3 Strategies to Change Your Internal Dialogue and Manage Anxiety

The constant feeling of anxiety, winding yourself up and expecting the bad is very exhausting. Clinical psychologist Jill Weber in her new book Be Calm. Proven Anxiety Management Techniques has collected simple and effective ways to deal with these feelings and find peace of mind. Lifehacker publishes an excerpt from chapter 9.

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Anxiety is rapidly gaining strength if a person’s internal dialogue is filled with sharp and categorical judgments about good and evil, right and wrong. What and how we tell ourselves affects our self-esteem, how we interact with other people, how much we believe in our strengths and abilities. Anxiety grows even more when our internal dialogue is filled with generalizations (never, always, everything, nothing, and so on). Which of these two statements is more depressing?

1. "I don't live, I exist."
2. "I'm single, I need to develop my communication skills."

The last one is more encouraging, isn't it? Although it has a negative emotional connotation, it also determines what real steps can be taken to not feel lonely.

If you're struggling with heightened anxiety, there's a good chance your inner commentator is strong-willed and cruel. Perhaps the disturbing thoughts appeared under the influence of criticism that you received from others.

Imagine that you have a friend who, every time you get into anxiety, tells you that you did everything wrong and recalls past situations when you made the same “mistake”. That person is you, and it's how you feel about yourself. Agree, it is much more pleasant and easier to communicate with people who help you feel better and more confident. Start treating yourself with the same warmth and love that friends and family members treat you with. Change the language and tone of your inner dialogue, add understanding and love to it. This will help you feel more comfortable and give you strength and confidence even when anxiety approaches.

Strategy: Set the Tone of Your Internal Dialogue

As you already understood, the way we talk to ourselves has a huge impact on our level of anxiety. But, even knowing this, we allow ourselves to criticize ourselves again and again for any shortcoming or blunder. Consider answers to the following questions.

After analyzing the answers, you can change the tone of your internal dialogue to a softer and more supportive one.

• In what tone do you most often talk to yourself? Is your inner voice loud and impatient or soft and supportive?
• When you are upset, does your inner voice try to calm you down? Or does he only escalate the situation, criticize you, make you feel even worse? For example, “You screwed up”, “You won’t succeed”, “No one loves you”, “How does anyone communicate with you at all ?!”
• Is your inner voice clouding moments of joy? When you are truly happy or relaxed, does it interfere with your thoughts, reminding you of what else needs to be done, completed, and so on?
• Are there any hobby, activities or people that make your inner voice soften, less harsh and critical? If yes, then this is exactly what you should be doing more often, and those with whom you should spend more time. If not, through trial and error, find those activities or those people with whom you feel most comfortable, which will allow you to soften your inner voice in dialogue with yourself.

Cultivate your ability to comfort and encourage yourself, to be compassionate, forgiving, caring towards yourself. Empathy means that you are understanding and warm about all your shortcomings, including anxiety. By forgiving yourself, you rebuild your internal monologue to a softer one, especially in those moments when you plunge into an anxious state.

Strategy: elephant

Write a few sentences about how you will develop positive self-talk without thinking about the elephant. Write whatever you want, all your thoughts on this subject, but in no case do not think about the elephant. There should not be a single thought of an elephant in your mind. Every time you think of an elephant, put an "X" in your notebook.

Well, how did it work? Have you managed not to think about the elephant? Most likely not, and here's why: forcing yourself not to think about something, you get exactly the opposite result. This is partly why we become even more upset when a close friend or relative tries to comfort us with the phrase: "Just don't think about it" or: "It's okay, don't worry».

Daniel Wegner, a well-known social psychologist at Harvard University who has studied thought suppression, conducted the following experiment. He asked the participants to share their thoughts, any thoughts that come to their mind, but try not to think about the polar bear during this time. If the idea of ​​a polar bear arose in the mind of the participant, he had to press a special bell. It turned out that this is not so simple: on average, the participants in the experiment thought about a polar bear about once a minute.

In order to suppress some thoughts, we literally force ourselves - "stop thinking about it." Our brain keeps track of whether "that" thought has flashed by, and in case it finds it, it attracts internal control to suppress it. Instead of criticize yourself for not being able to stop worrying, try to change the thoughts that provoke this anxiety.

Strategy: Replace Negative Thoughts

When you find a thought in your mind that spins endlessly and arises again and again, write it down and answer the following questions.

1. What gives rise to this thought? What are you doing / what is happening when this thought occurs?

For example: I was invited to go out of town with a company.

2. What do you think at this moment?

For example: “No one will talk to me”, “I will feel like an outcast”, “I will feel that I am bored”.

3. Determine what emotions these thoughts evoke in you, and rate your condition on a scale from 1 (“I feel almost nothing”) to 10 (“this emotion drives me crazy”).

For example: "Vulnerability - 5, feeling of helplessness - 6, anxiety - 9."

4. Is there anything that can refute the idea you mentioned in point 2?

For example: “I was invited to go, so at least someone wants me to be there”, “I can tie small talk with someone from the company”, “We have common acquaintances, at least this brings us closer”.

5. Can you replace an existing negative thought with a more positive one, or at least a more realistic one?

For example: “Even if I’m not the most desirable companion on this trip, I was still invited, I can at least talk a little with someone from the company, which means I’m not an outcast.”

6. Return to those emotions that you wrote out in paragraph 3. Now evaluate them again, but in the context of a changed, more positive thought. Note shifts in scores, even if your score is only 1 or 2 points off.

For example: "Vulnerability - 2, feeling of helplessness - 5, anxiety - 7."

The next time a negative thought enters your mind under the influence of anxiety, say, "I see you, negative thought." Then consciously replace it with a more realistic one: "Well, at least I was invited."

The effectiveness of all the techniques from the book “Be calm. Proven Anxiety Management Techniques has been proven by scientific research and many years of practice by Dr. Weber. To make it easier for readers to find useful information, the author has identified three thematic blocks. The first, "Feelings," will help you deal with anxiety symptoms that manifest as emotions or bodily sensations, such as irritability, dizziness, and frequent mood swings. The second section will tell you what to do if anxiety is affecting your behavior. For example, it makes you miss an important event or avoid communicating with friends. And the third part is aimed at getting rid of the negative or irrational thinking caused by anxiety.

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