The way we empower ourselves is by using tools.  There are two different types of tools; one is physical tools and the other is mental tools.  The way the tools work is that they somehow interrupt our thoughts and break the obsessive nature of anxious driven thinking.

Yesterday I posted about the physical tools.  This post will discuss the mental tools only.

Mental tools are subtle and require more attention to be effective, compared to physical tools.  Therefore, mental tools are typically suggested for lower levels of anxiety.  However, mental tools are much more effective at creating long-term recovery.

All anxiety starts with a single thought.  This thought is usually created upon being exposed to a trigger in some way.  Once the first thought starts, we continue to add additional thoughts, which is how anxious thoughts continue.  After the first thought then our conditioned behavior kicks in, and this is where the obsessing comes into play.

Our anxiety driven behavior is rooted in controlling a specific situation.  For a bridge phobic the control can be centered around the traffic, or the weather, day of time, what type of vehicle is in close proximity or even how fast everyone else is traveling on the road.  The desire to control everything about the driving experience is the reason why we will obsess over the situation and continue to add thoughts.

Therefore, the way to change this behavior is to break this cycle of thought pattern.  Breaking this cycle allows to “look away” from the fear we have been focusing on, and teach ourselves to allow the fear to leave us.

I have used the metaphor of a sponge in the past.  Imagine our brains like a sponge, it has little empty voids throughout it.  Each void can only have one thought present at one time.  If most of the voids contain anxious driven thoughts, we would be experiencing higher levels of anxiety.  So the idea is to fill these voids with non-anxious driven thoughts.

We fill these voids by using mental tools.  Mental tools are something that we can focus on and allow us to look away from the fear and teach us that we will be just fine without obsessing over the fear.

There is a list of mental tools below to give you a starting point.  However, there are many different types of things we can do that can be considered a mental tool.  However, what seems to work best for most people is doing something that creates a product; addition, subtraction, creating words for each letter in the alphabet.

What is not a mental tool is listening to music or watching television.  All too often someone in my support group would say the tool didn’t work, only to find out that what they thought was a tool was listening to music or watching a show on television.

Music and television are like white noise.  Your brain is basically idol during these times.  And your brain is complex enough that you can do two things at once.  You can listen to music, sing along and still have random thoughts pop up in your mind.  The same thing for television, you can watch a show, follow along and random thoughts will pop up from time to time.  These random thoughts can easily be anxiety driven thoughts.  And once they start, if we are not aware, then we can easily have additional thoughts and anxiety levels will escalate.

By using mental tools that produce some type of product, we are filling our brains capacity and creating an environment where anxiety cannot exist.  This is very important; we do not push anxiety out of our heads or stop it in any way, what we do is learn to look away from it and create an atmosphere where anxiety does not like to exist.  By doing this on demand with the tools, and feeling empowered, we learn to slow our behavioral response to our triggers, and ultimately create recovery.

My suggestion is to practice the tools once or twice a day, for 5 minutes each time, when you have little or no anxiety levels.  The reason for this is that we need to become familiar with using the tools and this will happen easiest when we practice on our terms without being filled with anxiety.  When we experience higher levels of anxiety we will naturally gravitate towards what we are familiar with and comfortable with, we need to make ourselves familiar and comfortable with the tools for them to be most effective.

Practice!  Practice!  Practice!  And be patient.  It will take time to be able to depend on the tools when you need them most.  But the more you practice and the more you try, the better capable you will be at managing your anxiety.

Mental Tools

• Counting backward from a high number by 1’s, 2’s or 3’s
• Alphabet games – girls/boys names, song titles, sports teams, etc.
• Use letters on signs or license plates to make words
• Number games – count numbers to make 21, count specific items or colors
• Spell words backward
• Take a larger word and make smaller words from it