffering can change.

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

— Steven C. Hayes, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life