1. Have I ever dealt with anything like this in the past?
No, I've obviously never been in a plane crash before.
2. How much will this affect my life a year from now?
Not much, I'd be dead!
3. Do I know people who've coped with something like this, and how did they do it?
No. None of my friends, relatives, or acquaintances has ever been in a plane crash.
4. Do I know anyone I could turn to for help or support?
Obviously not. I mean, what could they do?
5. Can I think of a creative new possibility that could result from this challenge?
How? In the few minutes I'd have on the way down, it's doubtful that many creative possibilities would occur to me.
Hmm. George didn't seem to get much out of our coping questions, did he? These questions don't do much good for a small number of worst-case scenarios. For those situations, we have the ultimate coping questions, followed by George's responses to these questions:
1. What is it about this eventuality that makes you think you absolutely could not cope and could not possibly stand it?
Okay, I can imagine two different plane crashes. In one, the plane would explode and I probably wouldn't even know what happened. In the other, something would happen to the engine, and I'd experience several minutes of absolute terror. That's what I really fear.
2. Is it possible that you really could deal with it?
Could I deal with that? I guess I never thought of that before; it seemed too scary to contemplate. If I really put myself in the plane, I'd probably be gripping the seat, maybe even screaming, but I guess it wouldn't last for long. I suppose I could stand almost anything for a short while. At least if I went down in a plane, I know my family would be well taken care of. When I really think about it, as unpleasant as it seems, I guess I could deal with it. I'd have to.
Most people fear dying to some extent — even those with strong religious convictions (which can help) rarely welcome the thought. Nevertheless, death is a universal experience. Although most people would prefer a painless, quick exit during sleep, many deaths aren't as easy.
If a particular way of dying frightens you, actively contemplating it works better than trying to block it out of your mind. If you do this, you're likely to discover that, like George, you can deal with and accept almost any eventuality.
If you find yourself getting exceptionally anxious or upset by such contemplation, professional help may be useful.
Cultivating Calm Thinking
Anxious thoughts capture your attention. They hold your reasonable mind hostage. They demand all your calmness and serenity as ransom. Thus, when you have anxious thoughts, it helps to pursue and destroy them by weighing the evidence, reassessing the odds, and reviewing your true ability to cope (see the previous sections for the how-tos).
Another option is to crowd out your anxious thoughts with calm thoughts. You can accomplish this task by using one of three techniques. You can try what we call the friend perspective; you can construct new, calm thoughts to replace your old, anxious thoughts; or you can try positive affirmations.
Considering a "friend's" perspective
Sometimes, simple strategies work wonders. This can be one of them. When your anxious thoughts hold most of your reasonable mind hostage, you still have a friend in reserve who can help you find a fresh perspective. Where? Within yourself.
Try this technique when you're all alone — alone, that is, except for your friend within. Truly imagine that a good friend is sitting across from you and talk out loud. Imagine that your friend has exactly the same problem that you do. Take your time, and really try to help your friend. Brainstorm with your friend. You don't have to come up with instant or perfect solutions. Seek out every idea you can, even if it sounds foolish at first — it just may lead you to a creative solution. This approach works because it helps you pull back from the overwhelming emotions that block good, reasonable thinking. Don't dismiss this strategy just because of its simplicity!
Juan's example demonstrates this technique in action.
Juan worries about his bills. He has a charge card balance of a few thousand dollars. His car insurance comes due in a couple of weeks, and he doesn't have the money to pay for it. When Juan contemplates his worry, he thinks that maybe he'll go broke, his car will be repossessed, and eventually, he'll lose his house. He feels he has no options and that his situation is hopeless. Juan loses sleep because of his worry. Anxiety shuts down his ability to reason and analyze his dilemma.
Now, we ask Juan to help an old friend. We tell him to imagine Richard, a friend of his, is sitting in a chair across from him. His friend is in a financial bind and needs advice on what to do. Richard fears he will lose everything if he can't come up with some money to pay his car insurance. We ask Juan to come up with some ideas for Richard.
Surprising to Juan, but not to us, he comes up with a cornucopia of good ideas. He tells Richard, "Talk to your insurance agent about making payments monthly rather than every six months. Also, you can get an advance on your credit card. Furthermore, isn't there an opportunity to do some overtime work? Talk to a credit counselor. Couldn't one of your relatives loan you a few hundred dollars? In the long run, you need to chip away at that credit-card debt and pull back a little on your spending."
Creating calm
Another way to create calm thoughts is to look at your anxious thoughts and develop a more reasonable perspective. The key with this approach is to put it on paper. Leaving it in your head doesn't do nearly as much good.
This strategy doesn't equate with mere positive thinking, because it doesn't help you create a Pollyanna alternative — that is, a thought that is unrealistically optimistic. Be sure that your reasonable perspective is something that you can at least partially believe in. In other words, your emotional side may not fully buy into your alternative view at first, but the new view should be something that a reasonable person would find believable.
Your task will be easier if you've already subjected your anxious thinking to weighing the evidence, rethinking the risk, and reevaluating your coping resources for dealing with your imagined worst-case scenarios, as we describe in earlier sections.
Table 5-3 provides some examples of anxious thoughts and their reasonable alternatives. We also provide you with a Pollyanna perspective that we don't think is useful.
We showed you the Pollyanna perspective because it's important not to go there. You may think the last example of the Pollyanna perspective — getting over your fear in an instant — looks great. That would be nice, we suppose, if only it worked that way. The problem with that approach is that you set yourself up for failure if you try it. Imagine someone truly terrified of elevators trying to jump on and take it to the top floor all at once. More likely than not, the person would do it that one time, feel horror, and make the fear even worse.
Be gentle with yourself; go slowly when confronting your anxious thoughts and fears.
Affirming affirmations?
The field of mental health has a long tradition of advocating that people use affirmations to improve their emotional well-being. Stuart Smalley, a character played by Al Franken on Saturday Night Live, used to look in the mirror and say, "I'm good enough; I'm smart enough; and doggone it, people like me." Does this approach for managing emotions really help?
Many people swear by the value of positive self-affirmations. However, a 2009 study reported in the journal Psychological Science suggests that positive affirmations may actually cause harm to some people. Although the doctors who conducted the study found that people with high self-esteem seem to feel better after repeating positive self-affirmations, those with low self-esteem reported actually feeling worse after doing so. This result may be due to the fact that positive self-affirmations feel unbelievable and out of contact with reality to people with really low opinions of themselves.
So, if you're tempted to use positive self-affirmations, we rec
ommend that you make sure you design statements that feel reasonably believable to you. Good statements often include reminders to cope or calm down. Some of our favorites include:
Relax.
With time, I can get through this.
I need to keep at this.
I don't have to be perfect.
Mistakes are not awful.
Breathe in and out very slowly.
Next year (or next month), this won't matter.
Repetition does help information sink in and feel like part of you. Be sure that whatever you repeat to yourself feels reasonable to you.
Chapter 6: Watching Out for Worry Words
In This Chapter
Recognizing anxiety-arousing words
Understanding how language creates anxiety
Tracking worrisome words
Substituting calm phrases
Think about the mental chatter that goes on in your mind. Do you ever exaggerate? Put yourself down? Predict horrible outcomes? For example, if your computer is acting up, do you get angry at yourself, predict that you'll never get anything done, and surmise that the day will surely be ruined? Those inner conversations can stir up a whirlwind of anxiety.
This chapter helps you discover what words contribute to your anxiety. They come in several forms and categories, and we show you how to track these words down. Then we offer strategies for finding alternative words and phrases to quell your unnecessary anxiety.
Stacking Sticks into Bonfires of Anxiety
"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Perhaps you heard this saying as a child. Parents often try to assuage their kids' hurt feelings through this catchphrase, but it usually doesn't work because words do have power. Words can frighten, judge, and hurt.
If those words came only from other people, that would hurt enough. But the words that you use to describe yourself, your world, your actions, and your future may have an even greater impact on you than what you hear from others. The example of Jason and his wife Beverly illustrates this point. What starts out as a simple conversation between husband and wife leads to lots of anxiety and marital stress.
Jason's wife Beverly, who's a little worried about her husband's blood pressure, mentions at breakfast that it looks like he's gained a little weight. "Oh, really?" Jason queries.
"Maybe just a little bit; it's no big deal. I just worry about your health," she replies.
Over the course of the next few hours, Jason starts ruminating about what his wife said. "I'm a pig . . . She's totally disgusted with me . . . She'll never want to have sex with me again . . . Losing weight is impossible for me . . . I'm certain that she'll leave me; that would be unbearable."
By the afternoon, Jason feels intense anxiety and tension. He's so upset that he withdraws and sulks through the rest of the day. Beverly knows something's wrong and worries that Jason is losing interest in her.
What happened? First, Beverly delivered a fairly mild statement to Jason. Then, rather than ask Beverly for clarification, Jason pounded himself with a slurry of anxiety-arousing words — pig, totally disgusted, never, impossible, certain, and unbearable. Jason's mind overflowed with powerful words that grossly distorted Beverly's original intention. His inner thoughts no longer had any connection to reality.
The worry words that you use inflame anxiety easily and are rarely supported by evidence or reality. They become bad habits that people use unwittingly. However, we have good news: Like any habit, the anxiety-arousing word habit can be broken.
Worry words come in four major categories. In the upcoming sections, we go through each of them with you carefully:
Extremist: Words that exaggerate or turn a minor event into a catastrophe
All-or-none: Polar opposites with nothing in between
Judging, commanding, and labeling: Stern evaluations and name-calling
Victim: Underestimating your ability to cope
Encountering extremist words
It's amazing how selecting certain words to describe events can literally make mountains out of molehills. Extremist words grossly magnify or exaggerate troubling situations. In doing so, they aggravate negative emotions. Read about Emily, who turns a fender bender into a catastrophe.
Emily, pulling out of a tight parking spot at the grocery store, hears metal scraping metal. Her bumper dents a side panel of a late-model SUV parked next to her. Emily stomps on the brake, jams her car into park, and leaps out to inspect the damage — a 4-inch gash.
Using her cellphone, she calls her husband, Ron. Hysterical, she cries, "There's been a horrible accident. I destroyed the other car. I feel awful; I just can't stand it." Ron attempts to calm his wife and rushes to the scene from work. When he arrives, he's not that surprised to find the damage to be quite minor. He's well aware of Emily's habit of using extreme words, but that doesn't mean Emily isn't upset. She is. Neither she nor Ron realizes how Emily's language lights the fuse for her emotional response.
Most of Emily's problematic language falls under the category of extremist words. The following list gives you a small sample of extremist words: agonizing, appalling, awful, devastating, disastrous, horrible, and unbearable.
Of course, reality can be horrible, appalling, and downright awful. It would be hard to describe the Holocaust, September 11th, famine, or a worldwide pandemic in milder terms. However, all too often, extremist words like these reshape reality. Think about how many times you or the people you know use these words to describe events that, while certainly unpleasant, can hardly be described as earth-shattering.
Life presents challenges. Loss, frustration, aggravation, and pain routinely drop in like annoying, unwelcome guests. You may try to banish them from your life, but your best efforts won't keep them from stopping by — uninvited as usual. When they arrive, you have two choices. One is to magnify them and tell yourself how horrible, awful, unbearable, and intolerable they are. But when you do that, you only manage to intensify your anxiety and distress. Your other option is to think in more realistic terms. (See the "Exorcising your extremist words" section, later in this chapter, for more on realistic options.)
Misrepresenting with all-or-none, black-or-white words
Pick up any black-and-white photograph. Look carefully, and you'll see many shades of gray that likely dominate the picture. Most photos contain very little pure black or white at all. Calling a photo black-and-white oversimplifies and fails to capture the complexity and richness of the image. Just as calling a photograph black-and-white leaves out many of the details, describing an event in black-and-white terms ignores the full range of human experience. Like a photograph, little of life is black or white.
Nevertheless, people easily slip into language that oversimplifies. Like extremist language, this all-or-nothing approach intensifies negative feelings. The following example shows how categorizing life in all-or-nothing terms can lead to upset feelings.
Thomas puts his newspaper down, unable to concentrate, and tells his wife that he'd better get going. "I didn't sleep a wink last night. I've been totally freaked about my sales quota this month. I'll never make it. There's absolutely no way. Sales entirely dried up with the slower economy, but the boss has zero tolerance for extenuating circumstances. I'm certain he's going to jump my case. It would be absolutely impossible to find another job if he fires me."
Thomas distorts reality by declaring that he'll never make the sales quota. Then his anxiety escalates. In the process, he concentrates on the negative rather than searching for positive solutions. If Thomas is at a loss for additional all-or-none words, he can borrow from the following list: all, always, ceaseless, complete, constant, everyone, forever, invariably, no one, none . . . you get the idea.
Few things (other than death, taxes, and change) occur with absolute certainty. You may recall pleading with your parents for a later curfew. We bet you told them that everyone stays out later than you. If so, you did it for good reason, hoping that the word everyone would make a
more powerful statement. Nevertheless, your parents probably saw right through your ploy. Everyone oversimplifies sometimes; our language has many words for distorting reality. (For an all-or-none antidote, see the "Disputing all-or-none" section later in this chapter.)
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