AHHHH!
Even the smallest thing stresses you out – a change in plans, anything new, too much noise, too much to do. Everything is just too much!
So, you crash at the end of the day, wondering what you even did that stressed you out (it was, after all, just living).
Now you feel bad for feeling bad. You should be able to manage these things. Other people seem to do it all just fine.
You start to squirm, thinking over your day, “I should have said that differently. Why did I do that? Everyone probably thinks I’m so stupid, useless, and overly emotional.”
And now the tears start to fall… “I’m such a failure!”
I know you won’t believe me when I tell you that you’re not a failure.
You are to the point where nothing makes sense. You don’t believe anyone, let alone yourself.
Your thoughts keep going round and round. Always landing on the same conclusions – if you were a lawyer, you would win the case – “Yes, indeed, I have messed up in life.”
And it all feels bad.
So, you retreat into anything to distract yourself from thinking and feeling.
Yes, numbing out will be best…
“I think I’ll have a much-deserved glass of wine, then some chips, while I watch TV and scroll on my phone.”
“I won’t think about tomorrow. I won’t think… until I lay down to sleep, then I know my mind will perk up and start spinning again with all the thoughts.”
You’ll toss and turn and fall asleep eventually from exhaustion, just to wake up feeling even more tired.
Dragging yourself out of bed, you’ll do it all over again. “I hate my life.”
One day in Phoenix, I was driving from one meeting to the next.
Even today, I remember the exact stretch of the sunny Arizona freeway. It’s a tricky one: It’s where eight lanes and three highways merge, and everyone’s going at least 65 mph.
My exit was coming up in less than a quarter of a mile, and I had to cross six lanes of traffic. If that wasn’t stressful enough, I was late. You would think that managing the challenge of the situation would be enough to occupy my mind, but it wasn’t. I was also thinking of recent events, the not-so-recent past, upcoming happenings, AND the distant future!
I was on autopilot as my thoughts flashed from the previous weekend at a workshop… to my recent separation and impending divorce… to my parents… and all the expectations and emotions you might expect when thinking about the unknown: sadness, anger, grief.
My thoughts about the future centered on the meeting I was about to be late for. Whether my kids were getting to after-school care, how I’d be late picking them up, what was at the house for dinner, how much homework the kids would have, whether there would be time for a bath, what chores needed to be done, how much sleep I might get…
It was a flurry of thought and emotion, and none was present – except in my mind.
I snapped back into the present moment…
… as I acknowledged my most intense future thought: “I AM GOING TO BE LATE.”
“I need to get over,” I realized. And at that moment…
Everything else fell away.
As I get into my lane and safely exit onto the next highway, I look at the clock on my dashboard and see that I have 10 minutes until the meeting starts.
I visualize the entire route to my destination, and it hits me…
“I’M NOT LATE YET. I’m not late yet! I am not late yet. The meeting doesn’t start for 10 minutes, so I am not late yet. I’m here, right now, safely in the right lane, in my car, in sunny Arizona, and I’m not late yet. In this present moment, I am not late.”
I took a deep breath, and for the next 10 minutes in which I was not late, I took deep breaths, relaxed, reassured myself, and enjoyed the rest of the ride. Somehow, time stopped, and I became fully present.
You’re not late yet!
In therapy, you’ll learn to slow down, manage your mind, control your behaviors, and create the world you want.
Slow down. How many windows do you have open at one time on your laptop?
There is no such thing as multi-tasking, even though everything you must do is lined up and waiting for your attention. You can only attend to one thing at a time.
Manage your mind. Who’s in control? You or your thoughts?
“Wait… aren’t ‘I’ my thoughts?”
NOPE. Your brain is just another body part that is meant to think. And it can only think of two things – the past or the future. It does a great job of remembering, reminiscing, continuing to beat yourself up for past mistakes, solving problems, and creating horrible what-if scenarios. It thinks pretty much the same thing over and over.
But you get to decide what you want to think about when you want to think about it, and you don’t have to constantly “listen” to your mind’s thoughts.
When you take a deep breath, the mind can’t actually think in that nano of a second – try it!
Control your behaviors. Once you slow everything down, it’s easier to manage your mind, and then you find a pause as you stand at a fork in the road of how you want to choose to respond, if at all.
Create your world. What would you rather be thinking? What would you rather be doing?
Now you begin to switch up the patterns of your life and your world. With every intentional action, you set yourself to achieve what you want.
You will have jumped out of the anxiety-depression loop once you slow down, manage your mind, control your behaviors, and create the world you were meant to create. No more sleepless nights, no more running around feeling like you are about to burst inside, and no more hiding from your thoughts and feelings.
Peace, calm, contentment: they can be yours.
Transform your AHHH! to Haha.
You can find joy in life.
Decide to stop running away from your thoughts and feelings today.
Contact me, and we can discuss how to jump out of the AHH loop and discover your Haha: (785) 817-0517.