This is a technique that I call the anxiety journal. Now, most people don't think about taking their anxieties and just writing them down and talking about the worst possible thing that can happen. Like contrary, people will give you all this advice to just, don't ruminate on anything. Let it go. Don't think about it, especially by the way. You know those non-anxious people, they're so unbelievably annoying around you. Those people who don't worry, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, just don't worry about it, man. It's probably not going to happen, doesn't really matter. You know, just so irritating because that's bad advice for you. Don't try to do that. That's actually unnatural. A bunch of research, by the way, shows that when you tell people to stop thinking about something that's troubling them, they think about it more. Okay? So that person in your life is actually making life worse for you. Here's what to do instead. Think about the five things about what you're suffering from some anxiety. Okay. You probably haven't done that before. It's going to take some work. So go someplace quiet. Think about your notebook and say, I'm troubled. Right now I'm troubled. How about what? What is the thing that's really on my heart and define it? Let's say that you got kind of a health challenge and you don't know what it is. You went to the doctor and the doctor did a bunch of tests and you haven't been feeling right? You're sort of, you're anxious about what it might be, even though you don't know. You know what? Don't run away from that. Don't leave it in the sort of the amorphous zone of something might be wrong. Write it down. Write down your orthphere. Write down your paranoid fantasy. What it actually it is. Or maybe put it in your phone, but password protect the file if you do. Define the actual source of your fear. Okay? So maybe it's like, I went to the doctor and something isn't right. And actually I'm afraid it's going to be something really bad, like cancer. Right? It's probably not, but it might be. So part two is actually not just writing down your worst fear. It's writing down the different scenarios of what it could be. This is nothing. This is something mild or this is something really bad and write down what it is. What are the three-sarrant scenarios? In defense planning in the department of defense, that's the analysis that I was doing. They call it best case, worst case, most likely case. It's a good place to start. You write down five scenarios if you want, but those three kind of get the job done. Then do something that an insurance company would do, which is it looks at the scenarios and it assigns probabilities to them. You don't know. You don't know. But you know, you kind of know. And what you're following when you start to get better, the exercise, is that the catastrophic thing that was like a phantasm was like a ghost up in the attic, bothering you, making weird noises, you know, rattling chains at night and all that. It starts to get a little less bad because what you're really recognized when you start getting better at this to quiet those chains, is that the probability of that worst case scenario is actually pretty well. It's actually objectively pretty well. Okay, so let's say I think it's 20% chance that this is nothing. It's just like it's some transient thing. I think it's about 5% chance that this is something really ghastly. And so therefore it's about a, I can't remember what I said the first 20 or 25%. The rest of it is just something not so serious that I can take care of. I mean, I can deal with something that's kind of the ordinary course of business with health, especially as you're getting older, whatever happens to be. Assign those notional probabilities that you probably know more than you think. You have a lot of information under your belt because you've been alive for a little while. It doesn't mean you're exactly right, but that leads to the next thing to do, which is to describe in your journal the strategies in each case. What am I actually going to do in each one of these cases? Well, there's nothing, nothing. If it's the little thing, it's this, and if it's the worst thing, here's what I'm going to do. And right down what you would do, literally in the worst case scenario. Now, what are you doing? You are preparing for something that's actually scary. This will physiologically move you into the zone temporarily, very temporarily, a fear instead of anxiety by focusing the anxiety itself. Then, guess what? You'll put that thing away, and it won't trouble you nearly as much. Until it does again, then you'll take it out and look at it. Go on to the next four things that are bothering you in order of trouble. Go down the list. What you're going to find is when you do this five times, and then you look at it once every day or two, whenever these things are bothering you, you're going to get better and better and better at dealing with your anxiety, not by running away from it, not by trying to eliminate it, but by trying to focus it. That's the anxiety journal exercises. A well-documented technique. I strongly recommended to my students. I use it myself, and I recommend it to you. And you know what else? It's really bracing. It really feels awesome. It really feels like you're a courageous person when you're doing this because you're able to state, look, this is bothering me. But I have an idea of how likely it is. And even if it happens, I know what I'm going to do. And it gives you kind of an empowerment to it, not like you're just running away. From something, but you're leaning into it. And the reason it feels better is because that's the way your brain and body are supposed to work. My name is James Hunt. I've written a book about raising my autistic, non-speaking sons, and what it's taught me about hope, acceptance, and joy. The meltdowns, sleepless nights, the unexpected challenges, and the breakthroughs, the growth, and the moments of connection. It's not a guidebook. It's a story. Our story. And maybe, in some small way, it's yours too. Your dear book of Love Needs No Words is out now on Spotify.
