Most of us are stressed at times and are plagued by feelings of anxiety and rumination. However, with a very common reaction, we make such moments worse.
“What if it goes wrong?”, “How am I supposed to do it all?” – many of us are familiar with such thoughts. Especially people who tend to brooding and fears often get lost in such negative spirals. The problem: Our intuitive reaction to this is often to jump on the thought carousel at full speed. “Oh God, and what if the train is late too? And my battery is dead?” We can probably think of countless other horror scenarios, we keep spinning our stressful thoughts. And with that, unfortunately, we usually make the situation worse.
We may realize how counterproductive this is when we picture the situation as follows: Our fear, negative thoughts, and feelings of stress are a product of our inner child, i.e. the part of our personality that has experienced difficult situations and trauma from childhood has not processed and therefore always comes up when we experience difficult feelings.
How would you deal with an anxious child?
So imagine a small child is scared, feels pressure and reacts by screaming, crying and so on. As an adult, how would you react to this child? Would you jump on the train and scream and cry along? Probably not. But that’s exactly what you do when you go into the anxious thoughts, worries and ruminations and spin them on.
Instead, an adult would probably try to calm the child down. Maybe on a physical level with a hug or soothing words. And that’s exactly what you can do as an “inner parent” when your inner child gets lost in anxious thought spirals.
Feel your body and stay in the moment
In the first moment you could try to connect with your body. This can help you stay in the here and now and take the pressure off negative thoughts. For example, focus on your breath for a few minutes, go for a walk, or do some yoga poses. Anything to help you be less in your head and more in your body.
When you feel like you’ve calmed down a bit, you can try using words to soothe your inner child and address the fears. You can tell yourself that everything is okay and that you will also overcome this situation – just like you have overcome many difficult things. Sounds trite, but usually that’s exactly what we lack: an authority that takes our concerns seriously and tells us that everything will be fine.
But before we are even receptive, we have to calm down a little in an anxiety or stressful situation, for example through the connection with our body. It is anything but easy when, over many years, we have internalized the intuitive reaction of obsessing over fear, worry and stress. But once we understand why we’re making the negative feelings worse, it can be a real game changer.
Sources used: instagram.com/healingwithhan__, instagram.com/mentalhealthceo, medium.com, psychcentral.com