Chapter 6

Make It NOT About Your Content

A struggling small business owner is facing some difficult decisions. With a seemingly insurmountable debt and no promising prospects, he’s thinking he might need to lay off some if not all of his employees. Even more troubling, he doesn’t know how long he can maintain this business when he has little income, no new leads, and a swarm of creditors breathing down his neck. His worries—about the livelihoods of the people who work for him, about his own livelihood, about impending bankruptcy, about finding a job in this economy—all of these bothersome, muttering worries, have forged together to form a big, ugly ball of anxiety that hounds him day in and day out.

Of course, our small business owner doesn’t expect his worries to solve his problems. They are a signal of his problems but offer no solution. None of us believe that worrying brings instant gratification or pays off our credit card bills. “This is unpleasant,” we tell ourselves, “but at least I’m worrying. That’s a step in the right direction.” Worrying about all of these potential negative outcomes seems a heck of a lot better than losing everything/going to pieces/going crazy/having a heart attack/disappointing everyone/humiliating myself. We have no need to adjust our intentions (which are good) or the logic behind them (which is sound). Instead, we must figure out new ways to respond to our distress signal. We need an alternative approach.

Presently, our fictional (but all too real) small business owner is stuck in what we can call the Problem Identification phase, in which we acknowledge the hurdle(s) we’re facing. It’s not uncommon that we’ll get trapped here, sitting down and staring at our problems like we’re staring at a blank page, asking ourselves, “Well, now what?” Worrying helps us to identify those challenges. But when we don’t do anything about them, worry starts to remind and nag us, stressing just how important each of these problems is, painting a bleak picture of our present situation.

Solving Problems

So how do we get out of that Problem Identification phase? Well, our worries are designed to motivate us. They are there to drive us toward creating a problem-solving plan and then acting on it. Instead of standing in those problems and wading into worry, we need to set in motion a strategy to solve those challenges by taking one step at a time. Our small business owner needs to call his financial advisor and look into loan options, or call his father-in-law in Toledo to ask him for loan options, or seek new job procurement services at a free business seminar. Or perhaps all of these things. When we are staring at a problem, even something as simple as setting aside a specific time on a specific date to address the issue is a better option than allowing worry to gnaw, gnaw, gnaw away at us.

That doesn’t mean worries will now disappear. Yes, we can still feel troubled even while taking action to solve our problems. We may start to question the plan while we are midway through implementing it. Our small business owner can set a date and time to meet with his CPA, but that won’t stop worry from creeping in. “What am I going to do between then and now? What if the CPA has no options for me? What if setting this appointment is not enough?”

That’s our goal: for signals, we are to create a plan and act on that plan. Worry is absolutely beneficial when it is integrated into the overall strategy. But that means, of course, that we’ve got to create a strategy. If you believe you’re dealing with a signal, then let worry provoke you into taking action to address the problem. That means you’ve got to have a plan you are willing to act on. And that means you need worry to trigger you into doing something.

“Get Prepared!”

Hurricane preparedness is a common discussion thread in the East Coast of the United States, particularly when July and August roll around. Frank, a South Florida resident, has been bombarded with reminders on local news programs about purchasing supplies in advance. At the end of each evening broadcast, meteorologists urge homeowners to “Get prepared!” Frank’s go-to supermarket has stocked up on water, canned food, flashlights, and batteries, even going so far as to display these emergency items in an obvious and convenient location near the front of the store.

If there’s one thing Frank’s stocked up on, it’s worries. You might say he’s “mentally prepared” for any tropical storms or hurricanes that might sweep through. He hasn’t actually purchased window shutters or the recommended disaster supplies—nonperishables, first aid kit, battery-operated radio—but he’s got enough worry stored up to last him three months. And he has worried a heck of a lot about that old tree out back, the one that in 125 mph winds could easily be uprooted and come crashing down on his screened-in patio . . . but, no, he hasn’t actually done anything about it. His legitimate worrying never triggered action, never impelled him to make a supply run, never prompted him to pull that old chainsaw out of the shed and cut down that looming liability.

Through all of this worrying, Frank has anticipated most of the negative events that might occur. He does this because he believes that when he worries, he is readying himself for any calamity that might befall him. His pattern reflects this false belief: “If I worry about it, then when something bad happens, I’ll be better prepared for it.” Or, on a similar note, “If I worry about this, I’m more likely to figure out how to avoid or prevent something bad from happening.” What Frank hasn’t done, despite all of his fretting and stressing and ideological defense of worrying, is take any action to prevent these negatives outcomes.

Listen up: When you worry about a legitimate concern and then do not act on that worry, you transfer it from a signal to noise. We all do this. We identify a problem that’s worth worrying about, and then all we do is worry. That’s noise. If it doesn’t kick you into problem solving, it’s noise. If you want to get stronger, you must stop doing that.

Remember that worry has a legitimate role in motivating us to take action on our plans, to stay on task, and to solve problems both big and small in our lives. It has the potential to trigger planning, preparation, and action, but worrying in itself is not acting. Acting is checking inventory, purchasing supplies, and putting up shutters. Acting means we’ve got ourselves moving. Worrying is sitting still.

When faced with a challenge (be it a hurricane or a struggling business or a reluctance to start writing), we must decide to act and then we must act. We should perceive our worries as an indication that we should meet our challenges head on, cut right to the heart of them, and take action. Otherwise, we’ll be in the aftermath of the storm, sitting and staring at that old tree that’s collapsed onto our patio, and asking, “Well, what now?”

Shall we try another example? Yes, we shall.

You have an interview scheduled for tomorrow morning, and you’re understandably anxious about it. You’ve been unemployed for a year now, and this position could prove to be very lucrative. You don’t want to blow it.

Let’s take a minute and jot down all of the worries that are spinning around in your mind.

WORRIES

There’ll be a lot of people in the room.

My hands will be sweaty/clammy.

I won’t know the answer to a question.

Someone else will be more qualified.

I’ll be overdressed.

I’ll be late.

I’ll be underdressed.

My mouth will dry out.

I’ll make a bad first impression.

I’ll misrepresent myself.

I’ll have to pee mid-interview.

I’ll sweat through my shirt.

They’ll think I’m boring.

I’ll forget my resume.

I suck at interviewing.

I’d say those are pretty typical worries that most people relate to. Now let’s take another minute and distinguish the noise from the signals.

WORRIES

There’ll be a lot of people in the room.

Hands will be sweaty/clammy.

I won’t know the answer to a question.

Someone else will be more qualified.

I’ll be overdressed.

I’ll be late.

I’ll be underdressed.

My mouth will dry out.

I’ll make a bad first impression.

I’ll misrepresent myself.

I’ll have to pee mid-interview.

I’ll sweat through my shirt.

They’ll think I’m boring.

I’ll forget my resume.

I suck at interviewing.

That’s right. Only seven of the fifteen worries cycling through your mind are actually in your control (i.e., signals). And—good news—all seven can be addressed rather easily.

I’ll be late: Map the distance beforehand, estimate travel time, and leave an additional thirty minutes for unexpected traffic, locating the building, parking, etc.

My mouth will dry out: Bring a small cup of water in with you to the interview. You can even buy a special chewing gum at the pharmacy that promotes saliva production (but take it out before you enter the room!).

I’ll forget my resume: Keep an extra copy of your resume in your car. Additionally, pack your suitcase/portfolio the night before so it’s not a last-minute concern.

I won’t know the answer to a question: Consider the questions that might be asked at a job interview. If you’re interviewing for a corporate position, you may want to know the history of the corporation, their mission statement, their clients and services, etc. Do whatever research you need to prepare for whatever they might toss your way.

I’ll be overdressed/underdressed: Ask friends for their opinions about attire for an interview. Search monster.com for “The 6 Worst Things to Wear to a Job Interview.”

I’ll have to pee mid-interview: Seek out a bathroom just before you enter the office.

I suck at interviewing: Practice! Conduct several mock interviews with a friend or family member, and try thinking on your feet.

As for the other seven concerns—well, there’s not much you can do about those. How can you ensure that no other candidate will be more qualified than you? You can’t! So unless you’re willing to camp out in the hallway and discourage all incoming interviewees to give up this swell opportunity on your behalf, you can do nothing except mark it as noise.

Elevate Your Game!

What does this chapter title mean, “Make It NOT About Your Content”? When you find yourself repeatedly worrying about a specific topic, I’m going to refer to that topic as your content. Anything at all that you’re stuck on and worried about is your content, whether it’s a medical procedure, walking into open spaces, making mistakes, having conflicts or being rejected, asking someone for a date, being the center of attention, or forgetting to lock the door.

Now we’ve settled what the term content means. But I’m telling you to make it NOT about your content. This means you must put effort into correcting any misinformation you have about the topic of your worry. It means you need to gather any knowledge you might be missing before you can step forward into the arena that threatens you. When we worry, all of us make some errors in assessment of what is truly at risk. Noisy worries pop up that exaggerate the problem, defining it as horrific, intolerable, humiliating, or life threatening. When facing a difficulty while those worries are in control, negative thoughts will intrude into our days and nights, and we will tend to back away as the only way we know to quiet our worries. Your task is to answer those worries. You’ve got to figure which ones are signals and which are noise, because you must determine your true risk and then decide whether you want to take that risk.

But this work will not only be about correcting misinformation. Whether you worry about only a specific topic or you dwell on lots of themes, if you want to feel stronger and more resilient, then we need to get underneath your specific content so we can address your tendencies. In Chapter 3, you saw the chart called “Generating Worry: Common Stances That Can Turn Against You.” That gives you a good sense of the tendencies Anxiety takes advantage of. One of the most important stances to address is “I can’t handle this.” Your task will be to adopt a new attitude: “This is hard. I’m not sure I can handle it, but I’m going to move toward it anyway.” To do that, you must be willing to tolerate uncertainty and cope with distress. Why? Because Anxiety will not allow you to feel sure that you can handle these situations. You must step forward at the same time you’re feeling uncomfortably doubtful.

There are two big reasons you need to begin this process by addressing your questions about the specific topic of your worry. First, if you firmly believe “I shouldn’t step forward and engage because it’s not safe,” then you’re stuck. Why would you pursue this task and simultaneously resist it?

The second reason, and the one I want you to pay closest attention to in this book, is that Anxiety needs you to stay distracted by your content, by the topic of your worry, in order for it to dominate you. Anxiety does not want you to discover that the core theme in this competition is a generic sense of doubt and distress, not a specific one. As long as Anxiety can keep your attention on your content, it wins and you will continue to lose out. Elevate the game! Get above your content, up to the real challenge you must face.

Let me be clear. It’s fine for a part of you to think that the threat is too much. But your executive, the one you put in charge of making decisions and acting on them, needs to think otherwise.

Let’s say you want to work on your continuing panic attacks, but every time you begin to panic, you think you’re having a heart attack. You have to resolve that misinformation. Otherwise, the thought of having another panic attack will terrify you. Why would anyone step forward if a heart attack is the risk? If I thought at any moment I could provoke my own heart attack, I’d be very cautious, too. When you decide a panic attack is dangerous, you’re likely to avoid strenuous physical activity, make sure you have anti-anxiety medications available, only go to the grocery store with a companion, frequently check your pulse, and so forth. Why would you change any of those behaviors if you believed they were saving you from harm? So either you stay stuck, or you change what you believe about panic attacks.

If you want to work on your fear of flying, and your fear is the possibility of your plane crashing, you need to change your perspective on this issue. Decide that you are not actually putting your life at significant risk when you fly. Your job is to move fearful thoughts about air travel out of the category of signal and into the category of noise. It is the only possible way you can start winning. And don’t give anyone else the responsibility of making you feel safe. You can talk to a pilot or work with a therapist who specializes in the fear of flying. But don’t turn the task over to them of convincing you that flying is safe. It’s not their job; it’s your job. You have to commit yourself to finding ways to trust the industry. (And, by the way, it absolutely deserves your trust.)

Even when you come to a rational conclusion, your worried self is still going to generate spontaneous fearful thoughts about dying on the plane. You simply cannot extinguish them; the mind does not work that way. Those thoughts will show up as you consider approaching a flight. Once you make your informed decision that flying is safe enough for you, then when any further worries pop up, your task is to label them as irrelevant noise (that still has the ability to make you scared). You won’t feel like it’s irrelevant noise. But you have to act as though it’s noise. (We’ll be talking about this “act as though” theme in Chapter 18.) Your job is to allow those noisy worries to pop up and then not believe them. When the worried thoughts arise, view them from the perspective of “Of course I’m going to have these thoughts. I’m doing something that has frightened me in the past. My mind hasn’t quite caught up to my understanding that everything is safe. It’s okay that these thoughts show up, and I don’t need to act on them.” (You don’t need to literally say such a long message to yourself in the moment. But whatever you do say will be some simplified version of that point of view. We’ll address all this talking-to-yourself stuff in Chapters 15 and 16.)

Once you catch yourself worrying and then decide to let those thoughts go, turn your attention to something else of interest. It’s likely that the worry will pop up again, maybe within just a few seconds, and that needs to be acceptable, too. What do you do then? Again turn your attention to something else of interest . . . until you get disturbed again.

Let me give you another example. If you believe it’s time to ask for a raise but you’re too afraid your supervisor will fire you if you speak up, you will need to handle that fear. You can convey to yourself something like, “It’d be crazy for her to react that way. But I guess it’s conceivable. And I’m willing to take that risk, because this issue is important to me.” Or you can make a different decision: “It’s too risky for me right now. Even though I deserve a raise, she laid off three people this quarter. I can’t afford the chance that I could be next.” Our job here is not to figure out which decision is best; it is to encourage you to make a timely decision so that you can quiet all that noise in your head.

Maybe you are afraid of humiliating yourself in front of coworkers, of blacking out while driving, or of contaminating the house and thus causing your children to be sick. Few people can cope with those kinds of fears. However, if you want to step into one of these activities, you have to figure out how to step away from those interpretations. Whether you worry about lots of little things or a specific phobia, panic disorder, social anxiety, or OCD, if you don’t change your perspective about the threat, those activities will quickly and easily end up in the “I can’t handle that” bin.

Mary

The ten-hour flight back from London was uneventful, but sitting in the very back row meant that Mary had a non-reclining chair and two bathroom doors directly behind her. And she was a long way from the escape exit doors. As the plane landed at the Phoenix airport and taxied to the gate, the air inside the plane seemed to stop circulating. As everyone got up to retrieve their luggage from the overhead bins, Mary could no longer see the front of the plane, and it seemed like eons before anyone started moving down the aisle. Suddenly, her heart started racing and her knees started shaking. Everything was escalating rapidly. Within two breaths, Mary was in full-blown panic mode. Up popped this danger message inside her mind: There’s not enough air! I’m going to suffocate in here! Despite her whole body feeling weak, as though she was moments away from collapsing, she thought about climbing over the seats to get out of there as quickly as possible, and she came close to screaming. She felt caught between a likely death experience and social humiliation. “Well, if I push ahead of everybody . . . I can’t really do that. They’re going to think I’m rude. But do they really know I’m in danger? I’m in danger! They have to move and let me out.”*

* Reid Wilson, Exposure Therapy for Phobias, video, psychotherapy.net, http://www.psychotherapy.net/video/Exposure-Therapy-Phobias, 2012. See Appendix B.

She survived the next ten intense minutes, but by the time she got off the airplane, she collapsed in a chair and wept. She didn’t know how she’d get on the next flight to make it home.

She began to have more and more trouble flying. Worried anticipation. Panic attacks on the plane. Her trouble spread to other arenas that offered no immediate escape. “I was revisiting Boston—I hadn’t been there in years—and my daughter was using the map to navigate for me. Two big highways had portions that were now underground, and it was really, really bad for me. I’m ashamed to say that at one point I started screaming at my daughter to keep us away from the tunnels. Only twelve at the time, my daughter was trying to read the map and accidentally put me into a three-and-a-half-mile long tunnel. I kept yelling at her. When we finally got out, she started crying. She said, ‘I didn’t know you were so mean.’ In my mind I said, ‘Well, I’m never, ever driving in Boston again.’”

Now Mary sits in front of me, frustrated that this problem has extended for ten years. We will have only two appointments, one today and one tomorrow, to address her classic symptoms of claustrophobia: the fear of restriction and suffocation. Mary has a flight tomorrow night, and she is not at all comfortable stepping onto that plane. “I love to travel. But it takes so much out of me because when I get on an airplane and the hatch door closes, I suddenly realize that there is no outside air source. There’s no way for me to leave. And my heart starts racing, and sometimes it’s been so bad, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. Because it feels like it’s jumping out of my chest and almost like it’s going to rip out. It’s pounding so hard, and I’m stuck in one little place. Because people do have heart attacks from shock and really strong duress, right?”

Parking structures are tough. “With their low ceilings I feel like I’m going to be crushed in there. The concrete above me looks really heavy, and I think if it fell . . . well, I think the worst possible death would be to be buried alive. If they’re big and they’re like a labyrinth, or if the ramps get crowded and the traffic’s not moving, that really panics me. And basically I just don’t park inside parking structures anymore.”

Elevators are a struggle, too. “If they’re really modern, go fast, and no one else is in them, I’m not too bad. But I don’t like elevators if they’re slow and kind of clunky, or if too many people crowd on. I’m afraid it’s going to get stuck, and then I won’t be able to breathe. And I won’t be able to get out. I don’t like to be in those kinds of situations. Anytime I feel trapped, I get really panicky.”

Mary focuses her attention on some substantial threats.

And now her world is smaller.

That’s Mary’s content in a nutshell. And she has strong, valid reasons to be afraid! But wait a minute. Mary is diagnosed with claustrophobia. How can her reasoning be valid? It’s not because these situations are inherently dangerous. It’s because she has experienced such threatening moments of impending doom that she has constructed a belief system that perceives those situations as dangerous. Plus, those traumas alone convinced her limbic system’s amygdala that it should automatically move into alarm when it senses these types of stimuli. Mary struggles with commercial flight, tunnels, and parking decks. Her fear of suffocation and restriction illustrates how Anxiety can take advantage of us after traumatic events in which we have felt threatened.

Our job—hers and mine together—is to push that content away. She has generated some strong signals that automatically provoke her sense of threat. She, of course, doesn’t want to keep generating that fear response. More important, if Mary wants to reach her goals, she needs to turn these signals into noise so she will be able to dismiss them more easily. When her anxious worries pop up, she needs to develop her ability to mentally step back and label them as irrelevant clatter. When she starts to feel panicky, again she needs to mentally step back and then say (and believe), “I can handle these feelings.”

Can we push that content away—the suffocation, the threat to her heart, the collapsing garage—into the category of extraneous noise? If Mary and I can accomplish that task, our work will not be done. She will then need to attend to the core work: letting herself feel her doubt and her physical discomfort. That will be hard for her, but at least she will be focusing on her primary task. We will return to Mary again, starting in Chapter 10. She has a lot to teach us.

Coping with feelings of uncertainty and distress is hard enough. Coping with some of the content of fears—Suffocating! Being humiliated! Falling from the balcony! Running someone over!—can seem impossible. So your job is the same as Mary’s. Your first task is to do whatever it takes to shift the topic of your fear from signal to noise. You might not be able to accomplish that by yourself, and you probably can’t do it instantly, but you do have to get it done.

Here are two topics we won’t be addressing in this book: worries that are signals and the specific content within your worries. When you hear worries that you believe are signals, you should take actions that move you toward resolving the problem. And you’ll have to study some other book if you are looking to figure out what to do with the specific worries of your specific content (your job loss, a medical condition, a bad decision, the best glasses for the shape of your face). In this book, you and I will design tactics to respond to distressing, noisy worry in all its forms.

By the way, let me remind you that your challenger doesn’t care about the topic of your worries. The goal of Anxiety is to take advantage of your feared content in order to bother you. That’s the game it has constructed, and it has coerced you into becoming the weaker player. One way it does that is to confuse you about whether a specific concern is a signal or noise. You need to sort that out. So let’s review what I was explaining just before I talked about Mary. Your mission should be to sweep content out of the way by correcting any misinformation so you can focus only on being willing to feel intimidated and insecure. Handle your legitimate concerns. What specific fears are threatening you? Get your questions answered. Find out whether you are misinformed about a subject. How stable are ladders, and how do you safely climb a stable ladder? Can anyone teach you the signs that help distinguish a friendly dog from an aggressive one? How frequently does one need to check The Weather Channel to be ready for a storm? How dangerous is it to stand near a railing of the balcony? Does a person need to worry about a panic attack turning into a heart attack? How long does the HIV virus live outside the body? Could asking for a raise be grounds for dismissal?

“I can’t handle that!”

“I don’t like it, but I can handle it.”
  • humiliating myself in front of coworkers
  • allowing my children to be in danger at school
  • getting fired for a minor infraction
  • contaminating my family with salmonella
  • accidentally burning the house down
  • realizing that I’m a bad person
  • dying in a plane crash
  • suffocating in an elevator
  • causing my own heart attack
  • being bitten by an aggressive dog

A generic sense
of uncertainty
and distress

When skills are necessary, develop your skills. If you worry about drowning, taking swimming lessons might be in order. If you are awkward about public speaking but you need that skill at work, you might consider attending a skill-development group like Toastmasters.*

*Visit https://www.toastmasters.org/ for more information.

Once you have made an informed decision, corrected the misinformation, and settled on a plan of action, then when your worries pop up, you can move them into the category of useless noise instead of signals. It doesn’t mean they won’t pop up again. It just means you don’t need to pay attention to them. If you have a fear of heights that keeps you from climbing a ladder but you want to be able to climb a ladder, then get your safety concerns handled. Even after you settle your concerns, once you’re stepping up onto rung three, with shaking hands and shaking legs, your worries are still going to pop up, and they may sound something like: “This ladder isn’t safe! I’m going to fall and crack my head open!” That is the moment when you need to act as though these thoughts are noise, reflecting your anxious insecurity, and not a signal of your impending doom. You really can handle feeling anxious and uncertain. Cracking your head open? Not so much.

Keep in mind that if Anxiety is dominating you, no amount of preparation or information or reassurance will feel sufficient. OCD represents the embodiment of this problem. If you are a checker, you probably know that it ought to be sufficient to turn off the stove and then confirm once that it’s off. If contamination is your issue, you can gather all kinds of data that reinforces washing your hands for twenty seconds in warm soapy water should be sufficient to prevent germs from spreading. You may know, as an orderer, that you can tolerate the housecleaner moving the magazines on your coffee table three inches to the left. If you are caught up in thinking rituals, then you probably know that having a bad thought shouldn’t require you to counterbalance it with a good thought. But if OCD is dominating you, all of that clarity of mind is utterly useless once your obsessions kick in. At that point, you will feel compelled to remove your doubt, and you won’t stop until you do. That’s why you and I must focus on how to manage the distress of uncertainty. But hold on, because we have to build that system from the ground up, and we’re just getting started.

The struggles of those with OCD show us unquestionably that if you want to take back control of your life from Anxiety, you cannot wait until you are certain that everything is safe or that you know what the perfect decision is. You cannot continue to gather more and more reassurance until you finally feel settled. You must learn how to step toward the threat while a part of you is still feeling insecure. Trying to close all the loopholes, attempting to erect a secure safety net, waiting for a clear indication that everything is going to work out, waiting until you feel confident . . . these options are not available to you while you are still being challenged by Anxiety. You have to step forward, into the proverbial fire, while some part of you is predicting that this is a really bad idea.