*Breathe in*

*Breathe out*

Ahhhh the nervous system is calming down. I hope with last week’s read you were able to put deep breathing to the test and I HOPE that it has helped you so far. But are you still feeling anxious? If so, welcome to the club!

With all of those deep breathing and meditation techniques I was feeling somewhat better, more like I was able to fully understand what was making me feel so anxious. Almost like seeing life with fresh eyes! But again, I still couldn’t calm my anxious thoughts. I asked my therapist, what now?! Am I one of those people who are too broken with no return!? With that we moved onto our next assignment: The Thought Log

The Thought Log is a chart that my therapist gave me every single week for about 2 months. It consisted of 4 sections: Event, Thought, Consequence & Alternate Response. The purpose of this was to train my brain to break down and challenge each anxious thought I had. I am going to walk you through one of my examples from 2021.

Event. To preface,I come from a family with severe time anxiety. I was ‘lucky’ enough to inherit this WONDERFUL trait. So, for one of my Thought Log entries the event that was causing me a lot of anxiety at the time, was “Coworkers scheduling meetings after my working hours”. Sounds so minor now but 3 years ago that would throw me off the deep end.

Thought. This was everything I was thinking when a late meeting would get put on my calendar. Be forewarned, I know these things sound a little ‘excessive’ but hey, that’s anxiety. “I am going to miss my workout”. “I want to quit” (lololol). “This was making me feel out of control of my own life”.

Consequences. The purpose of this block was to write the emotions and behavior these anxious thoughts provoked. These were simple for me to get down. Verbatim: “Anxious. Angry. Depressed. My behavior? Really pissed off”. Ugh.. I wish I could go back and hug 2021 Meg, poor kid. Now let’s move on…

Alternate Response. This portion was to figure out how to solve the situation and calm myself down. Here’s my alternate response: “Telling people no. Make my hours very known and be assertive about leaving on time”.

The purpose of doing this was to help reframe my brain and really let myself know that the situation isn’t as catastrophic as I thought it was. But that’s anxiety. My thoughts and feelings were just crippling me at that time. I know that the above example may seem minor to most people but I didn’t have the coping skills when it came to dealing with anxiety. I barely even knew what the word meant.

I filled those charts out for about 2 months. After 2 months my brain was slowly breaking these thoughts down itself and problem solving all on it’s own. There was an actual point when I did it subconsciously and I was SO proud of myself. BEYOND proud. Even today.. I have been in some very anxiety provoking situations and I am able to just breathe, take a step back and really see each situation from every angle possible which in turn, gives me the opportunity to respond vs react and go into a mental spiral.

If you’re struggling with anxiety and have thrown your hands up, I want you to create your own thought log. Get a sheet of paper and write down the 4 categories above ( Event, Thought, Consequence & Alternate Response ). Challenge yourself the next time you feel like your thoughts are taking over. Then keep doing it until one day you realize you’re able to do it without the action of writing it down. You will be so surprised how taking a brief moment to analyze a situation and/or thought(s) can truly change the way you go through life.

Here’s to understanding and overcoming our anxious thoughts!

Meg