You are stronger than you think you are, and more resilient, too.  It’s just literally hard to remember it when your brain is overwhelmed by potential danger and frozen with worry.  But one simple question can help:  “What are the things that helped you in the past?”

Research has shown that our brain functioning is threat oriented.  We scan our environment for perceived danger and when we detect a threat, our limbic system, or our primal brain as it is often called, is activated.  This leads to an automatic response known as “fight or flight.”  We either do our best to escape or we lash out to defend ourselves.  Both responses produce quick reactions, which are great for protecting us from being eaten by a predator or overtaken by an enemy.  Unfortunately it’s not such a great response style for dealing with such threats as the taxes we’re afraid we can’t pay or the speech we have to give in front of a crowd.  Rather than being quick incidents, these modern day threats live long lives.  And as we replay the potential consequences of failure over and over in our minds, the threat becomes constant, as well. Fight/flight reflexes do little to help us cope with these long term constant threats, and in fact, activate body chemicals that work against us.  During our flight/flight responding, hormones are released by our limbic system meant to help us focus on the immediate danger.  In order to do so, they actually block our ability to access the part of our brain, the frontal lobe, which helps us with long term remembering,  planning and problem solving.

It’s common for people struggling with a big stressor to become bewildered when I ask how they coped with things in the past.  In fact, at first they can’t seem to recall any successes in their lives ever at all.  But then, as they continue reflecting, a smile spontaneously appears, as if they have been reacquainted with a long lost friend.  Suddenly they are pulled out of the doom and gloom of the moment and are reminded of not only the tools they used in the past, but of the comforting fact that they have already survived many moments of crisis in their lives that now seem manageable.

Remembering past success can give us the time out from our worry that we need to gain a more useful perspective. So when you or someone you care about needs help, sometimes the best thing you can do is help them remember their own strength.  By reviewing just what did help in the past, we are not only helping them form a plan for the present, but helping them reclaim the confidence in themselves they have literally been disconnected from.  Sometimes a little question can be the biggest answer.