North Star’s Brandon Gimbel and Tory Krone, LCSW, of Proactive Therapy discuss how ACT helps patients move through anxiety by distinguishing pain from suffering. Rather than resisting anxious thoughts, ACT encourages acceptance—shifting from fear of panic to a values-based commitment to stay present.

North Star Conversations Transcript: Acceptance of Anxiety with Tory Krone, LCSW

Brandon Gimbel (00:00)

When I think about acceptance and talk about acceptance with patients, I talk about the parable about the two arrows, the first arrow being pain and the second arrow being suffering. The example I usually give is, if you walked over to me, Tory, and you punched me in the arm, we both agree that hurts.

 

Tory Krone (00:08)

Absolutely.

 

Brandon Gimbel (00:16)

The suffering is everything that follows. It is my thoughts did Tory just hit me? Is she gonna do it again? Are other people going to do it? Does Tory not like me? Is Tory angry with me? All of that, all of those thoughts are suffering. And if I can just work on the acceptance of the first part, acceptance that Tory hit me and it hurts, a lot of the rest of the suffering, I can let go of it, it is optional.

 

Tory Krone (00:33)

Yes. So everybody experiences anxiety, no one hasn't felt anxious in their lives. You step onto a plane, maybe you feel a little nervous. A huge part of ACT is normalizing the experience of human emotions, human suffering, and just saying, yeah, it makes sense. Like you just watched a movie about a plane going down. Of course you'd be afraid or feel a little nervous. The difference between the anxiety and the person who has a full blown panic attack on the plane is that the first person, they go on the plane and they acknowledge this is anxiety. I noticed some fluttering in my stomach. I notice my hands are getting sweaty. I'm going to choose to make this moment about reading my book. It's important to me to go on this trip. I'm not going to get off the plane. The other person starts to buy into their thoughts and they start to say "what does this mean? This is really bad. What if I have a panic attack on the plane?" That's the big differentiator between anxiety and panic: the person who says, "what if I have a panic attack? What if I'm dying?" If we're so afraid of our anxiety, being anxious about being anxious is panic.

 

Brandon Gimbel (01:40)

Circling back to acceptance, if you accept that I might have a panic attack on this plane, the anxiety can lift, the suffering we can let go of. Whereas if we we hold on to that fear, it grows, it snowballs, we're in trouble.

 

Tory Krone (01:44)

That's right. That's right.