We’ve all experienced anxiety. Maybe some of us tend to lean more toward the anxious way of thinking, but we have all been there. And I’m sure we all know what that sudden wave of dread can feel like.
You suddenly realize you left your wallet on the table at the restaurant.
You receive some unexpected bad news.
Your boss comes to your desk and says, “Do you have a minute to talk in my office?”
There is a physiological response that accompanies these experiences. You gasp. Your face flushes. Your pulse races. You feel your heart beating out of your chest. You start to sweat. Maybe you feel like you can’t catch your breath, or you can’t move your legs.
This is the triggered nervous system preparing your body for survival mode. Our thoughts are fear-based in this state, which often doesn’t lead to very wise responses. How does one re-engage the thinking brain, stay cool, and act?
Well here is a quick little road map back to clear thinking:
Breathe.
It sounds cliche, but most cliche’s are cliche’s for a reason. Taking a couple of slow, deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth, breathing with your diaphragm—not your chest—and letting it out slowly and evenly, has been proven to soothe the amygdala (the alarm system of the brain) and flip you from the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight/freeze) into the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). This helps you access the frontal lobes (the thinking part of the brain) and engage more values-based thinking.
Observe your thoughts.
This may sound strange, and maybe a little “meta,” but we don’t often think about our thoughts, and if we never learn to do this our thoughts can run away from us unchallenged. Your fear-brain might tell you, “that wallet is long gone and someone is already using your credit cards and stealing your identity.” This is just a story the fear is telling you in your mind. It is not reality. If you don’t realize this, you may find yourself pushing past people in the restaurant in a panic and accusing the bus boy of identity theft when he didn’t even bus your table.
Put some space between you and that thought:
Simplify (what is the basic thought?): “My wallet was stolen.”
Identify (name and describe the thought): “The scary thought occurred to me that my wallet was stolen.”
Challenge (test the thought to see if it’s true, then explore alternative thoughts): “Is it absolutely true that my wallet was stolen? No, I only know that I left it on the table, it’s possible the staff is holding it for me at the hostess stand.”
Replace: “I’m afraid I might not get my wallet back, but I have the ability to go back inside the restaurant and look for it, after all I have only been gone a few minutes.”
Focus on your circle of control
There are multiple things we might be worried about in the face of a crisis (perceived or real). It can help to clearly define what is and what is not within your control. Draw a circle on a blank piece of paper (it does help to actually do this on real paper, but doing it in your mind can suffice if you are doing this on the fly). Write inside the circle things you can control (my behavior, my attitude, my words, my thoughts) and write outside the box things you are worried about but cannot control (other’s thoughts/behaviors/attitudes, the weather, politicians, governments, elections, etc.). Pray and let go of the outside things, pray for wisdom and discernment about how to manage the inside things. The serenity is particularly profound and useful in these moments:
God grand me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Grace and peace.
Chad Barron