We hope that the instruction and practice with your therapist has given you a stronger sense of self-reliance to manage life’s challenges and hope that as you are more comfortable utilizing your ERT skills, you are left feeling more grounded and confident in responding to your emotional experiences. This confidence is not meant to be an extreme, self-sufficient, “go-it-alone” attitude, but rather it reflects a willingness to engage fully and clearly what matters to us and for whatever emotions and feelings arise in each moment of our lives going forward. A shorthand way to remember this point is that you are beginning to Know ERT By Heart. You are now perhaps understanding the concepts, skills, and practices of ERT in a way that feels easier and more fully relatable to your life and personal circumstances.
ARE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF A HEALTHY LIFE
First, a consistent message that we have expressed to you throughout ERT is that experiencing emotions, even ones that we do not ordinarily welcome into our lives, such as fear, anxiety, sadness, and anger, are a normal part of being human. Emotions are present and important to every moment of every day. Attending to emotions and the motivational pulls they represent helps us to be productive members of a society, a family, a romantic relationship, a friendship, a classroom, or an office. The truth of the matter is that all emotions, even difficult emotions like anxiety, play an important role in our lives. Even in calmer times, when things are mostly going well, we are always making choices in our lives based upon our motivations. The best of times requires us to negotiate how much security and how much reward are reflected in the action we bring to each moment of our lives.
A HEALTHY LIFE IS FULL OF UPS AND DOWNS
Second, we sincerely hope the hard work over the past four weeks has offered you some relief and reduction in the distress that you were experiencing at the outset of the ERT program. At this point, it’s important to point out that inevitably, there will be times when, despite using consistent practice of the skills you have learned, that you will once again be confronted with distressing situations. When those moments occur, you might notice yourself slipping back into patterns of responding reactively, possibly amplifying a behavioral action that favors security or that drowns out the possibility of meaningful reward. The moments happen to all of us at some point.
When you find yourself in this moment or situation, we encourage you to see it as a temporary lapse; however, this does not mean that you are going to have a relapse. Rather, we hope you can see it as at as invitation to recommit to practicing your ERT skills, to help you better recognize your personal triggers and choose counteractive responses that offer you the best possibilities to manage this new, stressful situation. It might be helpful to think of the waxing and waning of distress as the waves that rise and fall in the ocean. Sometimes the ocean is flat and glassy and other times is very stormy; but what is always predictable is the ever-present undulation of waves. Many of us have memories of swimming at the beach or floating on a raft when a wave is about to crash upon us. There are ways of handling it—diving under the wave, jumping up and into the wave, or perhaps surfing the wave. The point is, we can learn to recognize moments when a wave is upon us and then determine what is the best response in that moment. Surfing the Wave is one way to put a lapse into context, so that we are best prepared for the next wave, which will inevitably come.
When you find yourself in this moment or situation, we encourage you to see it as a temporary lapse; however, this does not mean that you are going to have a relapse. Rather, we hope you can see it as at as invitation to recommit to practicing your ERT skills, to help you better recognize your personal triggers and choose counteractive responses that offer you the best possibilities to manage this new, stressful situation. It might be helpful to think of the waxing and waning of distress as the waves that rise and fall in the ocean. Sometimes the ocean is flat and glassy and other times is very stormy; but what is always predictable is the ever-present undulation of waves. Many of us have memories of swimming at the beach or floating on a raft when a wave is about to crash upon us. There are ways of handling it—diving under the wave, jumping up and into the wave, or perhaps surfing the wave. The point is, we can learn to recognize moments when a wave is upon us and then determine what is the best response in that moment. Surfing the Wave is one way to put a lapse into context, so that we are best prepared for the next wave, which will inevitably come.
A COMMITMENT TO CONTINUED SKILL UTILIZATION
Your single best chance to maintain the gains you’ve made in ERT, and perhaps to make additional gains, is to keep up with your skills practice and utilization. One of the big changes that we’ve focused upon throughout ERT is to encourage you to not just try to relieve your distress but, rather, to find Clarity for Action so that you can approach all the moments of your life reflectively and with an awareness of the best course of action in difficult situations or when anticipating something desired but uncertain. Continuing to use your skills is the best way to keep your momentum. It’s like exercise. When you are training for something, you work a muscle or group of muscles. The training is hard work at first, but after a while, that muscle has a “memory” and the hard work at the beginning gets easier to maintain your gains, once you have invested in that work. At a gym, you might hear the phrase Use it or Lose it. This same idea applies to cognitive tasks, playing a music instrument, and almost any habit or skill we develop. Your ERT skills are no different. The more you commit to consistent practice and utilization of your ERT skills, the more they remain at the ready, to help you in a distressing moment or to determine the best course of action, when an opportunity presents itself that you would like to pursue proactively.
OPENING OURSELVES TO NEW LEVELS OF CHALLENGES
And keeping on the theme of proaction, I wanted to share with you a quote from Albert Einstein, the famous scientist and physicist, who once said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved on the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” In a way, the quote is a reflection on the hard work you have put into this program. By engaging this program, you have opened yourself up to a universe of possibilities that, beforehand, may have seemed opaque and unattainable. Now that you are better able to find Clarity for Action, you may be now able to see a world filled with many more rewarding possibilities—possibilities that now feel more within reach. We hope you are now better able to see this brave new world more for the available opportunities than the obstacles in our path. Clarity for Action is not a promise or guarantee that we will be successful, but is, rather, a possible way forward to enriching our lives with something that has been lacking. We call this part, Taking Larger Steps, and it reflects giving ourselves permission to ground ourselves but still push ourselves forward.