Studies have shown that ACT can be effective in managing various forms of psychological distress, including those stemming from daily hassles. I’ve seen this happen in my own therapy practice. One client, for example, used to become agitated by his neighbour’s dog barking at random hours of the day and night. Despite his attempt to address the problem by talking to his neighbour, the dog wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was his frustration. Over time and with practice, though, he began to approach the barking with a kind of detachment. The dog didn’t stop barking, but what changed was his ability to pause, notice his frustration, and apply coping skills of the sort I’ll be describing here. That made all the difference. With practice, you too can learn to relate to annoyances in a more skilful way, whatever your next ‘barking dog’ might be.
In acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), there’s an important distinction between unavoidable pain and avoidable pain. Micro-stressors such as running late, spilling something on your shirt or receiving a curt text message represent the unavoidable pain that comes with being human. Daily hassles happen. But how you choose to respond to those moments determines whether you add to the stress. Skills grounded in ACT – which I’ll draw from in the rest of this Guide – can help you reduce the avoidable pain that often comes with aversive experiences, including common annoyances.
Annoying experiences are a normal, inevitable part of life. So, whether you’re concerned about their cumulative impact on your wellbeing or just want to reduce the frustration you feel in the moment, there is value in learning to handle annoying things better. This is where evidence-based psychological skills are handy.
Research suggests that accumulated stressors might take a toll in other ways too. For example, a study in the 1980s found that people who experience more daily hassles report greater fatigue, headaches, and gastrointestinal symptoms. More recently, researchers have shown that increased stress and hassles significantly predicted the consumption of high-fat and high-sugar snack foods, with implications for physical health. And clinical researchers found that people who reported high levels of daily hassles were significantly more likely to develop generalised anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder or panic disorder over a follow-up period of several years.
It’s quite likely that you’ve been told ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ and ‘focus on the bigger picture’. Despite our best efforts, though, many of us sometimes find it hard to shrug off the lingering emotional effect of an annoying experience. Making it worse, you might judge yourself for not being able to just let it go. Even if a particular stressor seems insignificant on its own, annoying experiences can have a cumulative effect. Like drops filling a bucket, they can eventually spill over until you’re suddenly snapping at someone, or tearing up.
These are not the kind of events that disrupt the course of your life. But they are all annoying, and sometimes bothersome enough that they could set the tone for the rest of your day. Annoying experiences like these have also been dubbed ‘micro-stresses’ or ‘daily hassles’. They usually come your way unexpectedly, cause you some stress, and interrupt your flow. Though they are minor compared with, say, a personal attack, an injury or a significant loss, I’ve seen in my work as a psychologist how often people struggle to tolerate annoying things or underestimate their impact.
Embrace ‘radical acceptance’
It’s natural to want to fix or undo the annoyances you encounter. But insisting that a frustrating experience shouldn’t have happened doesn’t change that it did happen. What it does do is deepen your stress. It’s like tugging on a locked door: tiring and ineffective. That’s why you need radical acceptance.
Life’s little stressors can feel like a series of tiny battles. If you get lost in knee-jerk responses such as wishful thinking (I wish this weren’t happening), rumination (Why did that happen?), self-blame (Why am I so careless?), or blaming others (They ruined my day), it keeps you stuck in your head, takes you away from the present, and prolongs your unpleasant emotions. Instead of just feeling irritated about a lost key or a rude comment, you end up dealing with extra mental fatigue, shame or resentment.
Radical acceptance means recognising the reality of what has occurred without resisting it. It doesn’t mean you approve of what’s happened. It simply means you’re no longer fighting something that can’t be changed. It is about laying down your weapons and saying to yourself: This is happening. How can I work with it without getting lost in it? You’re choosing to no longer let it set the tone for your day.
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