Unworried. Dr. Gregory Popcak

Identify a situation that causes you anxiety. Write it in your notebook.

       Does this situation represent an imminent threat (not a potential, future threat) to your health or safety? Yes or No?

       If YES, your fear response is legitimate. Do what you must to escape the situation.

       If NO, then you probably need to respond to this situation rather than react to it. Proceed to step 2.

       2. Reattribute.

       The situation itself may or may not be serious, but your emotional reaction is probably disproportionate. Your emotional reaction is caused not by the situation, but by the fact that the situation has hijacked your fear-threat system. DO NOT respond to the situation at this time. Focus on getting control of your body by doing any/all of the following.

       Intentionally slow your rate of speech. Let you mind catch up with your mouth. Slow down until you have eliminated all “um’s” and “ah’s” and can speak what you are thinking calmly, thoughtfully, and without hesitation.

       Deliberately slow down your actions. Focus on what you are doing. If your mind is racing ahead to the next activity, bring it back. No matter how mundane the current task is (i.e., reaching for a glass, walking through a room) focus your mind totally on what you are doing in this moment.

       Breathe. Use the four-seven-eight breathing technique described in this chapter. Repeat for at least five minutes or until the anxiety decreases or passes.

       Pray. Concentrate on specific times you have felt God’s love. Remember times when God delivered you from difficulties. Thank him for these times. Praise him for his constant love and providence. Ask him for the grace to believe that he is right here for you in this moment in the same way, loving you, providing for you, and delivering you just as he always has.

       Make connection. Is there someone who could give you a hug? Go to them. Don’t talk about your problem … yet. Just tell them you are feeling out of sorts and need some help pulling yourself together. Relax into the hug. Focus on matching their breathing. Sync your body to theirs. If possible, stay in the hug until you find yourself exhaling spontaneously. That lets you know your “calm down” nervous system is fully engaged.

       3. Respond.

       Now that you have gotten your body and brain back under control, you are ready to respond (rather than react) to the situation that hijacked your fear system in the first place.

       What is one small step you can take to make the situation even a little bit better? Do not look for what you can do to resolve the whole situation once and for all. Just look for one small, even tiny, thing you can do right now to make a small improvement. Do that thing.

       Or, if nothing can or should be done at this time, look for one small thing you can do to help you refocus on making the rest of the day as pleasant as possible despite this troubling situation. Do that thing.

      The goal of this exercise is to: 1. Help you identify the real source of your anxiety (your body, not your environment); 2. Re-engage your calm-down nervous system so you can respond rather than react to stressors; and 3. Identify one simple step you can take to effectively respond to the problem situation. This process will allow you to, one step at a time, take control of your anxiety and respond more thoughtfully and productively to life’s stressors.

      Chapter Three

       Getting on My Nerves — The Psychology of Anxiety

      The more you understand the different factors that work together to create our experience of anxiety, the more avenues you have to address and overcome it. In the last chapter, we explored how anxiety begins as an experience inside your body, and we identified some basic strategies that can help you get your body back under control. Now we are going to briefly explore how your thought-life can also be a significant contributor to your level of anxiety and begin to look at different psychological strategies that can help anyone experience greater peace regardless of the level of anxiety they might be experiencing in their lives.

      Psychological and Emotional Factors

      Although we often don’t realize it, when something happens to us, it impacts us on several different psychological and emotional levels at once. Let’s pick a simple illustration. Suppose you text a friend and you don’t get a response. As a result, you begin to experience some degree of anxiety.

       The First Layer — The Event

      From a psychological perspective, the first layer of experience is the event itself. You texted a friend and didn’t get a response. As a result, you are aware of a feeling of nervousness and dread. But why? Most people answer this question by simply describing what happened, as if that explains everything. “I just told you! I texted my friend and didn’t get a response! How could I NOT feel anxious and upset?”

      The problem is that this statement assumes that everyone would feel the exact same way about this event as you do. Although many people feel anxious when a friend doesn’t text them back, some people feel angry, some people are curious, and others don’t give it a second thought. Even among those who get anxious, they might be more or less anxious than you. The real question is, what is causing your unique emotional reaction?

       The Second Layer — Self-Talk

      To answer this question, you have to go a little deeper. The second layer of any emotional experience is self-talk. Self-talk is the internal narration of your life. We aren’t always paying attention to it, but our mind is always engaging in some kind of self-talk as a way of telling us what our current experience means to us, what we should make of it, and how we should respond to it based on past experience. One good example of self-talk are those internet memes that show a person thinking two different thoughts: the thing they say to be polite and the thing that they really think.

      Karen texted Julia an adorable cat video. Julia didn’t respond.

       Karen smiled and said, “It’s fine …”

      It was NOT fine.

      To get at the particular self-talk that attends a specific emotional event, rather than asking, “Why do I feel this way?” which tends to simply lead to circular reasoning (i.e., “I feel this way about the event because the event happened!”), it’s better to ask yourself, “What does it mean to me that this event happened?” Or even, “What does it say about me that this happened to me?” Both of these questions do a better job of helping us tune in to the self-talk that underlies our anxiety.

      “What does it mean to me that Julia didn’t respond to my text?”