Lesson 2 - A Part of Me....

Review:

In Lesson 1 we practiced identifying and labelling the specific thoughts, feelings and body sensations that make up our thinking about stressful situations.  As Dan Siegel says, ‘we gotta name it to tame it.’ So you’ve started to experiment with naming and labelling the thoughts, feelings and body sensations that make up the experience of anxiety.

In Lesson 2 we will begin to explore how to ‘tame it’, what to do with what we’ve labelled so little by little we can decrease the amount of anxiety we experience and feel safer and less out of control when we do experience anxiety.

The next skill involves replacing ‘I am’ with ‘A part of me’.

For example:

• I’m anxious -> A part of me is anxious
• I can’t handle this -> A part of me thinks it can’t handle this

This may sound a bit strange, so let’s try a little experiment.

Experiment 2:1 - Page 2 of Workbook

Just take a moment to check in with yourself, see how things are doing in your internal space. Let your attention scan the length of your body from the top of your head to your feet, not needing to change anything or do anything, but just gathering data of how you are doing in this moment. Maybe there is heaviness or lightness, tension or ease. Maybe there are some strong emotions there or some persistent thoughts.  

Once you identify a thought, emotion or body sensation try changing it from:

• I am___________(e.g. anxious, scared, confused) to
• A part of me is______________(e.g. anxious, scared, confused)

What was that like? Did you notice any difference? Don’t worry if you didn’t yet, but overtime what you will notice is that you start to feel more ‘space’ internally. By being specific that only a part of you is feeling a certain way and not all of you, something begins to shift.

This isn’t magic, nor is it ‘just semantics’.

After first identifying our thoughts feelings and body sensations, changing how we think about things is an important next step in anxiety management.

But changing how we think is different than ‘positive thinking’. In fact there is research evidence suggesting that just trying to replace our worried thoughts with positive ones can actually make anxiety worse.

I imagine that is no surprise to you, you’ve probably had friends or family say things like, ‘stop thinking so much’, ‘it’s not so bad’, ‘think of all the things you’ve got going for you’ or ‘remember, it will get better.’

Though well meaning, these messages encourage us to ignore and replace our worries and feelings with positive thoughts. Instead of helping, that attempt to ignore or replace tends to get us even more disconnected from ourselves and therefore more anxious.

So you may be wondering how changing our language from ‘I am’ to ‘a part of me’ works?

When we say ‘I am_____’ that means all of me, there can be no other way to be. Psychologists label this as over-identification. It can be quite trapping to only be able to be one way - no wonder over-identification can increase anxiety. On the other hand, using words like ‘a part of me________’ labels the data I’m noticing, but also leaves the possibility that there might be other parts of ourselves, that we may have other ways of viewing what we are experiencing.

Here’s another way to think about the difference between ‘I am’ and ‘a part of me.’

Imagine being caught in a storm, you are getting pelted with rain and blown around by wind. It’s pretty wild and chaotic. 

Now imagine being at some distance from a storm. When we are observing it from a distance we can observe and watch all the different parts of the storm without getting tossed around by it. 

Note:
The words themselves aren’t so important; you could say ‘a part of me….’ or ‘something in me…’ or some other variation. What is the powerful piece is creating the differentiation between our whole self and an experience we are observing in some part of ourselves.

Experiment 2:2
Over the next few days, be attentive to your thoughts and feelings.

When you catch yourself thinking: I am_____________ or I feel________________ experiment with changing the sentences to:

• A part of me thinks___________________
• A part of me feels____________________

I completely understand that this may be difficult to catch in the moment. If that is the case, try setting a timer on your phone for once a day to stop and try this, or in the morning when you first get up or at the end of the day. You can try saying it to yourself, but even more useful is to write it down in the free workbook or on your phone. That way you can track any patterns in your thoughts, feelings or body sensations.

More examples:

• I can’t believe my friend said that to me - > A part of me can’t believe my friend said that to me
• I’m scared I’m not going to get this done in time - > A part of me is scared I won’t get this done in time
• I shouldn’t feel so nervous in big groups - > A part of me thinks I shouldn’t feel so nervous in groups.

So now that you’ve identified your thoughts/feelings/body sensations and shifted to ‘a part of me’, what do you do now?

Check out Lesson 3!