When making a change, it’s normal to have anxiety and worry about all the “what ifs…”  Anxiety, in small proportions, can actually help you perform well in a new situation by giving you a bit of extra energy and the motivation to prepare.  Sometimes, however, anxiety can run amok.  You can paralyze yourself with the anticipation of situations that may well never happen but get in the way of your feeling good enough:  “What if I embarrass myself,” What if I’m not smart enough,” “What if she doesn’t like me,” or the most common concern, “What if I fail?”

Anxiety takes you out of the moment and is a projection of your fear into the future.  Unfortunately, it can sometimes become so powerful, the “what if” scenario you create in your mind feels like reality.  As in the blog post last week about coping with tempting “just” thoughts, when coping with anxiety, it’s important to recognize your inner “what if” voice is also just a thought.  In this way, you can distance yourself from the thought and keep it in check.  Some people find the mnemonic of “STOP” helpful:

Stop what you are doing and label your anxiety

Take a few deep breaths

Observe what is going on in your mind and body

Pull back perspective as an outside compassionate observer using your more rational mind

The technique of STOP is a way to break the cycle of anxiety as it builds.  “What if” statements become perceived threats and trigger your fight/flight reaction –heart racing, muscles tensing, sweating, and stomach aches.  By actively using your mind to take control of your thoughts, you can slow down your central nervous system responding and stay in the present.

Another similar technique came to me one day when I was driving, not only my car, but myself crazy.  I was worrying about a class I was asked to teach.  It was a new class for me, and while I was excited to expand my knowledge and experience, I began to obsess about it.  “What if the material is boring to people,” or “what If they ask me something I don’t know.”  The worries began to expand from the class to my job, thinking that if I didn’t teach the class well, they wouldn’t want me to teach other classes, and then it expanded to other areas of my life, and how if I messed up, everything would fall apart.  Finally, in my frenzy of “What if” thinking, I suddenly had the insight about what I was doing to myself.  I heard the echoes of all the “what ifs” and realized how I was working myself up for the benefit of my anxiety, not myself.  Then, literally I said aloud, “What if, instead of everything being doomed, what if everything is okay?”  I sat there with that thought in mind:  “What if…everything is okay?”  It was a new thought for me.  It made me laugh.  It was actually amusing to realize how novel an idea it was for me to acknowledge the fact that most of the time, everything was okay.

It’s important not to think of anxiety as your enemy, however.   It’s actually a sign of your caring and your sense of responsibility and desire to be successful.  Those are all wonderful things that give your life passion and meaning.  It’s when anxiety takes over that we need to take care.  Whatever technique you find helpful, the point is to help you manage your anxiety and use its energy to excite you rather than torture you.  Next time you hear a trail of “What ifs”, try to S-T-O-P, and then get going!