What makes you anxious and deprives you of sleep? Problems at work, deuces in a child, lack of money? While you toss and turn in bed and come up with a solution, an hour or two passes. How to stop the cycle of unpleasant thoughts? Here’s what cognitive psychotherapist Robert Leahy recommends.
We all fall into the power of disturbing thoughts, but they can be overcome. I’m not going to give “think positive” advice. There are ways to successfully manage anxiety that have helped hundreds of clients. All you need is practice and you will succeed. Here are some of the techniques.
1. Repeat a disturbing thought until you get bored. Try to slowly repeat it for 20 minutes. I call this “boredom cure”: boredom kills anxiety.
2. Play the worst option. If you try to get your anxiety under control, you will exacerbate it. Do the opposite: try to exaggerate. Let’s say you’re afraid that when you’re giving a presentation, you’ll get confused and miss the point. Then during the next presentation, pretend that it happened and say: “Oh you. What was I talking about?” See, it won’t matter. Then why worry? I conducted such an experiment at a lecture, and no one raised an eyebrow. Maybe they didn’t listen to me at all.
3. Do not be afraid of insanity. Sometimes you become afraid of your own thoughts: what if I do something terrible (“He seems so attractive to me. What if I can’t resist his charm and cheat on my husband?”) Or I go crazy (one client, a lawyer, painted a picture as she starts yelling at the court session). Keep in mind that imagination is creative. We may also have “crazy” thoughts. Everyone has them. Instead of judging yourself, look at them as a curiosity lying on a shelf and move on.
4. Learn to recognize false alarms. You worry that you didn’t turn off the iron and your house will burn down, but this will never happen. Are you heartbroken? This does not mean that you will have a heart attack: this is the body’s response to excitement.
Many of the things we interpret as cause for panic are background noise. Look at them like a fire truck driving past at a different address. You notice her and follow her with your eyes.
5. Make a movie about anxiety. To get rid of it, you have to separate from it. For example, you can imagine your thoughts in the form of a scene from a movie. Imagine on the screen a little boy in a funny hat, who is tap dancing and singing a song about anxiety, and you are sitting in the hall and quietly watching what is happening.
6. Make time for her. More often than not, it crashes suddenly, like an e-mail, upon hearing the signal of which we rush to answer. What happens if we don’t answer now? Try giving worry 20 minutes in your daily schedule, say at 16:30 pm. If anxiety overcomes you at 10 am, briefly write down its cause and postpone reflection until the appointed hour. At 16:30 it may turn out that this is no longer important.
7. Do not press the beep. Do you always open the weather forecast if you have an outdoor event? Are you replaying an unsuccessful line in your head, regretting that you can’t take back the words? Violently press the horn while standing in a traffic jam?
When you want to take control of what you can’t control, you are like a drowning person who, in a panic, thrashes his hands on the water. It’s completely pointless. Better imagine how you are lying on the water, arms outstretched, and relaxed contemplate the clouds floating across the sky. Paradox: when you surrender to the power of the moment, you feel that you have more control.
8. Watch your breath. When you are tense, you begin to hold your breath. Where do thoughts wander? Bring them back and focus on your breath, inhaling and exhaling. This is an easy way to calm your nerves.
9. Make peace with time. An anxious person lives in a state of emergency all the time. But take a different look at your urgent matters: it is transient. Any panic attack ends, anxiety about some other reason eventually fades away. Ask yourself: “How will I feel about this in a week? Month?” Everything passes and this will pass.
10. Don’t let worry get in the way of your life. Many reasons for it turn out to be unworthy of attention, and the consequences – lack of sleep, tachycardia, a sense of shame – are minor inconveniences, if you look at it. What can you do if you feel anxious? Anything!
About the Developer
Robert Leahy, cognitive psychotherapist, director of the American Institute for Cognitive Psychotherapy, author of Freedom from Anxiety (Peter, 2017).