The Five Steps and other shrinky-dink advice

Pardon the self-help speak, but it so happens that I'm a big fan of lay cognitive psychology. Internet and armchair mental health diagnoses have helped me through some tough times when I didn't have access to or didn't think I needed an MH professional.

It was this old bag of tricks that I found myself turning to this afternoon, in a moment of panic and anxiety over an incident that occurred just as I was preparing to leave work and threatened to ruin my entire evening.

Allow me to present to you the Five Steps.* This is a trick that helps during those times when your world feels like it's caving in on you. It helps you to move past overwhelming emotions that threaten to paralyze you. I used to have this problem a LOT more, before I was diagnosed with PMDD and got treatment. But from time to time (i.e. today) it helps to remember ways to get past a tough moment.

So... the scene is this: I'm headed to the back of the office to drop off my case files for the day, when I run into my supervising attorney, signing out for the day. He catches my eye and, with a mouthful of food, says, "JE, come see me tomorrow afternoon so we can talk."

"Sure," I breezily reply. "What's up?"

And then The Very Fleeting Moment. He averts his eyes, pauses midbite and kinds of shrugs. I quickly jump in.. "Oh, okay. Just...stuff, right?" He immediately nods his head. "Yeah, just to talk about a few things."

Now, we just got together yesterday to review all my cases, so I know this isn't about what's going on with my case load. I went into his office to drop off my files, and saw the lastest assignment I'd turned into him, sitting on his desk with scribbles and notes all over it. For a split second, I thought about scanning over it, but his door was open and another attorney would've had a full view of what I was doing.

Nope. I was just going to have to wait. And stew. Thoughts immediately began running through my head, but they were incoherent. They took the form of a dark cloud appeared over my head. I messed up. Hiring me was a big mistake. He's terribly disappointed with the caliber of my work. I spent too much time with the FIFA games streaming on my computer. I'm not dressing appropriately. I shouldn't have called his cell phone (to tell him I was going to be late... I panicked!). I bug him too much. I don't communicate enough. I'm the worst intern they've had in a long time... on and on. You get the picture.

Enter: The Five Steps

Step One: HALT

Am I Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?

Well... yes, I am kind of tired. Later it turned out that I was hella tired, because I fell asleep for two hours after I got home. But at the time, I mostly just felt weary from a long day at the office. Not hungry, not lonely and not angry. It's possible that my exhaustion was exaccerbating my emotions, but I doubted it...

Step Two: Define the Problem

The problem was that ever since my boss told me that he needed to talk to me tomorrow and I realized that he had reviewed my assignment, I felt really anxious and inadequate because I knew that the product I turned in wasn't in the format he wanted it and it still needed a lot of work, so I was panicking and I was petrified of how I would feel in the meeting tomorrow.

Step Three: Think of (Exactly) Three Courses of Action

Okay... One, I could think through my feelings and then talk back to my twisted thinking (e.g. "I can't do anything right!... Wait, that's not true. I was complimented on my research skills by ED yesterday.") Two, I could wait until T got home and then talk to him about it. Three, I could distract myself and push the thoughts out of my head.

Step Four: Pick One Course of Action

I really wanted to spend more time thinking about what was bothering me. I also wanted to just forget all these uncomfortable feelings altogether, but I suspected that would just make me feel worse in the morning and I'd be cranky all night. So I picked #1, and decided that if I still felt bad, I would also do #2.

Step Five: JUST DO IT!

Well, I was riding on the bus when I was working through these steps, so I couldn't exactly write down my thoughts. But I did go through them silently to myself. I won't bore this blog with the innerworkings of my mind (anymore than I already have), but I will say that after spending some time when I got home identifying my twisted thinking and working to untwist some of my thoughts, I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up, I felt 95% better! And that's good enough for me.

* I didn't come up with this. Please see this website for more information and tools for panicky, reactionary minds. All the concepts mentioned here come from there.