Lots of generalized talk about anxiety now days. Awareness is a good thing, but tools, nuanced language and a path will get you 5000% further in anxiety management than just conversation. Two tools....
...that take extra time, but pay off in significant change are....
1: Verbatims.
When I did #CPE, I had to write dozens of #verbatims. 60+ if I recall. Presenting them to a trusted group or to my supervisor brought significant change. I kept 'running into myself' each time. I went from being triggered to knowing triggers as they approached.
A verbatim is an essay recounting, word for word, as best as you can recall, a conversation where you were anxious, didn't know what to do etc. Next to the conversation, you capture what you were thinking and feeling at the time, as best as you recall....
...at the end you capture what you think and feel now, looking back on it. You also capture your awareness of God, or a part of the Gospel that was present, or that you neglected because of your anxiety....
Side note: it is very difficult to be aware of God and be in anxiety's grip at the same time. Anxiety competes with God for space in your soul where awareness of God resides.
You'll be surprised how accurately you can recall, verbatim, an encounter like this. WARNING: you may 'relive' it a bit when you type it up. If it involves trauma or abuse, I recommend NOT doing it outside of a professional's care.
But presenting a #Verbatim to a trusted group helps you learn more keenly your triggers. Over time, you go from being triggered, to knowing your triggers, to pre-empting them. They will always be present, but no longer have you in their grip. You can now manage them. Powerful.
2: #Genogram. A Genogram is like a family tree, but it captures emotional dynamics, generational traits and conditions such as mental illness or addictions...
You present a genogram to a trusted group. They help you see patterns, assumptions, family propaganda, what you are holding, what is holding you.
Genograms help you gain insight into what you carry into every encounter and what you assume about life. They are not interested in blame, but awareness. Unlike a family tree, they are not interested in objective history, but your subjective experience of it. How you see the worl
Some of my favorite work and consulting is helping people with genograms and verbatims because they are deeper tools that anyone can benefit from and they help us go from talking about it to deep transformation....
We get reactive when we don't get a false need that feels like a real need.
What do you think you need that you don't really need?
We all have dozens of false needs and when we don't wrangle our many false need, they pile up and get the better of us and wear us out.
2/
Some of my false needs: 1. I need everyone I meet to like or approve of me. 2. I need to be understood. 3. I need to make the person in front of me feel better. 4. I need to always know what to say or do in any situation. You MUST see me as a smart person.
3/
We end up getting bigger or smaller than human sized.
1/
Some of us, when we are reactive get 'bigger.' We must have the last word. We no longer listen to learn, we now listen to advise, fix, correct, or mansplain. We get aggressive, we dominate the space. Some of us literally make ourselves bigger.
2/
Some of us get smaller than human sized. We no longer feel safe to be exactly ourselves in that space. We do not speak up in the meeting, we flatter rather than tell the truth, we get quiet.
Some of course get bigger or smaller, depending on the circumstance and people.
3/
A gentle reminder that your inner critic is telling you a gospel. It just happens to be a gospel of condemnation and shame.
I fired my IC, but he kept coming to work, like Milton from Office Space. I've learned to quieten it by containing it with God's first and last word.
1/
This is slow transformation work, not one and done. I started in 2016, noting how often I called myself 'stupid' or a 'moron.
50-100 times per week. Lord have mercy.
I vowed to treat myself the way God treats me. It was harder than I thought it would be.
2/
It turns out, I believed the gospel of 'self' and inner critic over the gospel of Jesus. And it took much faith and patience to relax into the gospel of Jesus.
One of the most powerful ways to lower reactivity in you and your people is to learn to notice it.
Noticing is sort of a reactivity power tool. It builds your immunity and you're less likely to catch and spread it when you're working on noticing.
What situations or types of people tend to generate reactivity in you?
How can you put yourself in those situations this week so you can practice noticing what goes on in you?
Then, after a few reps, as you walk into those situations, how can you pause to get your noticing radar set?
I'll give an example from my own life:
1/
A surefire generator of reactivity for me is when people ask me questions and I don't know the answer. I am a recovering 'stupidholic' and when I don't know something, especially if it is within my responsibility, and someone asks, I feel exposed.
*This, of course, is a false need.*
So in elders meetings which are monthly for our church, it is common that an elder asks me about, say, the children's min budget trend from the last few years.
2/
Now that elder isn't expecting me to know it right away. He or she is very happy for me to get that info later, but in the moment, I lose all reality because reactivity puts us in a false reality.
In the moment, I HAVE to know the answer for the world to be ok.
Reactivity is CRAZY. It is always selling ARMAGEDDON in the moment. That which is crazy suddenly feels eminently reasonable.
3/