by Jill Weber
There should be a space between you, the observer you, and the thoughts your mind drops on you. You’re not your thoughts. You’re the leader, the conductor, the captain—the one who oversees and observes—your thought stream.
STRATEGY: BECOME AN OBSERVER
Observing your thoughts and feelings is similar to standing on a high rock to watch the sea and reflect on its many changes. You notice the ocean waves, turbulent at times, peaceful at others, and often somewhere in the middle. From the safety of your rock it’s easy to label what you’re observing. You do not experience yourself as the changes. You are the one noticing the changes.
Even in a hurricane, the sea eventually becomes calm again. Observe yourself. Recognize that even though your brain might be spinning with various anxiety-based scenarios, it will eventually return to a more peaceful pattern. And a peaceful brain will inevitably become unsettled again. The feelings or thoughts that dominate the mind moment by moment eventually evaporate to be replaced by new feelings and thoughts. Such is the nature of the mind.
1.Sit quietly. Imagine the observing part of yourself as separate from your thoughts and emotions.
2.Notice the direction your mind roams and the accompanying physical sensations in your body.
3.Perhaps you notice tension in your chest, sweaty palms, or you have a headache.
4.Label these specific sensations without merging your identity or sense of self with them. For example, “I notice tension and worry coming over me” as opposed to “I’m a nervous wreck.”
If you keep practicing, you’ll find that thoughts, emotions, and sensations pass, only to be replaced by others. Calm invariably returns. Your thoughts will not frighten you when you recognize that they are temporary and not a direct reflection of reality.
Go Deeper
The Anxiety Struggle
Cultivate your capacity for ease and calm by seeing the bigger picture of how much your struggle with anxiety has come to limit and define you.
Write a paragraph about your anxious identity. How does your struggle with anxiety influence who you are as a person? How did your anxiety struggle start and what perpetuated your anxiety over time? How do you feel your anxiety will hold you back in life? What kind of person do you see yourself as, as a result of your anxiety struggle?
You can let this struggle go. Consider how your identity would shift if you were able to better cope with your anxiety.
Write a second paragraph, again with the realities of what you have endured but this time within the context that you have given up the struggle with anxiety. You accept your anxiety; it is what it is. At the same time, imagine you have found ways to manage and effectively cope. You are able to experience joy, be present, and connect with others. What kind of person would you see yourself as if anxiety no longer dominated your life?
Our sense of our ability to grow changes depending on how we perceive our circumstances. Start seeing yourself as someone who can (like countless others!) recover from anxiety.
STRATEGY: TRAIN STATION
This strategy helps you observe and be aware of your experience without becoming overwhelmed by it.
1.Imagine yourself safely on an elevated platform in the middle of a large train station. You have a bird’s-eye view of each track and see each train as it enters and leaves your station. You see some trains reenter the station after just a few minutes. Other trains take longer to reenter, while others don’t come back at all. Some trains stick around for a bit before they head back out of the station. Other trains leave immediately after arriving.
2.Imagine your thoughts as these trains. You are the one safely observing the thoughts come and go. Some thoughts linger, others leave quickly. You have no control or urgency or job responsibility around this other than to be aware of your thoughts as you would the trains entering and exiting the station.
3.Similar to “red train” or “green train,” see if you can label each train (thought) as it comes in and out of the station (your mind). Without judgment or criticism, list in your notebook, or say aloud, the thoughts that come through your station. See if you can group the thoughts into larger categories: “worried thoughts,” “catastrophic thoughts,” “family thoughts,” “self-esteem thoughts,” “future thoughts,” or “work thoughts.” Each time you label a thought as belonging to a certain category, that thought becomes less persuasive and less significant.
Test Your Predictions
Do you ever wonder why we tend to put our attention more into negative thoughts than positive ones? Or why we can still remember a critical comment or upsetting interaction weeks or even years after the event? The “negativity bias” is the term used to describe the fact that undesirable thoughts, emotions, and interactions have a greater impact on how we feel than do positive or neutral events. In fact, research shows that people are much better at remembering negative versus positive things, including angry versus happy faces, and take more time and mental energy processing negative events than positive ones. This bias is part of our evolutionary wiring. From a survival standpoint, the cost of overlooking a negative is far greater than the cost of overlooking a positive. Consider the early man who overlooks a bush loaded with edible berries. He will probably survive the mistake, but if he fails to look over his shoulder to see a stalking wolf pack, he may not.
You can see how negativity bias helped our ancestors survive. But in today’s world, when few of us face real threats in our daily lives, this bias can result in lots of needless—and exhausting—worry. When we become overly anxious, the negativity bias is often the behind-the-scenes culprit. We scan our environment and ourselves for possible threats and then, without thoughtful reflection, make improbable forecasts of bad outcomes.
You can break away from the habitually unhelpful ways you see yourself and your world by turning each negative thought into a prediction to be tried out and tested.
STRATEGY: WHAT’S YOUR ANXIETY TELLING YOU?
When you experience anxious thinking, it likely stops you in your tracks because you take it as a signal or even a command for you to worry and ruminate. This may be your negativity bias operating at full tilt.
What if the anxious thinking is not a signal to stop and wring your hands but rather a sign that something you really care about or desire is at stake? When you recognize you’re making anxious predictions, complete the following statements to see what might be on the other side of the anxiety for you and then test out your prediction.
1.Write down an anxious prediction (or thought).
Example: “If I drive, I’ll have a panic attack. Yet I haven’t seen my mother in a long time. I worry all the time about why I can’t drive. I also beat myself up for being so weak.”
2.Write down why this matters to you.
Example: “I want to visit my elderly mother and spend time with her. She lives in a nursing home over an hour away, so I have to drive. I’ve already missed out on so much time with her, but I can’t deal with the panic.”
3.Write down strategies that might help you.
Example: Practice progressive muscle relaxation, deep breathing, guided imagery (imagine driving and being able to cope and arrive safely). Practice positive self-talk (“I can and I will drive and see her”).
4.Test out the anxious prediction; see if your hypothesis was accurate.
Example: “I drove to my mom’s nursing home and I was uncomfortable but did not lose control and did not have a panic attack and I got to see my mom!”
Here are specific ways to test common anxious predictions so you can start working on yours.
WHAT ANXIETY TELLS YOU HOW TO TEST IT
I’m afraid the airplane will crash and I will die. Practice relaxation exercises, visualization, deep breathing and then take a flight.
I’m worried about people not liking me, and being rejected. Go to a party, work event, neighborhood function, and try to interact with people. Ask questions; don’t let yourself recede into a corner.
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�ll never be successful. Take on a new class, work project, hobby. Build something, take care of a plant, start a garden.
I’ll never be loved. Ask family if they love you (it still counts even if it’s family!). Or become a pet owner; pets provide unconditional love to many.
The world is against me. Notice the little things: light traffic, good weather, a kind person helping you in some way. Catch the world when it’s being good to you.
I’m useless. Do something that makes you feel competent: build a garden, take care of an elderly person or a child, offer to help someone in your neighborhood, clean your place of residence, clean your car, plan an activity of some sort and follow through.
Now take one of your anxious predictions, remind yourself of why it matters to you that you work through it, pick a strategy that will help you, and go out in the world and test it out!
WRAP-UP
•Train the voice in your head toward self-compassion and self-acceptance.
•Replace anxious and negative thoughts with realistic thoughts.
•Make goals and take actionable steps to lessen anxious rumination.
•Go out in the world, test out your anxious predictions, and see if they’re accurate.
CHAPTER TEN
Putting the Tools to Work
Whether you’ve struggled with anxiety all of your life, or if this is your first time, you’ve likely had hopeless moments along the way. Your anxious thinking may make you doubt your ability to progress. It’s no wonder you feel this way, because anxiety can become like a part of your identity, or a shadow you simply can’t shake. Here are ways to take the strategies you’re reading about and form longer-term habits that will lead you away from hopeless thinking and toward the satisfying life you want and deserve.
From Strategies to Habits
If you continue to cultivate your skills for finding ease and calm when anxiety is triggered, eventually your anxiety patterns will begin to break, and in the spaces that open up you can cultivate new habits of thinking and responding. It’s important to remember that changing the brain’s wiring takes time and consistent practice. It’s just when we think we can’t take it anymore and want to give up that we make our biggest gains. Eventually, for longer and longer periods of time, you’ll forget that you’re practicing healthy coping. Instead, you’ll enjoy the breeze on your face and the experience of living in this life now.
Consider what can come if you continue to do this work. Perhaps your baseline anxiety level, what you feel most of the time, was at a 6 on a 1 to 10 scale (1 is entirely relaxed and 10 is full anxiety meltdown). Once these strategies become habits you’ll find that your baseline drops, so now perhaps it is more like a 3 or a 4. This is a marked difference and is the payoff for all your effort. Once your overall anxiety level decreases, even if only by a few notches, it will become even easier and faster to successfully challenge distressing thoughts and repetitive thinking.
Take a moment as you conclude this section to tune into your internal voice. Is it chastising you that you should do more or reminding you of what you are doing wrong or criticizing your lack of commitment? Remember, you do not have to do anything written in this book. There is not a “right” or “wrong” or “should” or “shouldn’t” approach to take you out of your anxiety struggle. What will take you out of it is making a choice for yourself. Do you want to live in a different way? You would not be engaging these strategies on any level if the answer wasn’t yes. So make a commitment to yourself to work on your anxiety each day, no matter how small the effort. When you miss a day, just pick right back up, no judgment, no criticizing, just pure, clear, persistent determination.
Planning
Review the planning you started in chapter 4 (here) and revised in chapter 7 (here). Reconsider how well your planning system is working. Have you followed through with the plans you made for yourself regarding implementing the strategies?
Consider adding to your planning approach a couple of reminders each day on your phone or digital calendar. You might have the reminder “breathe” in order to stay relaxed and mindful. Or the reminder “positive self-talk” to be aware of how you’re speaking to yourself in your own head.
Review what you learned in the last two chapters. Identify which strategies you want to incorporate into your current plan. Try to do your anxiety work at the same time or times each day. A precise time provides a cue for the brain that will hasten the “neurons-that-fire-together-wire-together” process.
Track Your Progress
One of the most powerful ways to make a new behavior into a habit is to track what you’re doing. It’s essential to long-term progress that you set up a system where you track on a daily basis the strategies you’re using, and the intensity of your anxiety. As we’ve seen previously, you can quickly and easily track progress with a chart you sketch out in your notebook. Take a look at the example.
STRATEGY MON TUES WEDS THURS FRI SAT SUN
“Thinking about” vs. “Experiencing” ✓
Record Your Thoughts
Downward Arrow Technique ✓
Test Your Core Beliefs
Identify Your Worry Triggers ✓
Probable vs. Possible Outcomes ✓
Unproductive vs. Productive Worry
Spot Overgeneralizing ✓
Stop Underestimating Your Competence
Become Aware of Your Self-Talk
Pink Unicorns
Replace Negative Thoughts ✓
Un-Learn Helplessness
Cost-Benefit Analysis ✓
Become an Observer
Train Station
What’s Your Anxiety Telling You?
Rate Your Anxiety on a 1 to 10 Scale 3 7 9 2 7 5 3
Each day, check any and all strategies you use from chapters 8 and 9, or make a version of this table based on the strategies most useful/applicable to you. Also, be sure to rate your anxiety, using a 1 to 10 scale, with 1 being entirely relaxed and 10 being full anxiety meltdown.
Goal Setting
Struggling with anxiety can feel like fighting the ocean’s current. We spend so much time working to stay afloat that we don’t have the energy left to focus on actually getting somewhere. Operating in survival mode has some negative consequences, especially when it comes to anxiety management. First and foremost, survival mode doesn’t lead to long-term progress in terms of consistently escaping the torment of anxiety. Also, survival mode keeps us stuck in a mental state where we’re neither fully present nor able to enjoy the things we cherish most.
Take a break from treading water. Imagine yourself safely on a boat, even if only for a few moments. From this vantage point, you can observe your anxiety spiral without becoming entirely engulfed by it. With this perspective in mind, consider your goals for anxiety management:
•What made you pick up this book?
•What do you want to achieve?
•How do you want to feel on the inside?
•How do you wish you could cope with anxious thoughts?
People often get to this point and then start to doubt themselves, or talk themselves out of their goals because they fear it will be too hard to accomplish, or they’re not strong enough to meet challenging tasks, or they will fail in the end. Remember, people like you all over the world have struggled with anxiety and have gotten better. It’s not that they never feel anxious again, but they find methods to cope in healthy ways and stay present in their lives. Anxiety is treatable, perhaps more so than any other mental health problem, and people get better by consistently applying new ways of thinking and coping.
Setting a goal and sticking to it is akin to spotting and then reaching a buoy while treading water in the ocean. Each buoy leads to another and another and before you know it, you see the shore on the horizon. Putting the effort in and reaching for goals will almost instantaneously help you believe in yourself, increase your self-esteem, and make your anxiety seem less daunting.
STRATEGY OF THE DAY
> Pick a few strategies from this section that you can incorporate on a daily basis, or a different specific focus each day. One example would be to label a day “Positive Self-Talk Day,” where you’re mindful of your internal narrative, or “Identify Errors in Thinking Day,” where you commit to focusing on what exaggerated or irrational thought patterns may be making you feel anxious. Another helpful strategy is to “Become an Observer” of your thoughts each day. If only for five minutes, commit to watching your thoughts go by without becoming attached or actively pushing them away.
STRATEGY OF THE WEEK
Pick a few overarching or general strategies that you can work into your weekly routine at least three times this week. They don’t need to take a prolonged period of time, just something reasonably achievable for you in the context of your life. For example, you could incorporate the idea of “Un-Learn Helplessness”, where you commit to taking one reasonable, actionable step to combat what is making you anxious. Or commit to a hypothesis test and use it to challenge at least one of your anxious beliefs.
Go Deeper
Create Your Weekly Strategies Calendar
Revisit your weekly strategies calendar you created in chapters 4 (here) and 7 (here). Take a moment to look over the current month. If you have not already done so, write in work, social, and family commitments and appointments.
Habit formation comes faster when we teach our brain new strategies and techniques on a daily basis. Also, anxiety is reduced when we have a solid plan and stick to it. Write in one strategy from chapters 8 and 9 that you’re willing to employ every day of the month.
Assess what is coming up by digitally or manually marking red, yellow, and green zones on your calendar. Red zones are those that are more anxiety charged, green are those where you expect to be fairly at ease and feel less internal pressure, and yellow are neutral where you imagine you will feel neither very anxious nor very relaxed.
Take a step back and consider which red zones might trigger anxious thinking for you. On days or times where you anticipate anxious thinking or see a red zone, write down a strategy (or strategies) that you think will be particularly suited for that specific trigger. For example, if you’re anticipating a few events that will cause you to ruminate or overthink, consider keeping a thought record that week. Also, if you’re dreading an encounter, consider if you’re underestimating your competence and filtering out your abilities and strengths that can help you through the difficult situation.
