I wrote recently about getting terribly flustered on the basis of tiny irritants. I said I would ask my mental health team about it, and so I have. The advice I received was to try effective rethinking when I get into a flustered state. I’ll try my best to explain that here.
Looking backwards, my homework has been to identify what thoughts pop into my mind when I encounter a minor problem and then overreact. Looking forwards, my job is to develop some self-talk techniques, to replace the unhelpful thoughts with better ones.
Here’s a recent example. Saima and I were making our way home from Madrid to Canada. We took a cab from our downtown hotel out to the airport at 5:30 a.m., with our flight departing at 8:45 that morning. When we got to Barajas airport, we looked on the board for our flight to Dublin, and it wasn’t there! I panicked. My heart raced, my breathing quickened, I started shaking.
The first step in my effective rethinking homework, applied to this example, involves sorting out what came to mind that raised my emotional state from minor annoyance (which might have been appropriate) to full-blown breakdown (which wasn’t called for, and certainly wasn’t helpful). So, what were those thoughts in this instance? I recall thinking that I might have brought us to the wrong airport. That led to the thought that we’d have to rush to another Madrid airport to avoid missing our flight. I already imagined how much all that would cost: another cab ride, potentially another airline ticket. All of these thoughts were premature, a matter of jumping to conclusions. The worst ineffective thought, however, was: “I have made a mistake. I’m not so competent after all. I am going to fall apart again”. I think that’s the one which may have really precipitated the near-panic.
The second homework step is to think about what thoughts might have helped me at the time. Continuing with my example, several have occurred to me. I could have asked myself, “What is the worst thing that can happen?” The answer, I realize now and maybe could have seen back then, is that my mistake would only cost us some money. No one would die. I could have told myself as well, “You really are doing much better. This is just a tiny thing. It doesn’t show that you are getting unwell again”.
Looking ahead, what I’m trying to do is to prepare myself to engage in this self-talk as soon as a prompting event occurs. This is all the more important because I am starting to travel on my own again, and that means that I must be able to calm myself; I can’t shut down and rely on my travel partner to take control. I’m asking, therefore: “What must I be telling myself (that is, what are my interpretations and thoughts)
about the event that causes such distress and arousal?” Then I need to come up with alternative thoughts that I can use to reassure myself.
Effective rethinking is also paired, in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, with breath work. Next time I encounter an incident, I am to take a deep breath, say the more effective thoughts to myself, then breath out. For example: [Breath in deeply] “Everyone makes mistakes. This doesn’t mean that you are falling apart”. [Breath out slowly] “So, relax…” [Breath in deeply] “The worst outcome would be spending some money”. [Breath out slowly] “So, relax…”