Knowing that there are things you can do today which can change the way you feel is a great confidence booster. For example, start to make a note of all the little things that go well every day. Often, we tend to disregard them and focus just on the bad stuff. And then we start to fantasise about all the terrible things that might happen. Catastrophes in the making.
Take active note of even the smallest positive thing. If someone talks to you at the bus stop, give yourself a point. When you find yourself having an unhelpful thought, tell it to go away, and reward yourself for taking that action.
Unkind and critical self-talk is destructive and achieves nothing. Hypnosis can help you get out of the habit.
Anxiety and worry generally involve a tendency to over-estimate the severity and likelihood of danger and to under-estimate our ability to cope. But if we look back, our worst fears seldom happen. We seem to get into a habit of bigging up our worries - catastrophising. (You might remember the insurance ad that said we won’t turn a drama into a crisis.)
There are some things you can do to help overcome any tendency to catastrophise.
Imagine that feared situation, your worry, and get right into the detail. Now give it some marks out of 10. How awful is this? What is the chance of this actually happening? What mark would you give yourself for coping?
When people rate the awfulness of a situation - how bad or upsetting it seems -the first number they come up with is usually close to 10. So it helps to have a comparison. For example, what recent terrible disasters could you give a mark of 10 to? For me, it would be the Japanese tsunami. So compared to these situations, what mark can you give your fear? Probably not as bad as tthe tsunami. Maybe a 6 or a 7? It is helpful to keep a comparison in mind because it will help you to adopt a more balanced perspective.
Now, imagining the feared situation again, what is the most likely scenario? What is likely to happen? Rate its awfulness, the chance that it will happen and give yourself a mark for your coping ability.
All of us have deep resources for coping, some more than others, but of course the more we cope, the more skilled we become. When we only focus on the awfulness of something, we forget to consider what resources we might call on to help us. We get into the habit of awfulising but we don’t come up with a coping plan. And so we feel helpless and hopeless.
So now, develop a coping plan.What might you do to deal with this problem? Who might help? Where can you find information? Make it as detailed as possible. Get into a habit of spotting your Worry and then coming up with a Plan.
Now, with your coping plan in place, rerate the severity of the problem, the likelihood that it will happen and your chances of coping.
Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy helps you to observe your tendencies to catastrophise and shows you how to switch over into decatastrophising mode, able to rationally analyse your fears, come up with a plan and develop your coping skills.
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