How to Get off the Rollercoaster of Anxiety
Have you ever had the experience of a repeating worry? One that no matter how hard you try to fight, dispute, or reframe it just keeps coming back? You’ve tried all the anxiety coping skills and it just won’t budge. But there’s still one more way to cope that you might not have tried: The rollercoaster of anxiety and the 3 voices of the mind.
Worry Voice
If you think about the way worry operates, we usually have a thought pattern involving a lot of fear.
“What if I don’t get this job?”
“ What if the girl I’m dating doesn’t text me back”
“What if I’m missing out on what I should be doing with my life?”
It’s these worry-centric thoughts that ratchet up the feelings of anxiety, whether they’re physical like racing heart, tension in our body, shakiness; or mental like rumination, racing thoughts, or difficulty focusing. We can call these thoughts the Worry Voice. Worry Voice brings us up the rollercoaster into the cycle of anxiety.
False Comfort
After we experience Worry Voice for a bit, we might try coping strategies like reframing or using evidence to dispute the worry. If these work on the first 1 or 2 uses, bingo - anxiety cycle dodged! if not, we might keep trying, or maybe we start to get angry at Worry Voice and tell it to stop worrying or it’s not a big deal and to stop thinking about it. I don’t know about you but if you tell me not to think about something it’s probably the only thing I’ll be thinking about. Try it! Starting now, don’t think about a pink elephant… how’d it go? Not great, huh?
Anyway, the voice responsible for all this back and forth is False Comfort. False Comfort’s goal is to get Worry Voice to calm down, and is shown by the downward line on the Anxiety Cycle. We may feel a brief relief at the bottom of the rollercoaster, thanks to False Comfort. But False Comfort also tries to silence Worry Voice, and as a result: what we resist, persists. Worry Voice gets loud again. The relief is short lived.
Worried Voice: What if I messed up my interview and didn’t get the job?!
False Comfort: What are you talking about? You did great. Stop worrying about it.
Worried Voice: Yeah, but what if I actually didn’t? What if the interviewer hated me?
False Comfort: Why would they have hated you, people like you! You’re just being crazy. Go distract yourself.
Worry Voice: Maybe you’re right… 5 mins later But I still don’t know! Maybe I really screwed the interview up!
so on, and so forth
Wise Mind
So how do we deal with this? Enter Wise Mind, the third voice of the mind. Wise Mind sees Worry Voice and False Comfort from a 2000 ft view. It sees their repetitive argument cycle and gets in the middle with a new perspective. Wise Mind’s perspective is unbothered, not concerned, curious, and tolerant of uncertainty. It can call the cycle out for what it is.
Worry Voice: Maybe you’re right… 5 mins later But I still don’t know! Maybe I really screwed the interview up!
False Comfort: Make a list of all the things you did right in the interview. Then you can stop worrying about this.
Worry Voice: I did that, but I keep coming back to the possibility that I won’t get the job!
Wise Mind: I can see you both going back and forth about this, and the more you try to quiet Worry Voice the more upset you end up. These are just thoughts and nothing in life is certain. You can keep upsetting yourself by trying to do the impossible in finding certainty that you did or didn’t screw up, or you can move on and resume living your life.
Breaking the rollercoaster of anxiety can be tough and requires practice. Sometimes it can be hard to identify Worry Voice or False Comfort, and Wise Mind may be a completely new language for you. If you’re having trouble but want to work on dealign with anxiety, feel free to reach out and schedule a consultation!
Tina Caro, LPC, CCATP, ADHD-CCSP
*Please note that this blog is for your information only and does not constitute clinical advice or establish a client-counselor relationship.