Diffusing anxiety-fuelled worst case scenarios:
I don’t know about you but I’ve always had a tendancy to imagine scenarios in my head about what might happen in the future if I do this thing or make this decison and so forth. These days, now that I understand more about scenarios and how to control them, these scenarios tend to be more of a neutral contemplation or even about good stuff happening.
But when I used to struggle with severe anxiety, these scenarios would be like major feature film worst case scenario type disasters happening; like not being able to answer a question in a meeting and looking an idiot, or of standing up to present and going blank, or somehow messing up in what I said or did when out socially.
Whenever I work with clients with anxiety, this capability to imagine all sorts of future worst case scenarios and disastrous “what if?” thoughts tend to appear.
Our imagination is a wonderful thing, especially if you pause and consider that everything ever designed, built or made, from your computer to your chair, and every work of fiction you’ve ever read or TV show you’ve watched, started off as something in someone’s imagination. How awesome is that?!
Yet feelings of anxiety will always colour your imaginings with shades of things going wrong or badly in some way, leading to feelings of more anxiety, leading to more of those anxiety fuelled thoughts. So how can you dilute them to such a point that the anxiety has to subside?
