Taking the Paradoxical Point of View
Our point of view is the window we look through to perceive an event. It’s our unique perception of that event. In physics it describes the position from which an activity is identified or measured. Imagine you’re on a moving train, throwing a tennis ball up in the air, tossing and catching in the same hand. A fellow passenger on the train might say the ball is traveling straight up and down, whereas a person viewing the activity from outside the passing train will probably describe the ball’s trajectory as an arc. (Right? Because the train, with that ball on it, is moving forward.) Depending on your point of view—in this case, your position inside or outside of the train—your observation and description of the event could be drastically different from someone else’s.
To put it more simply, let’s say you’re meeting a friend at a coffee shop “on the left side of Oak Avenue.” You arrive at the destination and only then realize, “My left may not be her left.” If you’re traveling north on Oak, left is on the west side of the street; if you’re traveling south, left is on the east side. The frame from which you view the world can mean the difference between a successful rendezvous and a frustrating series of texts:
A: “I’m on the left side of the street.”
B: “So am I.”
A: “But I don’t see you!”
B: “Look to your left!”
If you are employed Monday through Friday, your view of the various weekdays—the name we’ve given to identical blocks of time measuring twenty-four hours each—is vastly different. Wednesdays are “hump days,” Fridays are “TGIF” days, and Saturdays are the start of a forty-eight-hour taste of freedom.
If we were in a classroom together, I’d ask each student to come up to the board and jot down some synonyms for point of view. “What are the words we use on a daily basis to describe this phenomenon?” But since it’s just me here alone at my computer and you there on your train or at your local coffee shop, we’ll just have to pretend.
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Synonyms for Point of View |
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Frame of reference Mind-set Orientation Disposition Attitude Stance Frame of mind |
Approach Position Perception Belief Standpoint Perspective Outlook |
Not all your actions stem from your point of view. They can come from any combination of your genetics, past experiences, and current emotional state, as well as your free will, which can be directed by your interests, values, and goals.
But we all do create specific points of view, and they do have a powerful influence on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. They become shorthand for directing our next moves in the world. Activating the belief “Education will get me ahead” motivates a student to study instead of avoid. The attitude “I’m not worth it” stops someone from asserting her needs. The perspective “Life is short, eat dessert first” directs action toward pleasure before work. Our minds are built to make sense of our moment-by-moment experiences. It is a meaning-making machine. A chaotic, confused mind will race to find an interpretation so as to create logic. Our established points of view are its go-to guys, always available, always ready to help calm down that momentary, discomforting lost feeling. Each of us has thousands of these frames of reference, some that give us the Big Picture (“A merciful God loves us and watches over us”), and many more that pertain to the little nuisances of daily activity (“Cherry pie over key lime, always”).
Some mind-sets appear to be loosely grabbed and relatively unstable. We relax into our confidence by leaving home to arrive at the airport in plenty of time for that flight and proudly reflect the belief “I’m in control of my life.” Then we get to the accident that blocks the freeway with a mile-long mass of cars idling in place. “My life is ruined!” You see, points of view don’t reflect reality. They either push an agenda forward (“Exercise is good for my heart”), or they create structure and meaning around a current set of thoughts and feelings (“Her lack of respect has me boiling mad”).
Our perspective can change, just as our stance on any given political or social issue can change when perceived from a different angle. We actually get to choose how to perceive whatever event we might encounter.
Same Scene—
Two Viewpoints and One Proposal
Suppose you walk into the office on Monday morning thinking, Ugh, I hate Mondays. I can’t stand going back to work after the weekend. I wish it was Friday. Like it or not, your interactions and experiences are reflected as well as influenced by that negative outlook. You will address your coworkers differently. You’ll answer the phone differently. The day will feel longer, and tasks will seem more unbearable with every passing minute. Then when you step into the break room and discover that no more ground coffee is left, it’ll further reinforce the idea that “Mondays totally suck.”
When we are stuck, it is to our advantage to step back, choose to disengage from our current view, and look at our tasks from a different vantage point. What I’m suggesting, if you will, is that if we start thinking of Mondays like Fridays, even though they are really Mondays, we might start having a Friday kind of Monday. And that’s got to be more enjoyable than Mondays!
To do this is the essence of paradox, which is acting on a point of view that is the opposite of logic. Why would anyone want to look at life in an illogical manner? Because Anxiety has hijacked your reasoning process and now uses it against you. Consider what happens when you approach an intimidating situation with this mind-set: “This is going to go badly, just like it did last time. I don’t want this. I can’t handle it.” That makes sense, right? But if you continue to maintain that stance, then you will either back away from such challenges or you will proceed with dread, worry, and distress. You already know how to do that. Let me help you learn a more clever way of handling Anxiety. By the way, acting cleverly is an important part of our strategy. Just you wait; I’ve got an entire section of chapters devoted to cleverness.
Let’s say you and I are going out to eat at a newly opened restaurant (my treat). As we pull into the parking lot and see that it is full of cars, we might have two separate viewpoints. Your opinion is “Oh, great! This place is already popular. We’re going to enjoy this.” At that same moment, my stance could be “Oh, great. [Groan.] The parking lot is packed. That means the restaurant’s going to be crowded. I can’t tolerate crowds tonight. Or any night, for that matter. This is a bad idea. I can’t do this.”
Two viewpoints of the same scene. But each point of view comes with its own set of feelings and intentions. Yours will call up excitement and the desire to get a seat and start choosing from the menu. Mine pulls up threat and the desire to escape.
Here’s my proposal: let’s go after Anxiety at the level of your belief system. If we can alter your frame of mind about what it takes to win over Anxiety, then you will become clear about what you need to do in these moments of threat.
“This Is Hard,
and I Can Handle It”
When we get caught up in our worries, we create a special point of view. Within that orientation, our behavior to resist and avoid makes perfectly good sense. This perspective is powerful. After all, it has guided us through the most distressing and threatening situations. But at the root of this point of view is the attitude that this situation is dire, that these worries are vital to our safety, and that the smartest decision is to become comfortable and certain by escaping as soon as possible. This is the position that leads us to avoid. If we can’t avoid, then we will endure; we will suffer through. If I can be so bold, let me say that when any of us consistently operates within this attitude, we are making our lives smaller than necessary. If this is how you think, we need to fix that.
As I described in Chapter 4, anytime we adopt a stance that reflects the message “This shouldn’t be happening!” we tap into the primitive and unconscious fight, flight, or freeze response of the limbic system’s amygdala. We’ll automatically have the urge to guardedly draw inward. Our next actions will become limited by a repertoire of highly restricted options related solely to struggling or escaping. This lower-level consciousness cares little about the nuances of the specific event. Its focus is on the most efficient end to the problem.
Now, I’ll take that reaction any day of the week when I’m trapped in an elevator during a fire or skidding sideways on the highway. I’d even take it when I’m trying to grab that last seat in musical chairs. But not when I’m trying to manage the everyday trials and tribulations of my life. When we walk into most situations with that attitude, our chances of winning are greatly diminished.
We cannot focus on trying to fix each specific scene so you can forever feel safe and comfortable. I assume you’ve already attempted that, and it hasn’t been enough to give you the freedom you want. So let’s try a different angle, shall we? In these previous few chapters, I’ve been talking about the need to clarify whether your worries are signals or noise and then to find ways to handle the signals and let go of the noise. Your initial skill must be to mentally step back so you can make that determination. In Chapter 9 I described the mechanics of how to step back in any particular moment.
So what’s next? It is to pay attention to the way you are judging your current experience. If you are making a mistake in your judgment, then we need to help you adopt a different opinion, one that empowers you. So let’s ditch that “I can’t stand this, and I gotta get away from it” point of view and experiment with this one: “This is hard, and that’s okay. I’ll handle it.” (Of course, you have to believe you can handle it. We’ll keep working on that one.) When you take on this perspective, you will stop resisting the present moment so much, and you will feel more motivated to move ahead with your task. If you are in a competition with Anxiety (and you had better believe you are), then this will be a much more powerful attitude. You’re up at bat, and you’re prepared to swing at any decent ball that comes across that plate, instead of adopting a more fearful, resistant mind-set like “This is serious. This is dangerous. I have to back away,” which leaves you shuddering in the dugout.
You can’t look through the same pinhole and expect to see anything different. As Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.” That’s why you and I are interacting right now. To solve your problems, we first have to change how you perceive your relationship to Anxiety. Let’s create a point of view that motivates you to take new actions.
In Chapter 6 you met Mary, who wants help with her fears of flying, parking garages, elevators, and tunnels. She’s afraid of panic attacks and whatever harm they might cause her heart. She also fears becoming trapped and then suffocating, and the possibility of being crushed by a collapsing garage.
My goal with Mary is the same as my goal with you. I will be with her a brief two sessions, and in those ninety minutes, I’m going to offer her a new perspective on the strength of her heart, I’ll give her a new point of view about her fear of suffocation, and I’ll provide her the chance to reappraise her beliefs about being trapped.
More than anything else that she might need, Mary needs to change her mind. And if you’re struggling, you need to change your mind, too.
I’m going to joke with her, give her facts, reassure her, and provoke some of her most uncomfortable feelings, whatever it takes to get her to see things from a different point of view. We both want the same outcome: to put those overwhelming threats behind her. We’d love to accomplish that in such a way that she can perceive those anxious worries as unnecessary, as irrational, irrelevant noise.
Let’s see how we do.
In this first session, after she describes her past difficulties and states that her goal is to become a more comfortable flyer again, I turn our conversation toward her heart. She tells me that when she feels trapped on the plane, her racing, pounding heart scares her, especially because she’s worried that it might cause her to have a heart attack. As soon as I hear her belief that a panic attack can lead to a heart attack, I know we must address it. Because if Mary continues to believe she’s at risk of a heart attack when she panics, I’ll have nothing to offer her, right? Why would she try out any self-help skills when they might put her at that degree of risk?
I ask if she has any family history of heart problems. Her mother has congestive heart failure, she says, but she’s not concerned about that in herself. In fact, she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her heart. Good, I think to myself. She believes her heart is okay.
Instead, she explains that she’s afraid she’s putting intense strain on her heart when she gets scared on a plane, and that could cause her to have a heart attack. She thinks that could cause anyone to have a heart attack. “Because people do have heart attacks from shock and really strong duress, right? It feels like it’s jumping out of my chest, almost like it’s going to rip out.”
So now I know the core of her heart fear. But I think she’s got that information wrong, and I need to help her reappraise what’s taking place in that panicky moment on the plane. “It sounds like your heart’s working pretty well,” I say. “To me, that’s the sign of a healthy heart. It’s what a heart is supposed to do in a threatening situation. If I were to open our door right now and a bear came charging to this room, your heart would feel like it was pounding out of your chest.”
She challenges my logic. “And your heart pounds so hard because you’re supposed to be able to run or something. But on a plane, it’s pounding so hard, and I’m stuck in one little place.”
She has it right. The function of the pounding heart is to prepare the body for fight or flight. However, she is scaring herself with that idea, and I want to correct her perception. “I think you’re making an error when you say, ‘If I’m standing still and my heart is pounding, it’s more dangerous to my body than if I’m running.’ That is a leap of logic that isn’t based on science. But don’t take my word for it. If you need to check that out with a physician, then you should. But you need to resolve that misunderstanding. When you are on the airplane and feeling anxious about not being able to escape, you will only compound your trouble when you also worry about having a heart attack.”
“Fair enough,” she says. “But it also makes me wonder how long the heart can take that before it does some kind of damage.”
So here it is again. Mary’s belief system about the fragility of the human heart is running the show. If we don’t correct her perspective, we will be unable to help her get over her fear of flying. Nothing is more important than fixing this distorted view.
“What do you think about checking that out, too? Would a physician be able to reassure you? Or would you not care what they had to say?”
“Oh, yes, a physician’s opinion would reassure me.”
“So, if we were making a list of tasks for you, one item would be ‘Let me gather a little more information about what is dangerous to my heart.’ Because why compound a difficult problem with incorrect information? You’ve got enough issues already. You’re on an airplane you can’t get off of, and you’re feeling claustrophobic! I think you’re going to remove 50 percent of your problem if you are able to say, ‘Boy, it feels as though my heart is going to burst, even though I know it’s really fine.’”
I didn’t think my challenge to her logic would have any immediate effect. I thought she really did need that medical consultation before she would change her mind. I was wrong, and I will tell you about that soon.
It’s Never the Event,
It’s Always the Interpretation
Mary’s fear of suffocation is compounded by misinformation, too. She believes it’s relatively easy for someone to suffocate in certain circumstances. I need to challenge that conviction. How will I do that? By conducting experiments in which she thinks she’s going to suffocate.1 Sure, I can correct her misinformation about her heart and suggest she talk to her physician for added reassurance. But this suffocation issue? I don’t think I can effectively produce change simply by telling her she’ll be okay and she won’t suffocate. Mary has been traumatized by feeling like she was about to die. She literally felt she wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. I believe we must recreate that sensation in a safe environment to see if she can learn something new about that sensation.
Mary seems to trust me so far. And it’s clear she wants to take advantage of this opportunity to learn as much as she can. She’s motivated. She wants her freedom back! I’m about to ask her to engage in some activities that will absolutely scare her. In order for her to continue, her goals must be more important than her momentary fears.
I recommend that you use Mary as a model, because you too must elevate your desire for change above your moment-to-moment doubt and distress. To be successful, you’ll have three big tasks. First, you need a strong desire to take Anxiety down and win back your life. Then you must work hard to make logical sense of this approach I’m going to teach you. And, here’s the biggest challenge: You have to step forward even while some part of you is yelling, “Stop! Don’t do this! This is wrong!” Getting stronger requires that you step toward the threat while you purposely and courageously let yourself feel your fear. You can learn what you need to learn only by facing difficulty. Mary is going to illustrate all of this for you.
I ask her to put on a nose clip (the kind swimmers use) so she can breathe only through her mouth. Then I offer her three cocktail straws, those tiny straws used to stir a cocktail (thus the name), and ask her to breathe only through those three little straws for thirty seconds.
She has an easy time with it and doesn’t feel much anxiety. However, I’m actually looking for her to have trouble breathing, since suffocation is about the fear of not getting enough air. We need to challenge her belief system while she’s having difficulty breathing. I want you to understand this, too. Your best learnings will come when you re-create a safe, reasonable facsimile of your feared circumstance. If you can pair up your feelings of dread and fear with a new belief about your ability to tolerate those feelings, then you can change. People don’t change by absorbing a new theory or studying new information. People change through experience.
Since my objective is to provoke her discomfort, I ask her to get rid of two straws so she will be breathing through only one. We agree on a scale of distress from 0 to 100, so she can easily report her degree of discomfort at any particular moment. I shorten the length of this experiment to ten seconds. Mary survives that trial and reports her highest number as fifty, indicating that she became moderately distressed. Let me take you into the scene as Mary and I debrief the experiment.
Mary: I thought this would be fine when I took a really deep breath through the straw. But then I realized that the exhale was going to take a long time, so it would be a long time until I could inhale again. That’s when my distress went way up.
Reid: Let me make sure I understand your message. You’re saying, “I was having this experience, I made an interpretation about the experience, and then my anxiety went up. It wasn’t the experience. It wasn’t how I was breathing. It was that I said to myself, ‘Oh, it’s going to take a long time to exhale, and it’s going to take a long time before I can inhale again’ and immediately I noticed my anxiety going up.” Am I saying it correctly?
Mary: That’s right.
Notice in this passage that I labeled her awareness of that long exhale as “this experience.” I do this purposely because I want her to learn a general principle, not something specifically related to breathing. I want her to move up one level of abstraction, away from breathing and up to “a difficulty.” If she can extrapolate from this experience to a broad range of uncomfortable experiences, she is changing at the level of principle.
The work is not about your uncomfortable sensations; it is about your response to the sensations. Mary predicts that trouble will show up in seconds, as she imagines a restricted ability to inhale. Then she becomes more anxious. You and I cannot prevent you from having uncomfortable sensations. But we can do something about your interpretations when your discomfort shows up.
Reid: So does that give us any clue about where we need to focus? Do we have to focus on the behavior of breathing through the straw? Or do we have to focus on your interpretation of the experience?
Mary: Well, the interpretation.
Reid: So maybe breathing isn’t the trouble. Maybe your interpretation is the problem, because that’s what makes you anxious. Let’s keep working on trying to change that interpretation.
She is making that critical distinction here, which you need to make as well. The principle to remember is that when you are feeling threatened, it’s always about your interpretation. There are plenty of reasons you would feel fear and physical distress. Most often it is because you have been traumatized in a similar way in the past. You don’t need an interpretation to have that response, because that comes more unconsciously. But once you decide a threat is in front of you, once you say something like, “This is dangerous,” or “This could go terribly wrong,” you have made an interpretation. We’re going to go after those!
The work is not about your
uncomfortable sensations, it is about
your response to the sensations.
When I’m feeling threatened, it is always about my interpretation. Early last Saturday morning, as I was driving down a country road, I hit a patch of black ice, and my tires lost traction for a moment. That gave me a zing! Of course, the zing was my amygdala instantly giving me a fight-or-flight response before I had time to think anything. (Thank you, amygdala.) Then I immediately made an interpretation, which went something like this: “It rained yesterday, it’s below freezing now, and black ice could appear again anywhere on this road. So this is a threat, and I need to drive cautiously.” I made a valid interpretation about the circumstance that led me to feel appropriately threatened as I continued driving. That’s what was supposed to happen in such a circumstance.
This is exactly what Mary and I are working on now: Does she need to maintain her degree of threat about suffocation? She comes into the session believing that her interpretation is valid. We are generating experiences to learn if it’s possible for her to invalidate that interpretation and grab on to a different interpretation that will progress her toward her goals.
I now increase her level of threat by asking Mary to breathe through a single straw for thirty seconds. I suggest that she let her mind be as quiet as possible and simply perform the task. She takes a deep breath before she begins, as though it might be her last for a good long time.
She begins the experiment, but within seconds she quickly pulls off the nose clip and removes the straw. She reports her rating in that moment as sixty.
Reid: So what happened? That was about eight seconds or so. Isn’t that interesting, because you’ve already done it longer than that. Maybe when I said you were going to be doing it for thirty seconds, it flipped a little switch in your mind.
Mary: Yeah, it scared me. I thought I wasn’t getting enough air.
Experience—The Greatest Teacher
There it is again. She became aroused in part because her amygdala was doing its job. Based on its past learnings, it sensed that the air in the straw was insufficient, and it put her on guard. I expected that would happen, because her amygdala has become sensitized due to her past traumatic experiences concerning suffocation. I want Mary to produce and then face that sensitivity in order to help her amygdala learn something new, so it will become less sensitive in the future. We’re going to do that by continuing to study her interpretations and then modify her interpretations through learning from experience.
Reid: So let’s try ten seconds again. [I pause to reconsider.] Well, let’s see if you can get to fifteen. [Another brief pause.] And if you can go beyond fifteen, then you can. But I’ll let you know when fifteen seconds are up, and if you want to stop at that point and take it off, that’s fine. But if we can go to thirty, which is our goal, let’s do that.
I just gave Mary a helping hand for this next experiment. If she can only last ten seconds, that’s fine. If she can continue to fifteen seconds, great. If she happens to get to thirty seconds, that will be great, too. And I’m going to cue her as the seconds pass. These are all little crutches, and eventually Mary will want to work on removing many of her crutches so she will have a chance to face more of her insecurity. But right now, they serve the purpose to help her move into new territory, which holds the possibility of new learnings.
We conduct the third experiment, and she makes it all the way to thirty seconds. Her distress level reaches a high of fifty during that time, but as soon as she removes the straw, it drops down to a normal of about thirty. I ask her how she accomplished that, since just minutes ago she panicked at eight seconds.
Mary: I think I felt like I knew how to regulate my breathing a little better, and also I kept in mind that I was in control of it.
Mary engaged in an experiment in which she started to panic within eight seconds. Then, in less than two minutes, she adopted a new point of view—“I think I can regulate my breathing, and I’m in control here”—and immediately applied it to her next experiment. And that allowed her to go the full thirty seconds. She changed her point of view; that’s the only thing she did. Now we are getting somewhere!
Reid: Oh. So here in this room you think, “I’m in control because I can take this nose clip off and take this straw out.” And on the airplane, what do you think?
Mary: I think something could happen with the oxygen supply. And then there wouldn’t be enough air.
Reid: Oh, yeah, I’ve read all the stories about airplanes running out of oxygen while they’re sitting on the tarmac, and all those people dying. It’s just awful. [Now Mary starts laughing.] You’re laughing. Why are you laughing? You don’t remember those stories? No?
Mary: [Still laughing] No.
Now, you’re probably thinking that that’s just a funny little exchange I threw in to lighten things up. But twenty-four hours later, when she’s sitting on that plane for her scheduled flight and she begins to struggle with her anxiety, the memory of that moment of laughter pops into her mind and lets her shift her perspective away from her fear. Excellent!
But back to the session. I’m going to keep the pressure on. I want Mary to learn (and I want you to learn) that she keeps responding to her interpretation of the experience. If she maintains her preexisting point of view, she’s going to remain stuck. So we have to dislodge that belief and then install a new one. If we can focus on her interpretation instead of the actual event, we can give her a new kind of control.
Reid: Okay, so, let me just get this straight. That’s another interpretation you’re making that ends up scaring you. “Oh, no, the air could run out!” This is like what you said about your heart, isn’t it? “My belief is my heart is going to pound out of my chest and cause a heart attack if I’m standing still instead of running.” So we might guess that that interpretation is adding, oh, maybe sixty percent to your distress. But think about this: You just did something within two minutes to change your experience. And it wasn’t making the straw larger, was it?
Mary can’t handle the realistic possibility of suffocation. Neither would you or I. No one could! When she’s on the airplane, if she starts thinking, I’m going to suffocate, she’ll move into full-blown panic and feel the urge to climb over the seats, push past the other passengers, and escape the plane. What if, instead, she can say, “Boy, it’s stuffy in here. I’m starting to feel like I’m going to suffocate. I know this feeling. And I know I’m not about to suffocate, but I sure feel scared.” Mary can tolerate a false sense of suffocation if she interprets it as false. She has to learn to step back in that moment, to separate her executive self from that part of her who was traumatized in the past and who is now really frightened. She needs to hear those messages of, “I’m going to suffocate,” and then immediately reappraise the situation and tell herself, “No, wait, I actually can handle this.” She’ll probably continue to hear those fearful thoughts pop up, and she will still have to cope with her distress. But that will feel a lot easier than coping with impending death.
This is why I’m deliberately working on her content, on her beliefs about the capacity of the heart, and on the likelihood of suffocation. She and I need to settle any faulty interpretation so we can push her content out of the way. We need to get to the essential work of tolerating a generic sense of distressing doubt.
Surprise!
I’m More Capable than I Thought
We have time for one more experiment. I brought a scarf to the session. I explain that Mary’s job is to tighten the scarf around her neck. Actually, I ask her not just to tighten the scarf but to tighten it a little more than she thinks she can tolerate. The experiment? To see if she can get past the momentary prediction of “I can’t handle this.”
Let me bring you into the scene. Mary has pulled that big, bulky white scarf around her neck and she is slowly tightening it. I tease her, “You look great. Truly.” She responds with a wry smile, “Let’s see how I look when I’m blue.”
Reid: You want to get to that place where you go, “Uh-oh.” Are you there yet?
Mary: Yeah.
Reid: I’m going to ask you to put the nose clip on now. And we’ll do this for thirty seconds. Is that all right with you?
Mary: Yeah.
Reid: Okay. [I count the seconds] Five . . . ten . . . Tell me what you’re thinking now. Speak to me. Talk out loud.
Mary: This is fine.
Reid: Where’s your number?
Mary: It’s probably a fifty.
Reid: And fifty is fine? You’re at moderate distress, and it’s fine? Tell me what you mean when you say “It’s fine.”
Mary: Well, my heart is beating faster, but right now it’s okay.
Reid: How do you know?
Mary: Well, I can’t look it up yet, but you told me it’s okay.
That’s an excellent surprise! I expected Mary would have to consult with a physician before she would change her mind-set about the strength and power of her heart. But she’s changed her mind! She modified her belief about one of her major fears, and she did it within a brief thirty minutes. Now, in the middle of an experiment, she’s already applying her new point of view in such a way that makes her more capable of tolerating her discomfort.
That’s significant progress. She’s willing to trust that her heart is not at risk when she gets panicky. But she has another huge belief that has also been in her way. Now that we’re coming to the end of this first session, I ask her about it.
Reid: Our main task today and tomorrow morning is to modify your point of view about your fears and your uncomfortable feelings. What are we doing about your interpretation so far, would you say? What sentence would reflect your point of view right now?
Mary: Well, just that some of the fears I have are unfounded, and that I can tolerate more than I thought I could.
Excellent. If Mary can hold on to “I can handle more than I think I can at this moment,” she’ll be in great shape to continue her work here. Mary and I are not focusing on her getting rid of the symptoms and getting rid of being scared. We’re working on changing the interpretation of what she’s scared about. “I’m not scared because something is wrong in this moment. I’m scared because I’ve been traumatized in the past and therefore I think there is something dangerous happening now. I’m feeling scared, I’m having symptoms, and I can handle it.”
This is what I want for you, too. If you are limiting yourself because you are worrying unnecessarily, I want you to discover that you are more capable than you think.
We have a few minutes left in the session, and it’s time to plan some experiments for homework. Our second session comes tomorrow morning, so she has only tonight to practice her skills. My goal is for her to voluntarily choose to place herself in a threatening situation. Most of Mary’s difficulties show up when she feels forced into tolerating discomfort. For instance, she loves to travel and needs to travel for work. So she’s forced to take that claustrophobic airplane. In the past she also faced times when there was no available street parking and she was forced to use a parking garage. But what if she voluntarily and purposely chooses to put herself in one of those circumstances? And what if she voluntarily and purposely chooses to generate those typical feelings of doubt and distress? How does that attitude affect her response? That’s the experiment.
Mary suggests that she travel to a nearby town so she can drive into a parking structure she typically avoids. Anytime she’s forced to use a parking deck, she drives “really fast straight up to the roof” to get away from that closed-in feeling. “But I won’t go up to the roof this time. I’ll stay in the middle of it.”
Stay tuned. In Chapter 16 you’ll find out how eventful that experiment was.
Here’s what we have so far.
It’s best for you and me to work directly on the way you look at your long-term relationship with Anxiety, because it has a way of messing with people throughout their lives. Finding a solution for one specific fear will not insulate you from future difficulties. But if you adopt a new perspective, you can apply it to a variety of circumstances over the years.
All of us seek comfort. We each want to feel relaxed when it’s time for relaxation. And everybody wants to feel confident in the outcome of our projects. So it’s no surprise that people who experience traumatic events—a near drowning, a panic that resembles a heart attack, blanking out in the middle of a conference presentation—will initially react by seeking comfort, safety, and reassurance. But as I described in Chapter 3, when we continue to use this approach to solving our difficulties, by avoiding and resisting and by seeking the comfort of certainty, we are inviting long-term problems. What we resist will persist.
This is a competition between two points of view within you. When your primary perspective in life is that you should remove all doubt and insecurity, your growth will be limited. When you believe you should focus on getting rid of symptoms and getting rid of being scared, that viewpoint will keep you stuck. If you want to take on any specific challenge, the best perspective is a paradoxical one: go toward uncertainty and distress and away from confidence and security. You must face difficulty. It’s the only way any of us learns.
So in the previous section, Step Back, I talked about the need to shift your perspective from the typical way you perceive your problems and your usual ways of responding to them. In Chapter 9 I offered you a specific way to mentally step back during any challenging moment if you feel like you’re getting tangled up and confused. When you can step back for a moment, you’ve created a little space. Great! Now what? This section, Want It, will answer that question. In the gap you create, you have an opportunity to step into a new point of view. I’m going to suggest that you don’t simply call up a different viewpoint. I’d like you to call up an absolutely opposite viewpoint, one that can be reflected in two words, and you can already guess what they are: Want it. Want what you don’t want. Want what you’ve been trying to get rid of. Want difficulty, confusion, and struggle.
And then take action based on that new mind-set. Want to step into the fray. And then step into the fray.
Welcoming such a sense of insecurity while you’re attempting to solve a problem is quite unorthodox. But stay with me. You can always throw away this book when you’ve finished it. Until then, try to keep an open mind. I’m going to present some logical explanations for this illogical approach, starting with a profound experience I had a few years ago.
1*This is a well-researched treatment procedure called interoceptive exposure.