12 - Acting on your anxious impulses.

Have you ever sent an impulsive text or in an anxious moment did something that you would later learn was not the best idea? Why do we do this?!? Why do we sometimes act on anxious impulses? Well, I can’t wait to walk you through why the brain does what it does and how it thinks it’s helping. 

Scenario: Your partner does not arrive home at the time that is expected, so you call and text them over and over again. 

Why does your brain think this is helpful and would make your partner appear quicker? In short, your brain thinks that getting a response will reduce the feelings of fear and uncomfortable sensations in your body. While this is true it also has its downsides. If your partner answers, great quick relief and all is well. This also teaches your brain that this behavior, of calling over and over, solves the problem and creates relief. You will be more likely to do this same behavior again. 

What if your partner does not answer, more intensified panic. Now let’s go deeper into the anxiety spiral. Let’s add to this scenario that your brain is telling lots of different what-ifs but you cling on to the idea that something bad has happened and your partner was in a car accident. 

Your brain is currently receiving lots of messages and may be struggling to weed out the helpful ones and the not-so-helpful ones. There is a possibility your brain mentions the options, “They are stuck in traffic” or “They got held up at work.” These are wonderful and very possible reasons for your partner's late arrival. However, once again those anxious thoughts doubled down and found other reasons to disconfirm why those thoughts might be valid. This could sound like, “They would have texted you if there was traffic or if they were running late.” Dang… we are back at square one. Still feeling anxious and possibly sending off more texts and phone calls. As we go deeper and deeper into the spiral we have more thoughts like, “See if everything was fine they would answer.”

The reptilian brain keeps getting flooded by fear thus causing the sympathetic nervous system to remain heightened. Thus, as more deceptive brain messages come in, we become hijacked by fear. Furthermore, our brain starts to believe that it’s worrying is help.

Why do we think or act on these anxious impulses? Because our brain believes that the thoughts are true. When our brain is hijacked it’s very difficult to decipher between deceptive brain messages and rational thought. This is often heightened when someone struggles with anxiety or insecure attachment styles. But of course, these thoughts didn’t just appear out of thin air, there was a point in time when that situation did happen or that thought was true. When our body is in significant distress our brain logs away the data and saves it for a rainy day. 

So what do we do when we have those fears that lead to anxiety that causes us to not eat, act in ways we do not like, and at times even stop us from getting out of bed? One way is to challenge the thoughts.

One of my favorite thought challenging techniques I talk to clients about is the idea of “taking the thought to court.” How it goes, we ask ourselves “What evidence do I have that this thought is true?” We need clear and conclusive evidence that the thought we are having is true and would hold up in court. So if we are fearful that our partner is running late and the thought is saying that they got in an accident, then we have to have evidence that the possibility of traffic or being held behind at work is not possible. If there is a possibility that those options are true our claim that something bad has happened is not held up in court. It’s a possibility, but it’s not conclusive. 

Another technique is to think of all the other possible options. This idea is to list all the possible reasons why your partner could be running late, from the most realistic all the ways the most unrealistic. So, this could look like: 1) they were in a terrible accident, 2) traffic on the road, 3) were held up at work, 4) drove to Disneyland without telling me, 5) stopping at the store on their way home, 6) pulled over to help ducks cross the road, and so on. Sometimes if we list out all the possible options, even the most unrealistic options, we can see more clearly that the possibility of them being stuck in traffic and then stopping at the store are the most realistic and pause the worrying until we have more concrete facts. 

Lastly, and most classically, we can engage in some healthy self-soothing coping skills. I think it’s important for everyone to have a list of 10 coping skills. Why 10? Mostly because it’s a nice round number and it’s good to have a long list of things you can do when times feel stressful. On this list, I like for client to place their top 3-5 most accessible skill at the top. This can look like deep breathing exercises, imagining a peaceful place, going on a walk, talking to someone, journaling, etc. As we work down the list we may move into skills that might be more difficult to do in public like, taking a bath, getting into bed and sleeping, talking with your therapist, etc. I encourage everyone to have a short list of coping skills on their phone or on a piece of paper. Why must they be externally written down? Because, sometimes when we are in the most distress our brain forgets what our resources are. 

I hope this post helps you think about anxious thoughts in a different way. And if anything, maybe you take some time today to start writing out a list of coping skills. 
If you want to learn more about how to manage anxious thoughts I highly encourage you to read the book You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey M. Schwartz & Rebecca Gladding MD