I have been banging on a bit about therapeutic approaches in psychology and lately reading up again on CBT and ACT. There are plenty of good resources available, though in the case of the latter, there is a bit of jargon that needs to be waded through. But let me give you the tiniest nutshell summary of ACT, though I'm sure that I will annoy practitioners.

We are not our thoughts. We can observe our thoughts through mindfulness exercises (nothing new, Buddhists have been doing this for two and a half millennia), the realisation of which leads us to understand that we don't have to be ruled by our thoughts or our feelings. We can detach from them, diffuse them or put them at arms length. We can make also space for them, practicing non-avoidance by allowing them to remain fellow travellers for the time-being. This means developing an attitude of acceptance.

As we do so, they usually become less worrisome, particularly as we turn our attention to what is important or valuable in our lives. We make a commitment to the pursuit of these values. Sure, the thoughts and feelings will return daily but there are ways in ACT of turning the tables, of making them more benign or insignificant.

Consider the following chain of thinking, for example.

"I can't cope."

"I am having the thought that I can't cope"

"I notice that I am having the thought that I can't cope."

At each remove, the sting is taken out of the original thought, allowing one to become an observer rather than a victim. Try it sometime.